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2004 Archive
"Israel
Has Long Spied on U.S., Say Officials" By Bob Drogin and Greg
Miller -- The LA Times reports:
WASHINGTON —
Despite its fervent denials, Israel secretly maintains a large and
active intelligence-gathering operation in the United States that has
long attempted to recruit U.S. officials as spies and to procure
classified documents, U.S. government officials said.
FBI and other
counterespionage agents, in turn, have covertly followed, bugged and
videotaped Israeli diplomats, intelligence officers and others in
Washington, New York and elsewhere, the officials said. The FBI
routinely watches many diplomats assigned to America.
Officials said
FBI surveillance of a senior Israeli diplomat, who was the subject of an
FBI inquiry in 1997-98, played a role in the latest probe into possible
Israeli spying. The bureau now is investigating whether a Pentagon
analyst or pro-Israel lobbyists provided Israel with a highly classified
draft policy document...
"There is a
huge, aggressive, ongoing set of Israeli activities directed against the
United States," said a former intelligence official who was
familiar with the latest FBI probe and who recently left government.
"Anybody who worked in counterintelligence in a professional
capacity will tell you the Israelis are among the most aggressive and
active countries targeting the United States."
The former
official discounted repeated Israeli denials that the country exceeded
acceptable limits to obtain information. "They undertake a wide
range of technical operations and human operations," the former
official said. "People here as liaison … aggressively pursue
classified intelligence from people. The denials are laughable."
Current and
former officials involved with Israel at the White House, CIA, State
Department and in Congress had similar appraisals, although not all were
as harsh in their assessments. A Bush administration official confirmed
that Israel ran intelligence operations against the United States.
"I don't know of any foreign government that doesn't do collection
in Washington," he said.
Another U.S.
official familiar with Israeli intelligence said that Israeli espionage
efforts were more subtle than aggressive, and typically involved the use
of intermediaries.
But a former
senior intelligence official, who focused on Middle East issues, said
Israel tried to recruit him as a spy in 1991. "I had an Israeli
intelligence officer pitch me in Washington at the time of the first
Gulf War," he said. "I said, 'No, go away,' and reported it to
counterintelligence."
The U.S.
officials all insisted on anonymity because classified material was
involved and because of the political sensitivity of Israeli relations
with Washington. Congress has shown little appetite for vigorous
investigations of alleged Israeli spying. ...
Although never
previously implicated in a potential espionage case, AIPAC has
frequently been a subject of controversy. Its close ties to Israel and
its aggressive advocacy of Israeli government positions has drawn
criticism that it should be registered as an agent of a foreign country.
Others, noting its ability to organize significant backing for or
against candidates running for national office, have demanded that it be
classified as a political action committee.
***
"Log
Cabin Republicans" -- Apparently, the title of the organization
for gay Republicans that was much in the news this week alludes to the
charming belief, found among some homosexuals, that Abraham Lincoln used
to get the log in his cabin back in his frontier days. Salon noted
back in 1999.
"In
1995, just after Bob Dole rejected campaign contributions from the Log
Cabin Republicans, a gay GOP group, Log Cabin member W. Scott Thompson
was quoted in the New York Times as saying that gays should feel welcome
in the party, "given that the founder was gay.""
AIDS
activist Larry Kramer claimed in 1999 to have proof Lincoln was gay, but
little has been heard from him about it since.
For
the record, Lincoln fathered four children. In the millions of words of
denunciation of Lincoln written during his lifetime, none of his enemies
alleged he was homosexual (a charge frequently hurled at the time at
Lincoln's predecessor, James Buchanan, but for some reason gays aren't
excited about claiming the passive and inept Buchanan).
It's
fun to keep a list of some of the unlikely guys (e.g., Sandy Koufax, who
has been married twice and currently lives with First Lady's college
roommate) whom gays have claimed to be homosexual. My favorite example
is that frequent victim of rumors, Met's catcher Mike
Piazza. The slugger has lived with about ten different lingerie
models over the last decade. I have actually heard the argument made,
"Well, that just shows how hard he's working to cover up his being
gay." I mean, why else would a man want to sleep with a lot of
centerfolds?
***
Bushllit
-- Back in 1978, George W. Bush ran for Congress in West Texas and
was beaten by an incumbent who cast scorn on the young preppie's fancy
degrees from Yale and Harvard. Bush resolved never to be out-dumbed in a
campaign again.
I've
never seen a politician make such artful use of a reputation for
ignorance that he's worked so hard to achieve. Consider this little gem
from his acceptance speech tonight:
"America
has done this kind of work before and there have always been doubters.
In 1946, 18 months after the fall of Berlin to allied forces, a
journalist wrote in the New York Times, 'Germany is a land in an acute
stage of economic, political and moral crisis. [European] capitals are
frightened. In every [military] headquarters, one meets alarmed
officials doing their utmost to deal with the consequences of the
occupation policy that they admit has failed.' End quote."
Let
me explain what Bush is doing because it's an impressive bit of
rhetorical sleight-of-hand. He's trying to give the impression that the
occupation of Germany after May 1945 was, like Iraq is today, similarly
bedeviled by dozens of attacks per day on American troops, dozens of
deaths per month (66 in August in Iraq, up from 48 in June before
"sovereignty"), large sections of Germany where America had
ceded control to rebels, and so forth. In the past, Rumsfeld and Rice
have peddled the line that renegade Nazi officers called
"Werewolves" put up an Iraq-style resistance to our
occupation. And, hey, Germany turned out okay!
These
claims were conclusively shot
down. (In reality, the Germans loved being occupied by us,
relatively speaking, because the alternative was being occupied by the
Red Army, which was gang-raping the women of East Germany. So, the West
Germans were very careful to make sure we didn't ever feel like chucking
it all and going home.)
So,
what Bush is doing ever so elegantly is calling upon the audience's
vague memories of the lies spouted by Rumsfeld and Rice to give the
impression that there was a persistent violent resistance in postwar
Germany. Yet, Bush is not, technically, lying, because the President
carefully avoids saying anything directly false. And of course, nobody
expects the President to have any historical facts in his head at all,
so nobody will think worse of the President's vaunted character for his
misleading the public in this instance, because to blame Bush for trying
to BS us implies that Mr. Bush knows what he's talking about, and of
course, nobody thinks he does.
Bush
does this this kind of thing all the time, most notably while he was
duping the country into supporting his Iraq Attaq. We all know the
impression Bush gave of the danger Saddam posed, but it's hard to find
specific quotes where he's directly lying. In contrast, Cheney, whom
everybody thinks is much smarter than Bush, has been caught over and
over again telling blatant whoppers. So, who's really the dummy?
It's
truly an impressive ruse that Bush has perfected of pretending to be the
brainless rube to avoid being blamed for all the subtle rhetorical flim-flam
he puts over on us.
Nonetheless,
not even Bush can come up with an explanation for the Iraq Attaq that
doesn't simply radiate contempt for the listener's intelligence:
"In
Saddam Hussein, we saw a threat. Members of both political parties,
including my opponent and his running mate, saw the threat, and voted to
authorize the use of force. We went to the United Nations Security
Council, which passed a unanimous resolution demanding the dictator
disarm, or face serious consequences. Leaders in the Middle East urged
him to comply. After more than a decade of diplomacy, we gave Saddam
Hussein another chance, a final chance, to meet his responsibilities to
the civilized world. He again refused, and I faced the kind of decision
that comes only to the Oval Office, a decision no president would ask
for, but must be prepared to make. Do I forget the lessons of September
11th and take the word of a madman, or do I take action to defend our
country? Faced with that choice, I will defend America every time."
Let's
see:
--
Bush didn't ask for the decision to invade Iraq. Yeah, right.
This was his decision all the way. Bush's decision to invade Iraq is
about as clean cut an example of Free Will in action as I've ever seen.
--
Bush didn't make the decision to invade Iraq until the very end. Yeah,
right. Bush made the decision long, long before.
--
Saddam Hussein refused a final chance to meet his responsibilities. Yeah,
right. He disarmed and he let Hans Blix's UN weapons inspectors in to
check. We told Blix where to look based on Ahmed Chalabi's info, and
every single one came up a dry hole. The UN refused to authorize Bush's
Iraq Attaq.
I
could go on, but you get the picture -- it's shooting fish in a barrel.
***
Was
Iran, not Iraq, the real threat? My son says that it sounds like we
don't need a National Intelligence Czar -- what we need is a National
Spellcheck Czar.
***
Kang
vs. Kodos for President: For some reason, right now I'm reminded of
the 1996 Simpsons episode "Treehouse
of Horror VII" in which flying saucer aliens Kang and Kodos
abduct Presidential candidates Clinton and Dole and impersonate them:
Kent
Brockman: Senator Dole, why
should people vote for you instead of President Clinton?
Kang: It makes no difference which one of us you vote for. Either
way, your planet is doomed. DOOMED!
Kent: Well, a refreshingly frank response there from Senator Bob
Dole.
Kent:
Kent Brockman here, with Campaign '96: America Flips A Coin. At an
appearance this morning, Bill Clinton made some rather cryptic remarks,
which aides attributed to an overly tight necktie.
Kodos:
I am Clin-Ton. As overlord, all will kneel trembling before me and obey
my brutal commands. [crosses arms] End communication.
Marge:
Hmm, that's Slick Willie for you, always with the smooth talk.
Announcer:
Ladies and Gentlemen, 73-year-old candidate, Bob Dole.
Kang:
Abortions for all. [crowd boos] Very well, no abortions for
anyone. [crowd boos] Hmm... Abortions for some, miniature
American flags for others. [crowd cheers and waves miniature flags]
Later,
Kang and Kodos are walking down the streets, holding hands.
Kang:
Fooling these Earth voters is easier than expected.
Kodos:
Yes. All they want to hear are bland pleasantries embellished by an
occasional saxophone solo or infant kiss.
A
Democratic National Committee van pulls up, and George Stephanopoulos
pokes his head out.
George:
Uh, Mr. President, Sir. People are becoming a bit... confused by the way
your and your opponent are, well, constantly holding hands.
Kang:
We are merely exchanging long protein strings. If you can think of a
simpler way, I'd like to hear it.
Springfield
holds a Dole-Clinton debate. Clinton is giving the opening speech:
Clin-Ton:
My fellow Americans. As a young boy, I dreamed of being a baseball,
but tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward, upward not
forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.
Kang:
The politics of failure have failed. We need to make them work again.
Tomorrow, when you are sealed in the voting cubicle, vote for me,
Senator Ka... Bob Dole. [applause]
Kodos:
I am looking forward to an orderly election tomorrow, which will
eliminate the need for a violent blood bath. [applause]
Homer:
America, take a good look at your beloved candidates. They're nothing
but hideous space reptiles. [unmasks them] [audience gasps in
terror]
Kodos:
It's true, we are aliens. But what are you going to do about
it? It's a two-party system; you have to vote for one of us. [Murmurs
from the crowd]
Man1:
He's right, this is a two-party system.
Man2:
Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate.
Kang:
Go ahead, throw your vote away. [Kang and Kodos laugh out loud] [Ross
Perot smashes his "Perot 96" hat]
The
next day, Kodos announces the result: "All hail, President
Kang." The field in front of the Capitol has now become a working
ground where humans are whipped by aliens and used to carry materials to
build a giant ray gun. The Simpsons, with chains around their necks, are
working too, with Homer and the kids carrying wood, and Marge pushing a
wheelbarrow of cinderblocks -- with Maggie on top.
Marge:
I don't understand why we have to build a ray gun to aim at a planet I
never even heard of.
Homer:
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
***
Bush's
"decisiveness" in Fallujah and Najaf -- Bush is running
for re-election on the grounds that while he may or may not make smart
decisions, he does make decisions fast and sticks to them. But has any
of his vaunted Trumanesque decisiveness been evident over the last year
in Iraq? The Administration's stop-start, infinitely drawn-out responses
to uprisings in Fallujah and Najaf make Jimmy Carter look Andrew
Jackson. The War Nerd's July column "Fallujah
2: Bush Bushwhacks the Marines" has the details on Bush's
indecisiveness over that Sunni city, and the two Najaf spats with Mookie
the Shi'ite mullah have followed similar templates.
The
truth is that Bush and Rove just want to make the voters forget the war
in Iraq. And, the voters might well be willing to go along since it's
all very embarrassing.
***
What
in the world happened to Cheney between Bush Administration 1 and Bush
Administration 2? He was supposed to be The Man, the hardheaded guy
who rode herd on the callow, ignorant President and kept him from doing
anything too stupid. Instead, he's been Bush's biggest facilitator.
Colin Powell said in the last Bob Woodward book that Cheney changed more
from the Bush Sr. to the Bush Jr. administrations than anyone else. Why?
***
"2002:
Bush's Lost Year:" James Fallows reports in The Atlantic
(available online only to subscribers):
But
the biggest question about the United States—whether its response to
9/11 has made it safer or more vulnerable—can begin to be answered.
Over the past two years I have been talking with a group of people at
the working level of America's anti-terrorism efforts. Most are in the
military, the intelligence agencies, and the diplomatic service; some
are in think tanks and nongovernmental agencies. I have come to trust
them, because most of them have no partisan ax to grind with the
Administration (in the nature of things, soldiers and spies are mainly
Republicans), and because they have so far been proved right. In the
year before combat started in Iraq, they warned that occupying the
country would be far harder than conquering it. As the occupation began,
they pointed out the existence of plans and warnings the Administration
seemed determined to ignore.
As
a political matter, whether the United States is now safer or more
vulnerable is of course ferociously controversial. That the war was
necessary—and beneficial—is the Bush Administration's central claim.
That it was not is the central claim of its critics. But among
national-security professionals there is surprisingly little
controversy. Except for those in government and in the opinion
industries whose job it is to defend the Administration's record, they
tend to see America's response to 9/11 as a catastrophe. I have sat
through arguments among soldiers and scholars about whether the invasion
of Iraq should be considered the worst strategic error in American
history—or only the worst since Vietnam. Some of these people argue
that the United States had no choice but to fight, given a pre-war
consensus among its intelligence agencies that Iraq actually had WMD
supplies. Many say that things in Iraq will eventually look much better
than they do now. But about the conduct and effect of the war in Iraq
one view prevails: it has increased the threats America faces, and has
reduced the military, financial, and diplomatic tools with which we can
respond.
"Let
me tell you my gut feeling," a senior figure at one of America's
military-sponsored think tanks told me recently, after we had talked for
twenty minutes about details of the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"If I can be blunt, the Administration is full of s---. In my view
we are much, much worse off now than when we went into Iraq. That is not
a partisan position. I voted for these guys. But I think they are
incompetent, and I have had a very close perspective on what is
happening. Certainly in the long run we have harmed ourselves. We are
playing to the enemy's political advantage. Whatever tactical victories
we may gain along the way, this will prove to be a strategic
blunder."...
And
here is the startling part. There is no evidence that the President
and those closest to him ever talked systematically about the
"opportunity costs" and tradeoffs in their decision to invade
Iraq. No one has pointed to a meeting, a memo, a full set of
discussions, about what America would gain and lose....
Discussions
at the top were distorted in yet another way—by an unspoken effect of
disagreements over the Middle East. Some connections between Iraq policy
and the Israeli-Palestinian dispute are obvious. One pro-war argument
was "The road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad"—that is,
once the United States had removed Saddam Hussein and the threat he
posed to Israel, it could lean more effectively on Ariel Sharon and the
Likud government to accept the right deal. According to this logic,
America could also lean more effectively on the Palestinians and their
supporters, because of the new strength it would have demonstrated by
liberating Iraq. The contrary argument—"The road to Baghdad leads
through Jerusalem"—appears to have been raised mainly by Tony
Blair. Its point was that if the United States first took a tougher line
with Sharon and recognized that the Palestinians, too, had grievances,
it would have a much easier time getting allied support and Arab
acquiescence for removing Saddam Hussein. There is no evidence that this
was ever significantly discussed inside the Administration.
"The
groups on either side of the Iraq debate basically didn't trust each
other," a former senior official in the Administration told me—and
the people "on either side" he was speaking of all worked for
George Bush. (He, too, insisted on anonymity because he has ongoing
dealings with the government.) "If it wasn't clear why you were
saying these skeptical things about invading Iraq, there was naturally
the suspicion that you were saying [them] because you opposed the
Israeli position. So any argument became suspect." Suspicion ran
just as strongly the other way—that officials were steadfast for war
because they supported the Israeli position. In this (admittedly
oversimplified) schema, the CIA, the State Department, and the uniformed
military were the most skeptical of war—and, in the view of war
supporters, were also the most critical of Israel. The White House
(Bush, Cheney, Rice) and the Defense Department's civilian leadership
were the most pro-war—and the most pro-Israel. Objectively, all these
people agreed far more than they differed, but their mutual suspicions
further muted dissenting views.
***
Tom
Clancy on Paul Wolfowitz: The novelist had this exchange with
Deborah Norville on MSNBC (via Raimondo):
NORVILLE:
And Paul Wolfowitz.
CLANCY:
Is he really on our side?
NORVILLE:
You genuinely ask that question? Is he on our side?
CLANCY:
I sat in on – I was in the Pentagon in '01 for a red team operation
and he came in and briefed us. And after the brief, I just thought, is
he really on our side? Sorry.
***
Olympic
Medals, Summer and Winter -- On a per capita basis, the best medal
garnering nation has to be little Norway. It did well in the Summer
games, winning 6 medals, but five of them gold, which put it #2 behind
tiny Bahamas in the golds per capita count
for Athens. But in the 2002 Winter
Olympics, it won the third highest number of medals in absolute terms
with 24 and the second highest number of golds with eleven. Put them
together, and Norway has to be the finest all-around performer in the
two Olympics.
On
the other hand, Argentina could claim it won gold in the two biggest
sports in the world, men's basketball and men's soccer (although Olympic
soccer doesn't compare to World Cup soccer, but Olympic basketball is a
big deal).
Likewise,
Ethiopia, Kenya, Jamaica, and Morocco didn't win too many medals but
they were almost all in running sports that everybody on earth takes a
crack at.
***
Neocongate:
The Bigger Picture: The WaPo reports:
For
more than two years, the FBI has been investigating whether classified
intelligence has been passed to Israel by the American Israel Political
Action Committee, an influential U.S. lobbying group, in a probe that
extends beyond the case of Pentagon employee Lawrence A. Franklin,
according to senior U.S. officials and other sources.
The
counterintelligence probe, which is different from a criminal
investigation, focuses on a possible transfer of intelligence more
extensive than whether Franklin passed on a draft presidential directive
on U.S. policy toward Iran, the sources said. The FBI is examining
whether highly classified material from the National Security Agency,
which conducts electronic intercepts of communications, were also
forwarded to Israel, they said.
***
What's
the highest IQ Olympic sport? I got thinking about this while
reading an essay
in the WSJ by a Dow Jones junior executive who won a gold medal in the
eight man rowing event. The rule of thumb is that the more boring the
sport, the smarter the participants.
For
example, I only saw a couple of boxing matches (NBC likes more
female-friendly sports and they like American winners), but Olympic
format boxing (short fights, so lots of action) still has to be one of
the most exciting sports of all. But, boxing generally does not attract
the major intellects.
***
Damn
right angles everywhere. Reuters (not The Onion) reports:
Speakers
at this week's Republican convention make their remarks at a wooden
podium that some Jewish groups find offensive because its decorative
panels appear to form the shape of a Christian cross. A cross is even
more visible in a waist-high gavel stand adjacent to the podium, leading
some to question whether the party is trying to send a subtle message to
its base among conservative Christians.
"It
is the very height of insensitivity for the Republican Party to feature
a cross at the center of the podium of this convention," Ira
Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council,
said in a statement. "This wooden cross must be at least three feet
(one meter) tall, and it sends a signal of exclusivity loudly and
clearly."
Two
other Jewish groups interviewed by Reuters expressed similar
sentiments...
President
Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove, told CNN he did not think
the podium's decorative woodwork looked like a cross. "My God,
where do they come up with this stuff?" he said. "Does it look
to you like it's a cross? I don't think so."
***
"Log
Cabin Republicans?" -- What does this name refer to anyway?
Whose log? Whose cabin?
***
GOP
Platform: The Fix Was In. Timothy
P. Carney reports in NRO on how GOP higher-ups blocked debate on
whether to endorse Bush's politically disastrous invite-the-world
immigration plan.
By
the way, I must thank Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove for saving this blog. I was
getting depressed by lack of readership early this year, but the
President's immigration plan announcement on January 7 set off an
increase in traffic that continues to accelerate.
***
Schismatic
Mormon polygamists hold successful membership drive; hundreds of surplus
bachelors driven out. Here's the first news
account I've ever read of what happens to left-over bachelors in a
polygynist society. As I've pointed
out, normally, reporters writing about polygamy, whether in Utah or
Africa, interview the patriarch and various of his wives, but the
surplus bachelors are never mentioned. The Salt Lake City Tribune
reports:
A
half-dozen "lost boys" who say they were cast out of their
homes on the Utah-Arizona border to reduce competition for wives filed
suit Friday against the polygamous church that controls the community.
The six allege the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints (FLDS) and its leaders systematically - and unlawfully - ousts
adolescents and young men for trivial matters or no reason from the
sister cities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. "The
[boys] have been excommunicated pursuant to that policy and practice and
have been cut off from family, friends, benefits, business and
employment relationships, and purportedly condemned to eternal
damnation," their suit says. "They have become 'lost boys' in
the world outside the FLDS community."
In
the two years he has been at the helm, Jeffs has ordered a steady stream
of expulsions, including those of 21 men in January. The wives and
children of the outcasts generally are reassigned to other men.
Supporters of the church say the oustings are reserved for members who
break FLDS tenets and some of the teenage boys were drinking, smoking
and carousing. But the lawsuit blames the church's support of polygamy
for creating a shortage of suitable brides and prompting the oustings.
The greater number of wives taken by older FLDS leaders also has
increased the need to get rid of the male surplus, the suit says. It
says that while previous leaders had 10 to 12 wives, Jeffs' predecessor
and father, Rulon Jeffs, reportedly had 70 wives when he died. The son
is rumored to have at least 50 wives, some of them his father's widows.
The suit contends that hundreds of boys and young men have been kicked
out, most of them poorly educated and with no support from their
families. Many end up homeless or suicidal, according to the suit.
***
Woody
Allen on Tamar Jacoby: The immigration-pushing New Yorker has moved
over the last decade or so from the socialist Dissent to the
neocon Commentary. A reader writes: "I'm reminded of that
old Woody Allen joke that if Dissent and Commentary
merged, they'd be Dysentery."
UPDATE:
Another version of the Woody Allen joke
was that he called Commentary a combination of "Commintern and
Dysentery"
***
If
France was really our enemy, it would have encouraged us to
invade Iraq -- Somehow, when whooping up an Iraq Attaq, the neocons
made Republicans forget the existence of nationalism, which has
only been the most potent idea in the political history of the last 225
years:
See,
the Iraqis, even the most hotheaded youths among them, would like
being occupied by us foreigners. Doesn't everybody? Who ever heard of
nations trying to throw out their foreign overlords? That's crazy
talk. The reason there were over 200 separate countries
participating in the new Olympics was because ... well, it was just because.
Don't ask why.
The
French, for all their sins, did not forget about nationalism. And they
tried to do us a huge favor by warning President Bush of what it's like
to try to occupy an Arab nation. But, he rejected their wisdom. Paul
Starobin reported
in The National Journal::
The
Algerian uprising [against France from 1954-1962] certainly made a
powerful impression on a young man destined for France's highest
political office: Jacques Chirac. Conscripted in 1956, at the age of 23,
to serve as an officer in the French army, Chirac commanded a platoon in
an isolated mountainous region of Algeria. The mission was to keep
order. But order proved impossible to keep, with the local population
protective of the fellaghas, the armed resistance fighters from the
Fronte de Liberation Nationale (FLN). Chirac himself was not wounded in
engagements with the guerrillas, but some of his men were, and some were
killed. In a speech to the French Military Academy in 1996, he called
his time there the most important formative experience of his life.
According
to an old friend and adviser, Algeria principally taught Chirac that
occupation, even under the best of intentions, is impossible when
popular sentiments have turned against the occupier: "His
experience is that despite all the goodwill, when you are an occupier,
when you are seen [by the local people] as an occupier, the people will
want you to get out." And if Chirac was convinced of anything,
according to this source, it was that the Americans would ultimately be
viewed not as liberators in Iraq but as occupiers. He foresaw a kind of
re-enactment of the Algerian tragedy, the source adds, a "vicious
circle" in which increasingly violent acts against the occupier are
met with an increasingly harsh response -- a cycle that inevitably sours
local people against the occupation.
As
the French side tells it, this perspective was at the heart of a
disagreement between Chirac and Bush at a private talk late last
November [2002] in Prague, where U.S. and European leaders were gathered
to discuss enlarging NATO. (Although the pair talked on the telephone,
this was their main exchange before the war started six months later.)
According to a senior French official who reviewed a French handwritten
transcript of the meeting, Chirac talked not about the risks of the
major combat phase of a military campaign, which the French expected to
go quickly, but about the perils of the postwar phase, in particular the
dangers of underestimating the force of Arab nationalism and the
prevalence of violence in a country that had never known democracy.
According to the French source, Bush replied that he expected postwar
armed resistance from elements connected to Saddam's Baathist regime --
but thought it unlikely that the population as a whole would come to see
the U.S. as occupiers. And Chirac, according to the source, told Bush
that history would decide who was right. The White House recently
declined to comment on the meeting.
I've
been doing some Googling to see if anybody on the pro-war Right
ever mentioned the highly informative movie "The Battle of
Algiers" (here's my review of the The
Battle of Algiers in The
American Conservative), which was rereleased last January after the
Special Forces generals put on a screening of it in the Pentagon to
educate desk warriors in what it's like to try to put down a nationalist
guerilla war. All I could find was one paragraph by Mike Potemra in
NRO's The Corner commending it. (Good for you, Mike.) I also haven't
found any mention on the pro-Iraq Attaq side of Alistair Horne's classic
history of the Algerian War, A Savage War of Peace, even
though that forms the basis for a famous sub-chapter in Paul Johnson's Modern
Times, which I hope every conservative pundit has read.
***
Dear
Republican Convention Speakers: Iraq is not the War on Terror;
Iraq is the War in Error -- I just wanted to clear that up. Thank
you.
***
Richard
Perle, businessman: From the Washington
Post:
A
report by a special [Hollinger] board committee singled out director
Richard N. Perle, a former Defense Department official, who received
$5.4 million in bonuses and compensation. The report said Perle should
return the money to the Chicago-based company...
The
report said Perle "breached his fiduciary duties" as a member
of the board's executive committee, signing documents without evaluating
or, sometimes, reading them, including those that allowed Black and
Radler to evade audit committee scrutiny. Perle received more than $3
million in bonuses and hundreds of thousands of dollars more in
compensation from a Hollinger subsidiary that invested in new media
companies during the dot-com boom. The report said Hollinger
International put $63.6 million into 11 companies Perle recommended and
lost nearly $50 million. "Perle was a faithless fiduciary . . . and
. . . should not be allowed to retain any of his Hollinger
compensation," the report said.
***
Neocongate
and Jonathan Pollard -- One of the funnier defenses of Neocongate is
that Israel would never ever dare spy on the U.S. because it learned its
lesson in the Jonathan Pollard case of the mid-1980s. Pollard was a
cokehead who sold, by his estimate, 360 cubic feet of secret documents
to Israel in return for a promise of $540,000 over ten years. Much of
the information, such as on how America tracked Soviet subs, was only
valuable to the Soviet
Union, and -- surprise! -- it ended up in Moscow. Reagan
administration officials, such as the late CIA director William Casey,
believe the Israeli government traded the American secrets to the
Soviets. Other have tried to argue that Soviet agents within the Israeli
government obtained the information.
Pollard
was sentenced to life in prison. Investigators believe, by the way,
based on the extreme specificity of the Israeli requests to Pollard to
steal particular materials, that there was at least one more Israeli spy
in the U.S. government.
Yet,
from the public record, there's little evidence that the Pollard case
put much of a dent in Israeli chutzpah, because winning Pollard's
release has been a high priority of the Israeli government ever since. A
2001 editorial entitled "Let
Pollard Go" in the Conrad Black-owned neocon Jerusalem Post
noted:
In
recent years, the Pollard issue has brought together a unique
constellation of figures calling for clemency. Legal luminaries, such as
Alan Dershowitz and Irwin Cotler, have been outspoken in their support
for releasing Pollard, and the issue has cut across ideological and
political boundaries here. Last year, in an unusual joint letter, [Likud
leader] Binyamin Netanyahu and [Labour leader] Ehud Barak wrote:
"Concerning Mr. Pollard, the people of Israel and virtually all its
political parties stand as one."
Though
upon Pollard's arrest, Israel initially sought to distance itself from
the affair, claiming that it was conducted as a "rogue
operation," the past decade has seen a dramatic shift in that
position. In November 1995, Israel granted Pollard citizenship, while in
May 1998, the Netanyahu government issued a statement recognizing
Pollard as an Israeli agent and accepting full responsibility for him.
All prime ministers from Yitzhak Rabin onward have appealed to
successive American administrations to grant clemency, but none of these
efforts have borne fruit. The closest Pollard came to being released was
a promise made by Bill Clinton to Netanyahu at the Wye summit in the
fall of 1998 that in exchange for signing the deal, Netanyahu would be
able to take Pollard back home in freedom. Unfortunately, at the last
minute, Clinton reneged.
What
happened was that America's intelligence heads went ape when they heard
Clinton had promised to release Pollard. They went public with the
damage Pollard did (Seymour Hersh printed the details
in the New Yorker) and Clinton backed down.
By
the way, somebody ought to give Hersh the Presidential Medal of Freedom
one of these years, although I suspect we'll need a new President for
that to happen.
UPDATE:
A reader writes:
The
most relevant aspect of the Pollard case is that the Israelis denied
that he had been spying for them, until they no longer could. This is
why no one should believe the current Israeli denials of spying on the
United States.
***
"Napoleon
Dynamite" -- My 15-year-old reports that all the kids back at
school are talking about this micro-budget Mormon-made comedy, which
just enjoyed its biggest
weekend yet even though it's been out since mid-June. It's up to $22
million on a $400,000 production budget, and who knows where it will
stop. In The American Conservative
(have you subscribed yet?),
I wrote back in late Spring:
At
the screening I attended, Hollywood's Bright Young Mormons were out in
force as the theatre resounded with the lovely laughter of
wholesome-looking starlets from the Great Basin. The twenty-something
crowd found the small town misadventures and eventual triumph of an
ornery high school geek (voted "Most Likely to Find Sasquatch")
a cartoonish but redolent delight. This mild, PG-rated film is winning
bellylaughs from gentiles under-25 too, so the studio is now rolling it
out to 1,200 theatres.
Personally,
I didn't find the movie terribly funny, which made me feel downright
wizened to realize that I'm too over-the-hill to get the jokes that are
slaying all the Mormon hipsters...
One
of the less remarked demographic trends is that the makers of
"Napoleon Dynamite" represent the future. As coastal
sophisticates fail to reproduce themselves, an ever-increasing
percentage of young white people come from conservative, religious
backgrounds. Mormon Utah has by far the highest birthrate, of course,
but in the 2000 election, the 19 states with the highest white fertility
all voted for Bush, while nine of the ten states at the bottom of the
white birthrate list voted for Gore.
By
the way, upcoming in The American Conservative (available Friday night
to Electronic Edition
subscribers) is my review of the important Chinese movie Hero and
my Olympics wrap-up (including new content!).
***
Neocongate
and the AIPAC: Juan Cole has
an apt quote from Sen. Ernest F. Hollings, who is retiring after 38
years in the U.S. Senate (and thus is able to speak honestly) that
helps explain why any scandal involving the American Israel Political
Action Committee is unlikely to go anywhere. Hollings said:
"You
can't have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here.
I have followed them mostly in the main, but I have also resisted
signing certain letters from time to time, to give the poor President a
chance. I can tell you no President takes office--I don't care whether
it is a Republican or a Democrat--that all of a sudden AIPAC will tell
him exactly what the policy is, and Senators and members of Congress
ought to sign letters. I read those carefully and I have joined in most
of them. On some I have held back."
Sen.
Hollings was of course denounced as an anti-Semite for saying this. But,
since he's retiring, AIPAC can't unleash its fundraising firepower on
him in the next election. What AIPAC does, pour encourager les autres,
is periodically pick out a member of Congress who dissents from the
AIPAC line and floods his primary or general election opponent with
support, thus ending his career.
***
Olympic
medals wrap-up: The biggest improvement was turned in by Japan,
which climbed from 18 total medals (5 gold) in 2000 to 37 (16 gold) in
2004. I've been saying for some time that the bad Japanese performances
in recent Olympics were primarily psychological -- the Japanese media
put too much pressure on the athletes who feel like they will shame the
nation if they lose. As I blogged two weeks ago: "I predicted
in VDARE, however, that eventually Japan would win something big and get
its national confidence back. That may be happening, following the
inspiring early victory of the Japanese men's gymnastics team." So,
it looks like Japan may finally have got the monkey off its back.
Everybody
wants to use Olympic medals as a proxy for who is coming up in the real
world, but did anybody predict mature, comfortable, aging Japan
would be the hot country in 2004?
Otherwise,
stability ruled. The US went up from 97 to 103 total medals but down
from 40 to 35 golds. Russia went up from 88 to 92 medals (truly an
extraordinary number considering the state Russia is in -- and if you
reassembled the USSR and added in the medals won by Ukraine and Belarus,
it would be way ahead of the USA), China up from 59 to 63, Australia
down from 58 to 49 (no home field advantage anymore), Germany down from
56 to 48, France down from 38 to 33, Cuba down from 29 to 27, Britain up
from 28 to 30, Greece up from 13 to 16, Canada down from 14 to 12, Spain
up from 11 to 19. Pretty ho-hum stuff if you are looking for trends.
I
must say that I am impressed by how India, despite its improving
economy, has continued to remain incredibly awful at winning Olympic
medals. For the third Summer Games in a row, this country of one billion
people won just one medal. Granted, this time it was a silver, up from
bronzes in 1996 and 2000, but still... Personally, I like the idea that
there's a big part of the world that is different enough from the rest
that they won't ever care enough about any sport other than cricket to
try hard enough to win anything. But I suspect that's just a fond hope
and eventually India will hop on the sports bandwagon with the rest of
the world.
***
"New
Magazines for Black Men Proudly Redefine the Pinup" says NYT:
In
the pages of King, a bimonthly men's magazine for the rims, bling and
sneakers set, one thing is prized more than a taut waistline and a
pretty face, shapely legs or a perky bosom: a large behind. "That's
what our readers have come to expect from us," said Datwon Thomas,
King's editor since it began publishing three years ago. "They want
to see the thick girls, the girls with " Mr. Thomas, a 29-year-old
married father of two, stammered here, searching for a description that
would work in the pages of a family newspaper, "with, you know, a
big backside."
***
Legacy
Admissions -- Defenders of racial preferences constantly cite breaks
given to children of alumni when applying to college. A friend writes:
My
experience as an associate provost for a decade at a private university
was that the legacy admissions program was a ruse to trick highly
qualified students into applying. If the students were not up to
admissions standard, we turned them down with the implication that the
(fictitious) legacy preference just wasn’t enough to get them over the
top. If we admitted them, they tended to be grateful for the extra
(and still fictitious) boost.
I don’t offer this as a justification for such programs and I don’t
know how common it is, but it would explain Larry’s observation about
legacy students scoring higher on SATs than non-legacies. “Family tradition” is just a marketing ploy, and it should not come
as a surprise that it best approach caveat emptor.
Given the mischief that the defenders of racial preferences have been
able to create by means of misleading references to legacy admissions, I
would just as soon take them off the table.
***
Don't
expect Neocongate to get very far: What hasn't been discussed much
is that the American Israel Political Action Committee is being accused
of espionage for giving the secrets from Doug Feith's Pentagon policy
shop to Israel. But AIPAC is a heavyweight lobby -- In Fortune
Magazine's 1997 listing of the Power 25, it came in as the #2 most
powerful pressure group in all of Washington.
Who's
going to mess with AIPAC?
Moreover,
it's quite possible that one of the guilty parties released this leak to
shortcircuit the investigation before it got to higher-ups.
***
New
VDARE.com column:
Opening the black box of IQ and the Wealth of Nations.
***
Running
by Race: Here was my count of the top 100 times ever as of 1997 by
different length races (men only, not including 110m and 400m hurdles):
|
100-400 |
800-1500 |
3000m Stpl
|
5k-10k |
Marathon |
Total |
| West
African Descent |
95% |
15% |
0%
|
0% |
0% |
35% |
| Kenyan |
2% |
32% |
90% |
41% |
16% |
29% |
| Ethiopia |
0% |
0% |
0% |
12% |
8% |
3% |
| Northwest
Africa |
0% |
21% |
2% |
23% |
1% |
10% |
| European
Descent |
3% |
20% |
7% |
18% |
37% |
14% |
| East
Asia |
0% |
0% |
0% |
0% |
16% |
2% |
| Mexican |
0% |
0% |
0% |
3% |
6% |
0% |
No
doubt much has changed since then, and there were a number of people I
couldn't identify back then before Google Images makes it easy to take a
gander at all top track runners. Also some of the columns don't sum to
100% because I left out a row for Other East Africans, such as
Burundians.
But
the 2004 Olympics reflect the same general trends, suggesting that
different racial groups are better at different length events. That this
conclusion is considered rather scandalous says a lot about the
healthiness of contemporary intellectual discourse.
***
Neocongate
and Jewish-Americans: It's important to keep in mind that the great
majority of American Jews are American patriots with non-extreme views.
For example, as I
wrote at the beginning of the Iraq Attaq:
A
poll by the American Jewish Committee at the beginning of January [2003]
found that 59 percent of Jews supported an Iraq attack -- about the same
level as other polls found for the population at large.
The
problem, as we are seeing with the revelations coming out of the
Pentagon, lies with a small coterie that's by no means all Jewish, but
that has ties of such strength to Israel that their judgment is impaired
by their dual loyalty, yet they are protected from direct criticism by
their ability to slur their critics as "anti-Semites."
***
Surprise
American wins silver in Olympic marathon: Mebrahtom
Keflezighi is from Eritrea, next to Ethiopia. His is one of those
inspiring stories about an immigrant born in a abject poverty who leaves
his hut-based life and comes to America and achieves the American Dream.
Unfortunately, the Keflezighi story won't inspire American runners who
weren't born in African huts, since they'll just see it as more evidence
that they weren't born with the genetic right stuff.
The
nice thing about the marathon is that, like the 800m, almost everybody
from around the world has a chance to win. The bad thing is that who
does win seems pretty close to random, with few people winning
consistently enough for the event to develop enough interesting
storylines over the years. The event is just so hard that the best
anybody can do is peak once in the spring for the Boston marathon and
once in the fall for the New York (or other) marathon. Falling awkwardly
in between seasons, the Olympic marathon tends to generate so many
surprise winners that there's no surprise when somebody obscure wins.
In
contrast, last night's 5000m was a classic because the new Ethiopian
world recordholder Kenenisa Bekele, the heir to the great Gebrsellaise
who had dominated the 5000m for almost a decade, was being challenged by
the legendary 1500m man Hicham El-Gerrouj. The two superstars ended up
sprinting for the finish line, with El-Gerrouj pulling away to equal
Paavo Nurmi's 1924 accomplishment of doubling in the 1500 and 5000. The
5k and 10k tend to generate that kind of human drama more than the 42k
marathon.
***
Neocongate:
Trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together -- Juan
Cole (whose wife is from Pakistan - it's a little distasteful but in
this case it's important to lay everybody's biases on the table) tries
to synthesize the Israeli-spy-in-the-Pentagon story. I certainly can't
vouch for it, but it is interesting:
Here
is my take on the Lawrence
Franklin espionage scandal in the Pentagon.
It is an echo of the one-two punch secretly planned by the pro-Likud
faction in the Department of Defense. First, Iraq would be taken out by
the United States, and then Iran. David Wurmser, a key member of
the group, also wanted Syria included. These pro-Likud intellectuals
concluded that 9/11 would give them carte blanche to use the Pentagon as
Israel's Gurkha regiment, fighting elective wars on behalf of Tel Aviv
(not wars that really needed to be fought, but wars that the Likud
coalition thought it would be nice to see fought so as to increase
Israel's ability to annex land and act aggressively, especially if
someone else's boys did the dying).
Franklin is a reserve Air Force colonel and former Defense Intelligence
Agency analyst. He was an attache at the US embassy in Tel Aviv at one
point, which some might now see as suspicious. After the Cold War ended,
Franklin became concerned with Iran as a threat to Israel and the US,
and learned a little Persian (not very much--I met him once at a
conference and he could only manage a few halting phrases of Persian).
Franklin has a strong Brooklyn accent and says he is "from the
projects." I was told by someone at the Pentagon that he is not
Jewish, despite his strong association with the predominantly Jewish
neoconservatives. I know that he is very close to Paul Wolfowitz. He
seems a canny man and a political operator, and if he gave documents to
AIPAC it was not an act of simple stupidity, as some observers have
suggested. It was part of some clever scheme that became too clever by
half.
Franklin moved over to the Pentagon from DIA, where he became the
Iran expert, working for Bill Luti and Undersecretary of Defense for
Planning, Douglas Feith. He was the "go to" person on Iran for
Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and for Feith. This
situation is pretty tragic, since Franklin is not a real Iranist. His
main brief appears to have been to find ways to push a policy of
overthrowing its government (apparently once Iraq had been taken care
of). This project has been pushed by the shadowy eminence grise, Michael
Ledeen, for many years, and Franklin coordinated with Ledeen in some
way. Franklin was also close to Harold
Rhode, a long-time Middle East specialist in the Defense Department
who has cultivated far right pro-Likud cronies for many years, more or
less establishing a cell within the Department of Defense...
Josh
Marshall, Laura Rozen and Paul Glastris have just published a piece
in the Washington Monthly that details Franklin's meetings with
corrupt Iranian arms dealer and con man Manuchehr Ghorbanifar, who had
in the 1980s played a key role in the Iran-contra scandal. (For more on
the interviews with Ghorbanifar, see Laura
Rozen's web log). It is absolutely key that the meetings were
attended also by Rhode, Ledeen and the head of Italy's military
intelligence agency, SISMI, Nicolo Pollari, as well as Rome's Minister
of Defense, Antonio Martino.
The rightwing government of corrupt billionnaire Silvio Berlusconi,
including Martino, was a big supporter of an Iraq war. Moreover, we know
that the forged documents falsely purporting to show Iraqi uranium
purchases from Niger originated with a former SISMI agent. Watch the
reporting of Josh Marshall
for more on this SISMI/Ledeen/Rhode connection.
But journalist Matthew
Yglesias has already tipped us to a key piece of information. The
Niger forgeries also try to implicate Iran. Indeed, the idea of a
joint Iraq/Iran nuclear plot was so far-fetched that it is what
initially made the Intelligence and Research division of the US State
Department suspicious of the forgeries, even before the discrepancies of
dates and officials in Niger were noticed. ...
Journalist
Eric Margolis notes of SISMI:
SISMI has long
been notorious for far right, even neo-fascist, leanings. According to
Italian judicial investigators, SISMI was deeply involved in numerous
plots against Italy’s democratic government, including the 1980
Bologna train station terrorist bombing that left 85 dead and 200
injured. Senior SISMI officers were in cahoots with celebrated
swindler Roberto Calvi, the neo-fascist P2 Masonic Lodge, other
extreme rightist groups trying to destabilize Italy, the Washington
neocon operative, Michael Ledeen, and the Iran-Contra conspirators.
SISMI works hand in glove with US, British and Israeli intelligence.
In the 1960’s and 70’s, SISMI reportedly carried out numerous
operations for CIA, including bugging the Vatican, the Italian
president’s palace, and foreign embassies. Italy’s civilian
intelligence service, SISDE, associated with Italy’s political
center-left, has long been a bitter rival of SISMI. After CIA rejected
the Niger file, it was eagerly snapped up by VP Dick Cheney and his
chief of staff, Lewis Libby, who were urgently seeking any reason, no
matter how specious, to invade Iraq. Cheney passed the phony data to
Bush, who used it in his January, 2003 address to the nation in spite
of warnings from CIA . . .
So Franklin, Ledeen, and Rhode, all of them pro-Likud operatives, just
happen to be meeting with SISMI (the proto-fascist purveyor of the false
Niger uranium story about Iraq and the alleged Iran-Iraq plot against
the rest of the world) and corrupt Iranian businessman and would-be
revolutionary, Ghorbanifar, in Europe. The most reasonable conclusion is
that they were conspiring together about the Next Campaign after Iraq,
which they had already begun setting in train, which is to get Iran.
But now The
Jerusalem Post reveals that at least one of the meetings was quite
specific with regard to an attempt to torpedo better US/Iran relations:
The purpose of
the meeting with Ghorbanifar was to undermine a pending deal that the
White House had been negotiating with the Iranian government. At the
time, Iran had considered turning over five al-Qaida operatives in
exchange for Washington dropping its support for Mujahadeen Khalq, an
Iraq-based rebel Iranian group listed as a terrorist organization by
the State Department.
The Neoconservatives have some sort of shadowy relationship with the
Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization or MEK. Presumably its leaders have
secretly promised to recognize Israel if they ever succeed in
overthrowing the ayatollahs in Iran. When the US recently categorized
the MEK as a terrorist organization, there were howls
of outrage from "scholars" associated with the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy (a wing of AIPAC), such as ex-Trotskyite
Patrick Clawson and Daniel
Pipes. MEK is a terrorist organization by any definition of
the term, having blown up innocent people in the course of its struggle
against the Khomeini government. (MEK is a cult-like mixture of Marx and
Islam). The MEK had allied with Saddam, who gave them bases in Iraq from
which to hit Iran. When the US overthrew Saddam, it raised the question
of what to do with the MEK. The pro-Likud faction in the Pentagon wanted
to go on developing their relationship with the MEK and using it against
Tehran.
So it transpires that the Iranians were willing to give up 5 key al-Qaeda
operatives, whom they had captured, in return for MEK members.
Franklin, Rhode and Ledeen conspired with Ghorbanifar and SISMI to stop
that trade. It would have led to better US-Iran relations, which they
wanted to forestall, and it would have damaged their proteges, the MEK.
Since high al-Qaeda operatives like Saif al-Adil and possibly even Saad
Bin Laden might know about future operations, or the whereabouts of Bin
Laden, for Franklin and Rhode to stop the trade grossly endangered the
United States.
The FBI has evidence that Franklin passed a draft presidential directive
on Iran to AIPAC, which then passed it to the Israelis. The FBI is
construing these actions as espionage or something close to it. But that
is like getting Al Capone on tax evasion. Franklin was not giving the
directive to AIPAC in order to provide them with information. He was
almost certainly seeking feedback from them on elements of it. He was
asking, "Do you like this? Should it be changed in any way?"
And, he might also have been prepping AIPAC for the lobbying campaign
scheduled for early in 2005, when Congress will have to be convinced to
authorize military action, or at least covert special operations,
against Iran. AIPAC probably passed the directive over to Israel for the
same reason--not to inform, but to seek input. That is, AIPAC and Israel
were helping write US policy toward Iran, just as they had played a key
role in fomenting the Iraq war.
Okay,
did you get all that? Me neither. You are probably saying, "I don't
like conspiracy theories." I don't either. But, being a supporter
of republican self-government by the people, I especially don't like conspiracy
realities. And a lot of evidence points toward Michael Ledeen as a
man who has devoted much energy over the years toward turning conspiracy
theories into realities.
***
Neocongate:
George Washington foresaw it all: In
his Farewell
Address, George Washington explained the dangers of today's
neoconservatism with prophetic clarity. Here's just an excerpt from a
topic that clearly concerned the father of our country deeply:
"Sympathy
for the favorite [foreign] nation, facilitating the illusion of an
imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists,
and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into
a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate
inducement or justification... Against the insidious wiles of foreign
influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of
a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and
experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes
of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be
impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be
avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one
foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they
actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even
second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may
resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and
odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of
the people, to surrender their interests."
***
I
can't imagine a more persuasive character reference:
The Boston Globe reports
on the suspected neocon spy:
Entifadh
K. Qanbar, a senior aide to [Ahmed] Chalabi, said yesterday: ''I know
Mr. [Larry] Franklin, and I think he is a person of great integrity and
a very hard worker with great values and a patriotic American."
***
The
Washington Monthly's long-awaited muckracking article on meddlesome
Michael Ledeen's attempt to set up a second Iran-Contra with his old
compadre from the first Iran-Contra, shadowy arms dealer Manucher
Ghorbanifar, and the help of Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode is off to a
slow start here.
Can't say yet whether it will amount to much.
***
"The
worst are full of passionate intensity" - Yeats. Long-time
loose cannon and all-around international man of mystery Michael
Ledeen's name keeps coming up in relation to the Israeli espionage
story. The NRO Contributing Editor has quite a history, as Jim
Lobe recounted:
When
The Washington Post published a list of the people whom Karl Rove,
President George W Bush's closest advisor, regularly consults for advice
outside the administration, foreign policy veterans were shocked when
Michael Ledeen popped up as the only full-time international affairs
analyst. "The two met after Bush's election," the Post
reported cheerfully, quoting Ledeen about Rove's request that "any
tim | 
Me