I'm taking the evening off to spend with some good friends in Philadelphia but wanted to underscore the point that this writer and The Washington Note are committed to trying to get this country's policy course on a much better track in 2006 than during these last several years.

2005 was a fascinating and important one for me personally and for this blog -- particularly after helping to keep John Bolton -- and his supporters George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove -- from having the legitimacy of a Senate confirmation in his role as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Be sure to watch for the launch of Bolton Watch in the next couple of weeks.

There is much we need to do next year, and we'll start tomorrow afternoon -- but the rest of you have a fantastic evening and great new year.

I'm in Philadelphia at the home of a great and whacky friend who also writes a creative, personal blog.

She's a dramaturg, and a nut, and a friend of mine (and also John Malkovich's. . .for a kick, see this link).

Now, I need to get back to the party and to discussing what the Founding Fathers here in Philadelphia would thing about our current wannabe monarch.

Happy New Year, seriously.

-- Steve Clemons

Over the next few weeks, you will notice design changes to the website. The first has been added today, just before New Year's.

I realize that these changes may have some kinks to sort out, particularly given the fact that people view them through different browsers. Just send a note if you are having problems.

More soon. Off to spend New Year's in Philadelphia, must to the consternation of an earlier reader in the last post.

Oakley the Weimaraner sends best New Year's greetings to all.

-- Steve Clemons

TWN hopes everyone is preparing for a safe and fun New Year's Eve.

I'm back in Washington and headed to Philadelphia for the next couple of days. I just learned that I'll be going to Saudia Arabia on January 5th for a few days and any insights appreciated.

The best news this morning is that the deal that fell apart last night between feuding Yemeni tribes and the Yemen government came back together, and the Chrobog family has been reportedly released.

That's good news -- enough for the moment.

-- Steve Clemons

I have received word this morning that two people, one whom I know, have had direct phone contact with Karim Chrobog, son of former German Foreign Ministry State Secretary Juergen Chrobog, who both along with three other family members have been kidnapped by Yemeni tribal clans.

While Karim Chrobog told both people that he and his family are well, even though they are being held against their will, he hoped that they would be released soon.

However, a dispute between two tribal clans about them has broken out, and the Chrobogs were moved this morning -- reportedly for their saftey -- when a group of armed men in several helicopters arrived in the area where they are being held.

This is an email I received today from a source whom I should keep anonymous:

I wanted to also let you know that I have just received an email from XXXX on the XXX film telling me that he spoke with Karim at 8.45 this morning - Yemen time.

Karim was calm and collected and he said he and family were all safe and sound, being treated as guests (even if involuntary ones) and awaiting an early release in sha Allah. Only a short call, but what a relief . . . ok just had this emailed interupted by a phone call FROM KARIM.

He does sound calm and collected. He said that they are being looked after well but are not able to leave. He said that it is complicated -- that it is a feud between two tribes that they are in the middle of.

They are being looked after well but he doesn't know when it will be over. He said that there was a moment of tension this morning when helicopters arrived and they were taken up to the hills -- for their protection.

I asked him if there was anything I can do and he said that he
is not sure but the more people that know about this the better.

Karim Chrobog and the Chrobog family have been important allies to many throughout the Arab world who have felt exploited or demeaned by Western nations.

The Yemeni tribes should consider carefully what they are doing to hurt their political cause by holding against their will people who many in the Arab world feel are great friends.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

(photo of Juergen Chrobog, former State Secretary of the German Foreign Ministry)

A loyal reader of The Washington Note and very good friend, Karim Chrobog, as well as four other members of his family were kidnapped in Yemen according to various news reports.

Juergen Chrobog, Karim's father and former State Secretary of the German Foreign Ministry as well as former German Ambassador to the United States, was invited to Yemen as the guest of the Yemeni Deputy Foreign Minister. He had his wife and three children traveling with him. His wife is Egyptian, and Karim is German-Egyptian by descent.

From a CNN report:

Juergen Chrobog, his wife and three children were in a tour group traveling from Aden to Shabua province when their vehicle fell behind and disappeared, German television network ARD reported.

Chrobog, 65, also was ambassador to the United States from 1995 to 2001.

ARD said kidnappers are demanding the release of jailed comrades.

Reuters quoted a kidnappper from the Abdullah tribe as telling the news service by phone that the five hostages are safe.

"Their life is not in danger, and they are guests of our tribe," the tribe member told Reuters.

"We were forced to do this to focus the government's attention to our cause," Reuters quoted him as saying. He added that he hoped the kidnapping -- the third involving Westerners this year -- would pressure the San'a government to free five of his tribesmen who are in jail for criminal charges, including murder, Reuters reported.

German sources told CNN that Chrobog and his family were on a private trip at the invitation of a Yemenese deputy foreign minister. The sources said the tour group reported the family missing.

Most of the news has focused on the profile of Juergen Chrobog, also a friend of mine and this blog, who recently became Chairman of the Herbert Quandt/BMW Foundation.

Chrobog is a candid, skillful diplomat -- particularly in matters involving the Middle East.

But Karim Chrobog's interests have not been profiled and should be noted by the kidnapping tribe of the Chrobog family. This family is one that is deeply concerned about enhancing self-confidence and pride among youth throughout the Arab world. I have spoken many times with to both Karim Chrobog and Juergen Chrobog about the systematic humiliation that average people in the Arab world have endured from both Western governments -- and their own governments.

It is quite likely that if the Yemeni tribesmen who kidnapped the Chrobogs are sincere that they are trying to bring attention to various grievances they have with their own government that they have taken people who are generally sympathetic with and useful to any efforts to improve conditions and political empowerment of Arab citizens in the Middle East.

Karim Chrobog is a film-maker and had two projects underway. One of these film projects is being funded out of Saudi Arabia and the UAE and focuses on the life and deeds of a 15th century Arab navigator and explorer Ahmad ibn Majid.

This film project is important to the Arab world because it helps tell the story of an Arab hero that few in the West and few in the Arab world have been introduced to. Major film productions on topics such as Ahmad ibn Majid -- as well as a set of educational films and tools that would be generated alongside this feature film project -- can help enhance a sense of self-worth among Arabs who have long felt that the West looked at them as a global underclass to be exploited.

Another film project Karim Chrobog was launching was a documentary film on political blogging. TWN is one of the featured blogs in the projecs, and the life of bloggers -- particularly hard-core, often young bloggers on the political right and left -- was one of Karim's interests. I recently introduced and took Karim to a couple of the progressive Townhouse blog meetings run by one of the country's top blog networkers, Matt Stoller.

In any case, the Yemeni tribesmen who kidnapped the Chrobog family need to know that they have people under their control who have been working hard to enhance conditions and self-determination for people throughout the Arab world. Juergen and Karim have both helped build economic opportunities for Palestinians in both the Arab world and in Europe.

To harm this family is to harm your own cause -- and that can only bring dishonor and shame to your goals in the eyes of others in Yemen and throughout the Middle East who are also fighting to bring attention to grievances that they have with their governments.

To hurt them, you undermine yourself and anger many others who are on the same side in your struggle.

Please consider this in your negotations with the Yemeni government -- and listen to Karim Chrobog on his thoughts about building up heroes for Arab youth to look up to.

-- Steve Clemons

Last August, I ran into Katrina van den Heuvel, editor of The Nation, who remarked to me after reading both something on The Washington Note and after Ari Berman's excellent article, "The Strategic Class," that "realism had become the new liberal ideology."

Her views are echoed in an interesting rundown of "The Most Valuable Progressives of 2005" by John Nichols on The Nation's website today.

Despite some naysayers who had a too little/too late attitude about former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson's revelations about the "flummoxed" national security decision making process inside the White House as well as the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal that took over the political helm after 9/11, The Nation has dubbed Wilkerson as its "most valuable progressive" in the Executive Branch this past year.

TWN supports that view. Wilkerson's comments have both real policy and historical importance -- and it is fascinating that the journal of record for the "left" in America sees it the same way.

Wilkerson is a conservative with a conscience and with a profound sense of duty and obligation to the nation, and it is a sad comment that in the climate we are in today, conservatives with a conscience are mostly abandoned by the right and are increasingly embraced by the left. This really does speak to a possible solutions-oriented, radical centrism that unites the Wilkersons and van den Heuvels in a serious discussion about national interest and foreign policy in the coming year.

From John Nichols' piece:

* MVP -- Executive Branch:

Yes, there was one. It's Lawrence B. Wilkerson, the retired U.S. Army colonel who served as chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell until Powell exited the State Department in January, 2005.

After leaving his position, Wilkerson began revealing the dark secrets of the Bush-Cheney interregnum, telling a New America Foundation gathering in October that during his years in the administration: "What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made."

Wilkerson warned that, with "a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either," the country is headed in an exceptionally dangerous direction. "I would say that we have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita and I could go on back, we haven't done very well on anything like that in a long time," Wilkerson explained.

"And if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence."

That is truth telling of a quality and a scope all too rarely witnessed in the Washington of Bush and Cheney.

Nichols is on the money.

On his roster of MVPs are:

U.S. Senate: Barbara Boxer, John McCain, and Russell Feingold

U.S. House of Representatives: Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders, Walter Jones, John Murtha and John Conyers

Executive Branch: Lawrence Wilkerson

Law Enforcement Branch: Patrick Fitzgerald & Ronnie Earle

Citizen Branch: Cindy Sheehan

Watchdog Branch: The "After Downing Street" Coalition

Cheers to all -- and more later on what is planned with Bolton Watch.

-- Steve Clemons

I don't have much time to write about this now, but TWN -- which was keenly focused on blocking John Bolton's confirmation as Ambassador to the United Nations -- will be launching a "Bolton Watch" division of The Washington Note in early 2006.

I have been keeping my powder dry on Bolton and decided some time ago to give Bolton time to prove his critics, and me, wrong about the fundamental reasons we opposed him.

He started off politely on the surface, but underneath, he's done a great deal to harm America's foreign policy portfolio, and his crusades in the name of U.N. reform are actually designed to undermine any chance of achieving reasonable and serious reform.

Because Bolton was not confirmed by the Senate, his days at the U.N. are numbered -- but those days and his work during them need to have a more consistent monitor. This will not be a Bash-Bolton blog, but will call his actions and behavior as they are. If he gets on a course that is positive for American and UN interests, then the blog will highlight that. But as I suspect, he continues to vigorously work to undermine both the United Nations and enlightened American diplomacy, then this blog will expose him.

There is more planning that needs to be completed before launch, but I wanted to give early word of this decision.

TWN will be hiring research staff to help in this endeavor -- so your financial support is appreciated. If you are interested in supporting, there is a paypal link above, or alternatively, you can write to me and I can give a mailing address.

I have really deliberated about this step -- and take it reluctantly. I feel that it was civil society's responsibility to debate Bolton's qualifications and my responsibility do all that one could to try and block Bolton's confirmation and appointment to the position he holds now as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

We succeeded in blocking confirmation, but the President has a right of recess appointment, even though that provision of the Constitution is not designed to skirt Congress as Bush did in this appointment.

I was hopeful that the pressure TWN and others put on Bolton in this process would produce a John Bolton who would be less damaging than he has been in this job. But it is only after having spent time with some very high-ranking former Republican officials recently -- who all share my perspective of Bolton -- that I have decided to launch this new "Bolton Watch" division of TWN.

I don't think Condi Rice can manage John Bolton, as she promised Senator George Voinovich. But I do think that more constant, micro-focus of this Ambassador's every move -- good and bad -- will help us survive his tenure there.

More on this later -- but this was news I wanted to get out to readers before New Year's Day.

So, if you are thinking of it, toast "Bolton Watch" on the 31st.

My friends and I will be.

-- Steve Clemons

I am in Los Angeles this morning and was drawn to two op-eds that ran in today's Los Angeles Times, one by Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations and the other by journalist Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent of Britain's The Independent.

I like Haass and often agree with him, but the "messy, barely a democracy" scenario he holds out as probably the best we can hope for in Iraq depends on U.S. forces being able to forestall the civil war he fears.

I have a different view as I believe that U.S. forces and the "brand name of America" have become so tainted in Iraq that we can't achieve our objectives, have become targets ourselves, and unless we internationalize the face of occupation, as well as institution building efforts and aid to Iraq, the civil war will rage anyway with Americans being targeted and blamed for the instability. His scenario is not necessarily wrong, but mine is plausible and perhaps even more probable.

Haass's piece though should be read because he is a serious analyst who is taking many far more conservative than he and walking them towards acknowledging less-than-rosy, more likely scenarios in Iraq than the White House has been portraying.

However, the stem-winder article today is "Telling it Like it Isn't" by Robert Fisk who has written the irreverent, honest piece I wish I had written on the subject of the Israel-Palestine conflict and on war coverage in general.

It's a devastating critique of how global media -- not just American -- have become complicit in the selling of wars, occupation, and colonization.

He opens with a vignette of his farewell to a Boston Globe correspondent and then writes:

"I used to call the Israeli Likud Party 'right wing,' " he said. "But recently, my editors have been telling me not to use the phrase. A lot of our readers objected." And so now, I asked? "We just don't call it 'right wing' anymore."

Ouch. I knew at once that these "readers" were viewed at his newspaper as Israel's friends, but I also knew that the Likud under Benjamin Netanyahu was as right wing as it had ever been.

This is only the tip of the semantic iceberg that has crashed into American journalism in the Middle East. Illegal Jewish settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land are clearly "colonies," and we used to call them that. I cannot trace the moment when we started using the word "settlements." But I can remember the moment around two years ago when the word "settlements" was replaced by "Jewish neighborhoods" -- or even, in some cases, "outposts."

Similarly, "occupied" Palestinian land was softened in many American media reports into "disputed" Palestinian land -- just after then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, in 2001, instructed U.S. embassies in the Middle East to refer to the West Bank as "disputed" rather than "occupied" territory.

Then there is the "wall," the massive concrete obstruction whose purpose, according to the Israeli authorities, is to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from killing innocent Israelis. In this, it seems to have had some success. But it does not follow the line of Israel's 1967 border and cuts deeply into Arab land. And all too often these days, journalists call it a "fence" rather than a "wall." Or a "security barrier," which is what Israel prefers them to say. For some of its length, we are told, it is not a wall at all — so we cannot call it a "wall," even though the vast snake of concrete and steel that runs east of Jerusalem is higher than the old Berlin Wall.

The semantic effect of this journalistic obfuscation is clear. If Palestinian land is not occupied but merely part of a legal dispute that might be resolved in law courts or discussions over tea, then a Palestinian child who throws a stone at an Israeli soldier in this territory is clearly acting insanely.

If a Jewish colony built illegally on Arab land is simply a nice friendly "neighborhood," then any Palestinian who attacks it must be carrying out a mindless terrorist act.

And surely there is no reason to protest a "fence" or a "security barrier" -- words that conjure up the fence around a garden or the gate arm at the entrance to a private housing complex.

For Palestinians to object violently to any of these phenomena thus marks them as a generically vicious people. By our use of language, we condemn them.

We follow these unwritten rules elsewhere in the region. American journalists frequently used the words of U.S. officials in the early days of the Iraqi insurgency -- referring to those who attacked American troops as "rebels" or "terrorists" or "remnants" of the former regime. The language of the second U.S. pro-consul in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, was taken up obediently -- and grotesquely -- by American journalists.

This is a powerful and important perspective that should remind journalists, bloggers, academics, and public intellectuals in general that their job is to keep the state from becoming a self-justifying system that undermines our liberties and democratic form of government. America is tilting towards a "national security state" that has too many vested interests that thrive from a "high-fear" world rather than one of lower fear and higher trust.

Candid and honest journalism have been undermined by scandals ranging from Stephen Glass to Jayson Blair to Judith Miller -- but there are worse out there. And the celebritization of journalists has also had disturbingly corrupting consequences as James Fallows once bravely wrote about in his book, Breaking the News: How Media Undermine American Democracy.

More later on this subject, but Fisk's piece certainly did inspire some hope that media might just be able to make its way back to the oversight function that it should play in our brand of democracy.

-- Steve Clemons

The Washington Note was the first to get out the news that Douglas Holtz-Eakin was leaving his post to accept a position at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Today, a talk that he recently gave at the New America Foundation was highlighted by the New York Times editorial writers as being the sort of "straight talk" that has largely disappeared from government agencies -- particularly from Republicans like Holtz-Eakin.

The Times writes:

As director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Holtz-Eakin has been Congress's top economist, handpicked by the Republican leadership. Recently, he had some advice for lawmakers - mostly Republicans - who insist that more tax cuts will foster economic growth and raise tax revenue: "Don't even think about it."

The occasion was the release of the agency's long-term outlook, which shows huge unending deficits. "You can't grow yourself out of this problem," said Mr. Holtz-Eakin. "It's just too big."

That's startlingly straight talk, given that Republicans are determined to pass tens of billions in unpaid-for tax cuts come January. But it is typical of Mr. Holtz-Eakin, who is retiring this week after three years as the director. In those years, he has delivered nonpartisan, data-driven research on some of the most controversial issues.

I'm glad that the New America Foundation was host to Holtz-Eakin's last major policy address in his official position.

However, he will be working on significant international economic policy questions at the Council on Foreign Relations and attempting to synthesize thinking about America's classic military, political, and economic dimensions of U.S. foreign policy -- much like the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation is doing. I suspect that Holtz-Eakin and New America will continue to work closely together to generate sensible policy proposals for future governments.

Congratulations Doug.

-- Steve Clemons

Anne Gearan's interesting piece on Condi Rice yesterday got me thinking about what structurally is enhancing or constraining the Secretary of State's success.

Gearan writes:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has become the most popular member of the Bush administration and a potential candidate to succeed her boss in the White House, even as Americans lose confidence in the president she serves and patience with the Iraq war she helped launch.

Entering her second year as the country's senior diplomat and foreign policy spokeswoman, Rice has improbably shed much of her image as the hawkish "warrior princess" at President Bush's side. The nickname was reportedly bestowed by her staff at the White House National Security Council, where Rice was an intimate member of Bush's first-term war council.

Rice resolutely defends the post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism and the expansive executive powers that Bush claims came with it. She has lately sounded more optimistic than Bush about the progress of the Iraq war and the future for that country.

Yet, it is unusual to hear anyone talk about Rice as an architect of either of those two defining undertakings of the Bush presidency.

By a mix of charm, luck and physical distance from the White House, Rice has managed to escape the fate of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who saw their public approval ratings fall to historic lows before rebounding slightly recently.

Kurt Campbell, director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, credits Rice's heavy travel schedule, an approach to diplomacy that is more pragmatic than other Bush advisers, and a measure of personal pluck.

"She appears to have sort of skated away" from controversies over U.S. intelligence failures and aggressive U.S. tactics in the hunt for terrorists, Campbell said, and from the perception that the United States is "slogging" along in Iraq.

"She appears at once to be close to the president but separate and detached from some of the foibles of the administration, and that's a very hard thing to pull off," he said.

Rice has been busy putting together small victories. For a while -- and perhaps still -- there looked like there was a breakthrough in negotiations with North Korea. She got the Gaza-Egypt border crossing open, and has been putting constant and regular pressure on Israel to follow through with commitments made when she pushed forward a post-Gaza framework deal. She has had other successes as well -- but frankly, without taking anything away from the way she is performing as Secretary of State, she is cutting a work agenda that is very Colin Powell-like.

Many are ready to call anything "realism" that doesn't look like 'Borg-ian assimilate or annihilate neoconservatism.'

Condi Rice was never a neoconservative. She just bent their way after 9/11. In fact, before then, she was trying to tutor George W. Bush in what "neo-realism" would look like in a world of America as the ascendant power -- in contrast to the Nixon/Kissingerian realism that managed American interests as America was in decline. In March 2001, she even arranged private tutorial sessions with America's most influential Machiavellian realist, Robert Kaplan, who was then my colleague as a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

At the time, there were three camps in the White House: neo-realists who had Rice at their helm; neoconservatives who had Paul Wolfowitz as their in-government high priest with many others inside the administration and a well-organized band of ideology officers embedded in civil society; and Colin Powell -- who was neither realist, liberal internationalist, or neoconservative -- but who was the cautious incrementalist who felt that America need to be far more careful with its political and military capital than these other camps called for.

Powell was apparently the guy in the room who mattered when he was there because he would usually bring up the part of the picture that others had conveniently neglected as they tried to sell their plans to the President. The problem was that Powell had to be in the room. If he wasn't there, his ability to influence the process was seriously diminished. Powell didn't have an "ism" he was championing.

Rice does not look like a doctrinaire realist today. She looks like a Colin Powell cautious incrementalist -- doing what she can here and there, nearly in an ad hoc fashion to promote global stability, encourage and nudge forward self-determination, and doing deals with some of the world's real bad guys -- particularly in North Korea and Syria.

If she embodies a new realism, then it is realism super-lite. Nonetheless, Condi's stock is rising in the eyes of many.

But she needs to be aware of a few things. First, she has the "latitude" to do what she is doing both because she has a personal relationship with the President that lets her call many of her own shots and because she does not have a Condi Rice at the National Security Council shutting her down.

Rice's biggest failure as NSC Advisor to the President is that she got swept up in the strong Cheney-Rumsfeld current following 9/11 and tilted the President and the national security decision-making process away from judicious analysis and consideration of all options and all consequences. Rice deferred to "the cabal" and made Bush's decision making easier and less complex than it should have been because she filtered out much of what should have been before the President.

In the past, Rice shut down Powell and his team. Today, Stephen Hadley -- though while a close devotee of Vice President Cheney -- is not taking on his former boss on any front whatsoever. Condi Rice is succeeding as Secretary of State because she doesn't have her clone shutting her down.

The other reason she is successful is because the President is weak. When Bush was at the height of his power, he chose to bully the world -- on everything from America's disdain for renewal of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to climate change remediation efforts and negotiations. When Bush was strong, America walked away from a deal that Colin Powell's team had assembled with North Korea, which had great continuity with the Clinton team's work in this arena, and which looks a lot like the deal that Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Christopher Hill put together earlier this year. The cost for Bush's arrogance and failure to move forward with North Korea: about 8-12 nuclear warheads that the North Koreans probably have today.

Bush negotiates when he is weak, not when he is strong -- and thus he is a miserable investor in global stability -- because he has taught the world that as he sees it, the powerful make all the rules, make all their own weather, and decide right and wrong. This is not what one would call a "democratic message."

So, Rice is succeeding because the President is weaker and because she has no Condi Rice to shut her down. But she still has to worry about Cheney and his torture-obsessed thugs.

For one, we still have the story that her own Ambassador to the United Nations, the recess-appointed and Cheney-vassal John Bolton, leaked the news of her diplomatically fragile effort to offer Syria a "Libya-like" makeover track. Bolton sabotaged Rice -- and thus far has gotten away with it.

David Addington, Cheney's chief of staff, is no fan of Condi Rice's and has fought her efforts vigorously inside the White House. So far, Rice is winning -- but if Cheney's power resurges which may occur, Rice could be chewed up in a tug-of-war over foreign policy. To this writer, Cheney appears to have successfully tossed off the negatives from the Libby indictment.

The other risk that Rice has is that if she covers up and flacks for White House misdeeds on illegal wiretaps, detention centers, and torture -- these will eventually undermine her with an American public that won't tolerate institutionalized dishonesty in the Oval Office.

But as things look today, Rice may not be readying herself for President as much as getting ready to be John McCain's vice presidential running mate.

That ticket -- if the Republicans were smart enough to put it together -- would be tough for any Democrat, Hillary included, to beat.

-- Steve Clemons

P.S. TWN is on the move again. Had a great Christmas yesterday and am enjoying "Boxing Day" in Claremont, California. Tomorrow, TWN will be in Las Vegas. Wednesday and Thursday in St. George, Utah. Friday in D.C. Saturday and Sunday in Philadelphia. Look for me on the running trails and say hello. To all the rest -- have a great week!

Be back soon, Steve Clemons

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!

Oakley and I wish you a fantastic holiday weekend. I'm working with my new Apple Powerbook and appreciate all of the advice from knowledgable Mac practitioners.

While Oakley has the blue ball, it seems that my powerbook does have the blue tooth -- so many things are possible.

And to cap off an interesting season of foreign policy work, the October 19th talk by Lawrence Wilkerson at the New America Foundation and Wilkerson's subsequent thoughtful and impassioned commentary on America's broken national security decision making "system" drew a great profile piece by Steve Weisman today in the New York Times.

Weisman writes:

"What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made," Mr. Wilkerson said in a well-publicized speech at the New America Foundation in October. "And you've got a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either," he added in the speech.

Mr. Wilkerson has also attacked the Bush administration for allegedly condoning torture and setting lax policies on treatment of detainees that led, he charges, to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the black eye they gave to the United States Army.

SINCE starting to speak out a few months ago, Mr. Wilkerson has become something of a Washington celebrity. He has given interviews and speeches, appeared on television, written op-ed articles and taken telephone calls from journalists and senators.

That talk Col. Wilkerson gave at New America was an event that "mattered", and my New Year's Resolution for 2006 is to make sure that we have more such occasions that "matter."

I salute Larry Wilkerson for what he has done these last few months with regard to getting this country's foreign policy back on track -- and I feel privileged to have worked with him and enjoyed make his speech a "well publicized" one as Weisman remarked.

Just a short note to Col. Wilkerson's wife, Barbara, who recently sent me some fantastic Christmas cookies. I had two of them -- and Oakley, the very crafty weimaraner, decided he deserved the rest.

Thanks on behalf of both of us for the cookies, and thanks from TWN's readers for supporting your husband during this complicated time.

Happy holidays to all -- and more soon.

-- Steve Clemons

P.S. Keep the Mac advice coming. I'm reading everything you post and send. Really appreciate it.

Greetings and happy Friday TWN readers.

I just bought a new Apple Powerbook G4 to move me into 2006, and this is a real departure from the Dell Inspiron I had which had two hard disks and four keyboards go out on me in 20 months.

I will post more later, or tomorrow morning -- but need to get some things worked out on this system. If there are any experts out there on Apple powerbooks, drop me a line. I'd love to ask a few questions about what one does without a right click.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

Besides holiday gift shopping, which I still do too much of on foot rather than on-line, I have been digging into as much detail as possible on the so-called "Bush Bombing Memo" that recounts George Bush's conversation with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair about bombing Al-Jazeera's headquarters.

TWN is going to be posting more about this in the first week of January. The Brit's prosecution of two bureaucrats involved in the leak of the memo's contents will resume on January 10th. This is one of the first -- and perhaps the very first -- serious prosecution of an individual under Britain's "Official Secrets Act."

The Official Secrets Act sounds to most Americans like it is trotted out all the time; maybe it has something to do with our James Bond fetish. But in fact, it's rarely actually applied in real legal terms -- and is used more as threat.

I have spoken with several senior American intel officials who think that if Bush did say something to Blair -- despite Scott McClellan's basic denial -- that it would have been in jest.

Would the Brits be prosecuting two guys over a joke? I don't think so.

There are ten lines that refer to this Al-Jazeera bombing topic in a 5-page memo on the Bush-Blair meeting.

Tomorrow I'll have more on this subject, but still trying to confirm one piece of this fascinating story.

Thus far, it is looking increasingly like the one who most benefited from the leak of this story was Tony Blair himself. Did he set things into motion? TWN is running some of this down.

And those in the right places know that TWN is prepared to run the relevant ten lines from the broader secret session, which dealt with Fallujah, if that material is leaked. It's not out of the realm of possibility.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

I have to admit that I have not spent a lot of time thinking about the succession scenarios in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, currently headed by John Negroponte.

But I've been hanging around Tom Clancy a bit -- not much, just a bit -- and this type of problem is one of those Clancy-esque scenarios which add such interesting grit to his stories.

But as of today, a line of succession directive has been ordered by President Bush.

If the Director of National Intelligence is not able to perform his functions and duties, and his principal deputy, General Mike Hayden gets knocked out of action as well, here is the order of those who would take over:

(a) Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Management;

(b) Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Collection;

(c) Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis;

(d) Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Customer Outcomes;

(e) Chief of Staff, Office of the Director of National Intelligence;

(f) General Counsel, Office of the Director of National Intelligence; and

(g) Chief Information Officer, Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

I like the bumper sticker slogans embedded in the ODNI organization chart.

Want It -- Know It -- Get It -- Build it!!

The first person to succeed Negroponte is the "Build It" guy, Patrick Kennedy.

Next in line, the "Get It" lady, Mary Margaret Graham.

Tom Fingar, who was one of the key players in the background investigation on John Bolton's abusive antics at the State Department, is the "Know It" guy and is third in line.

And the "Want It" customer-oriented Ron Burgess is fourth in line if Negroponte and Hayden prove unable to do their jobs.

There is no "link" yet to this Presidential Memorandum, so I will post in full here:

December 20, 2005

MEMORANDUM FOR THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

SUBJECT: Designation of Officers of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence To Act as Director of National Intelligence

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, including the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, 5 U.S.C. 3345, et seq., it is hereby ordered that:

Section 1.

Subject to the provisions of sections 3 and 4 of this memorandum, the officers of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence named in section 2, in the order listed, shall act as and perform the functions and duties of the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), during any period in which the DNI and the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence have died, resigned, or otherwise become unable to perform the functions and duties of the office of the DNI, until such time as at least one of the officers listed in this section is able to perform the functions and duties of the DNI.

Sec. 2. Order of Succession.

(a) Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Management;

(b) Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Collection;

(c) Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis;

(d) Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Customer Outcomes;

(e) Chief of Staff, Office of the Director of National Intelligence;

(f) General Counsel, Office of the Director of National Intelligence; and

(g) Chief Information Officer, Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Sec. 3. National Security Act of 1947.

This memorandum shall not supercede the authority of the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence to act for, and exercise the powers of, the Director of National Intelligence during the absence or disability of the Director of National Intelligence or during a vacancy in the position of Director of National Intelligence, (National Security Act of 1947, as amended, 50 U.S.C. 403-3a).

Sec. 4. Exceptions.

(a) No individual who is serving in an office listed in section 2 in an acting capacity shall act as the DNI pursuant to this section.

(b) Notwithstanding the provisions of this memorandum, the President retains discretion, to the extent permitted by law, to depart from this memorandum in designating an acting DNI.

Sec. 5. Publication.

You are authorized and directed to publish this memorandum in the Federal Register.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Speaking of intelligence succession, official secrets, and all that, I'll be posting more later. . .on the George Bush/Al Jazeera Bombing Memo.

-- Steve Clemons

(photo credit: The Australian)

Many analysts of President Bush's speech on Iraq last night noted that he has stopped insisting that things could hardly be better in Iraq and that victory was around the corner. He acknowledged high costs of America's Iraq effort and slightly flirted with realism.

However, in the view of TWN, Bush has modified his style a wee bit but kept his core message exactly the same.

Despite his admission that Iraq's parliamentary elections on December 15th would not end the violence, Bush's opening lines again reflected a lop-sided, sentimental, and self-serving perspective on Iraq's recent elections that fail to address or acknowledge the serious problems that lie beneath a "veneer of success.'

Bush has not become more 'real' by acknowledging the numbers of deaths or mentioning the fact that Iraq continues to violently boil. This new "style" is more tactic than substance. The tack towards the appearance of realism came because the White House knew that Americans were scoffing at a president who acknowledged no costs in this war and were embracing Congressman Jack Murtha's views that we are paying too high a price in Iraq and have no strategy to win or get out.

Bush's embrace of last week's election as yet another milestone of success in that "Mission Accomplished" style of his had him celebrating December 15th as "a landmark day in the history of liberty." He continued with his rosy overstatement that "a people who suffered in tyranny for so long will become full members of the free world."

To argue that Iraq has turned the corner and is now a "constitutional democracy at the heart of the Middle East", as Bush has, sounds too remote from realities on the ground to be taken seriously.

This morning in The Australian, I have an op-ed on this subject titled "The Jury is Still Out on Iraqi Democracy". The piece deals with how leading neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, Bob Kagan, and Lawrence Kaplan -- in addition to President Bush -- are interpreting Iraq's elections.

In my view, opponents of the Iraq War need to be careful not to co-opt every bad development in Iraq to justify assessments that are worse than reality. But the President is doing the opposite -- as are other leading neoconservative voices who are ignoring important factors that should be legitimately considered in their takes on what is unfolding in Iraq.

To get things right -- whether America stays or leaves Iraq (and TWN thinks that we should go) -- we need our leading analysts to make their arguments and market their Iraq proposals to the public through a realistic prism.

-- Steve Clemons

Although I have yet to read a full transcript of tonight's BBC interview with Colin Powell, a report on the former Secretary of State's comments tracks with Lawrence Wilkerson's impressions of a Rumsfeld-Cheney cabal at the White House.

From a BBC report this evening:

He also referred to his relationship with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney - often depicted as icy.

"Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney and I occasionally would have strong differing views on matters. And when that was the case we argued them out, we fought them out, in bureaucratic ways," he said.

"Often maybe Mr Rumsfeld and Vice-President Cheney would take decisions into the president that the rest of us weren't aware of. That did happen, on a number of occasions."

Asked about post-war planning for Iraq, Gen Powell said his state department staff drew up detailed plans, but they were discarded by Mr Rumsfeld's defence department, which was backed by the White House.

"Mr Rumsfeld and I had some serious discussions, of a not pleasant kind, about the use of individuals who could bring expertise to the issue. And it ultimately went into the White House, and the rest is well known."

These comments by Powell primarily color in much of what was already known.

But they perhaps were triggered by his 16-year aide's brave revelations about the best-case only decision making realities in the White House.

It's still too early to tell, but Colin Powell may finally be finding his voice.

-- Steve Clemons

I returned a few days ago from Israel, and it became very clear to me that both Israeli and Palestinian politics are on the verge of major tectonic shifts.

If Ariel Sharon's reported stroke is serious, then these next few months in the Israel-Palestinian arena are going to be more fragile than they would already be.

The Palestinian Fatah party is divided between the corrupt and incompetent on one hand and some who are both visionary and competent. A new more centrist, anti-corrupton party called Hurriyah may be born after the January 25th elections. And of course, Hamas is poised to get a major foothold in the Palestinian government.

On the Israeli side, Ariel Sharon tilted towards the center, crippling the right wing Likud party and building a catch-all party in the semi-center, called Kadima. Both Labor and Likud figures have joined Sharon, including the former Likud Defense Minister as well as Labor's former chief, Shimon Peres. The new Labor Party leader, Amir Peretz, has a genuine battle ahead with Sharon in racing to get enough seats in the March 28th election to form the government. Most analysts have been giving the tilt in the race to Sharon's Kadima, and Likud has no chance to beat either Labor or Kadima.

Beneath this political turmoil, most Knesset observers feel that Sharon is attempting to impose a final border solution with the Palestinians that is unilaterally imposed. The other side of this debate is a competing effort to get to final status negotiations on a Palestinian state with a border deal that is bilaterally agreed to.

The fact that there will be two major elections in the Palestinian Territory and Israel over the next 14 weeks poses the possibility of either a real break-through in achieving a 'deal' between Palestinians and Israelis -- or alternatively, a worsening of circumstances if Hamas scores big in the polls, and Sharon's Palestinian-cripping unilateralism is rewarded in Israel's elections. Hamas and Sharon, in many ways, reinforce each other -- often crushing more moderate voices between them that believe that a negotiated solution is not only possible, but achievable in the near term.

TWN knows nothing more about Sharon's state of health. But there can't be much doubt that this stroke will shake the Israeli-Palestinian world pretty hard.

It's too early to tell whether Sharon's health weakness presents an opportunity to break out of the trap of unilateralism now -- or whether this could intensify and worsen the already stessed Palestinian-Israeli situation.

Stay tuned.

-- Steve Clemons

It seems like Vice President Cheney (of course his boss too) has followed, in part, a British road map in torturing one's supposed and "possible" enemies.

A disturbing report appeared today in the Guardian on a secret detention camp for Nazis, SS officials and people thought to be collaborators at a German spa turned into an interrogation and torture center named Bad Nenndorf.

One of the really disturbing parts of the report is that a Scotland Yard report discovered that not all of the victims of this camp were hard-core parts of Hitler's government or police apparatus. Some were "industrialists, tobacco importers, oil company bosses or forestry owners".

From Ian Cobain's important investigative report:

Prisoners complained thumbscrews and "shin screws" were employed at the prison and Dr Jordan's report highlighted the small, round scars that he had seen on the legs of two men, "which were said to be the result of the use of some instrument to facilitate questioning". One of these men was Hans Habermann, a 43-year-old disabled German Jew who had survived three years in Buchenwald concentration camp.

All of these men had been held at Bad Nenndorf, a small, once-elegant spa resort near Hanover. Here, an organisation called the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC) ran a secret prison following the British occupation of north-west Germany in 1945.

CSDIC, a division of the War Office, operated interrogation centres around the world, including one known as the London Cage, located in one of London's most exclusive neighbourhoods. Official documents discovered last month at the National Archives at Kew, south-west London, show that the London Cage was a secret torture centre where German prisoners who had been concealed from the Red Cross were beaten, deprived of sleep, and threatened with execution or with unnecessary surgery.

As horrific as conditions were at the London Cage, Bad Nenndorf was far worse. Last week, Foreign Office files which have remained closed for almost 60 years were opened after a request by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act. These papers, and others declassified earlier, lay bare the appalling suffering of many of the 372 men and 44 women who passed through the centre during the 22 months it operated before its closure in July 1947.

They detail the investigation carried out by a Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Tom Hayward, following the complaints of Major Morgan-Jones and Dr Jordan. Despite the precise and formal prose of the detective's report to the military government, anger and revulsion leap from every page as he turns his spotlight on a place where prisoners were systematically beaten and exposed to extreme cold, where some were starved to death and, allegedly, tortured with instruments that his fellow countrymen had recovered from a Gestapo prison in Hamburg. Even today, the Foreign Office is refusing to release photographs taken of some of the "living skeletons" on their release.

Initially, most of the detainees were Nazi party members or former members of the SS, rounded up in an attempt to thwart any Nazi insurgency. A significant number, however, were industrialists, tobacco importers, oil company bosses or forestry owners who had flourished under Hitler.

This report was covered as well today in an article in Haaretz.

In the nearly 60 years since the end of World War II, one would think that the norms of leading democracies in the world had finally figured out that our greatest strength comes not from throwing out human rights protections and due process when the going gets rough -- but in holding them up as the genetic material of our society and model of government, particularly during times of national crisis.

This report on the British camps is important because it reminds us of where we were in World War II, and how little some people elected as our national leaders today have grown since that time. If they can so easily throw out the rule of law and protection of individual liberty -- then and today -- then our democracy is not worth much.

This is not to say that we should become apologists for evil people and those who would do us great harm -- but hold them accountable in courts of justice, not gulags and torture chambers.

-- Steve Clemons

I don't care how long the list is of those people and phone numbers that have been surreptitiously monitored by the National Security Agency without court approval.

This list should be made public -- published in full on the Internet.

If there are specific individuals or numbers that a judge wishes to give ex post facto protection, I can accept that.

But this invasion of privacy in the case of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American citizens must be challenged in the courts. What Bush did is engage in an extra-legal act against the citizens he is paid to represent -- and this is criminal.

Post the list. It should be made public because at this point there is NO NATIONAL SECURITY rationale to justify the monitoring of citizens in cases that have not been approved by a court. That means that all of those citizens monitored are innocent -- and unwitting victims of this domestic spy campaign launched by George W. Bush.

Publish the list of phone numbers, Mr. President. Do it now or lawyers may start working today to compel you through the courts to do it.

TWN would be happy to provide the bandwidth and home exposing this national intelligence disgrace.

-- Steve Clemons

Although the New York Times cut a deal with the Bush administration a year ago to keep hidden the fact that it knew that the National Security Agency was spying on the electronic voice and data transmissions of American citizens -- without court approval -- the news of this which hit today resulted in the Senate saying enough is enough.

The Senate voted to kill extension of 16 Patriot Act provisions expiring on December 31st.

From an AP report:

President Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Republicans congressional leaders had lobbied fiercely to make most of the expiring Patriot Act provisions permanent.

They also supported new safeguards and expiration dates to the act's two most controversial parts: authorization for roving wiretaps, which allow investigators to monitor multiple devices to keep a target from evading detection by switching phones or computers; and secret warrants for books, records and other items from businesses, hospitals and organizations such as libraries.

There is momentum now behind those who want to clip the wings of the Bush White House. A genuine battle is breaking out. . .finally.

In the past, those who would preserve our system of checks and balances, our system of justice, and civil society have been too weak compared to a White House that had become intoxicated with a passionate belief in its own infallibility.

The White House is being handed one defeat after another, but the President and his team despise being beaten. I suspect that we are entering a dangerous period where the White House feels trapped and prone to excess to try and get back in control.

Stay tuned.

-- Steve Clemons

I just received the note below from CNN's Director of Communications.

Bob Novak is done there.

"After 25 years of serving as a CNN commentator and program host, our colleague Bob Novak's tenure on the network will come to a close (effective 12/31).

Through the years, Bob has offered incisive analysis for much of CNN's programming, including Crossfire, The Capital Gang, Inside Politics, Evans and Novak, The Novak Zone, and Novak, Hunt and Shields. Bob has also been a valued contributor to CNN's political coverage. We appreciate his many contributions and wish him well in future endeavors."

Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

My friend Doug Bandow (note that the Cato Institute has already made him a "former senior fellow") has recently admitted to taking payment from Jack Abramoff to write favorably about Abramoff's clients. Doug has resigned from the Cato Institute and been forthright that this whole thing was a "lapse of judgement."

Truth in advertising. Doug Bandow has been a guest-blogger at The Washington Note in the past, and he wrote one of the more compelling but still wrong-headed pro-John Bolton articles in National Review this year. Those that have been reading TWN for a while know that I was diametrically positioned to Bandow on the Bolton battle.

For the record, I would ask Bandow to guest blog again.** I regret that he is involved with Abramoff, but when a town like Washington, D.C. has become systemically corrupt, where does one start focusing the blame? Bandow has paid a price by resigning from Cato.

But what of think tanks and the growing undisguised advocacy role that they play on behalf of funders' objectives?

What of the media at home and abroad in which the U.S. government has paid pundits, ghost writers, and opinion leaders to help shape opinion via op-eds and other articles in the U.S. press and even Iraq's press?

What of Tom DeLay's efforts to punish corporate trade associations and NGOs for hiring Democrats, choking off political access to all -- inside and outside the Congress -- who didn't do his bidding?

All of these depict a corruption of institutions that should not rest on the revelations about one guy who has a great mind and made a mistake -- particularly when the rest of the institutions in this town are engaged in dramatically worse behaviors.

I have written about the corruption of think tanks in the past, and in my view, Doug Bandow's transgression is minor. I praise him for not resisting or dissembling about this relationship to Abramoff.

But on other fronts, what about Jim Woolsey's war-profiteering? What about Doug Feith's $700,000 grant from Turkey, orchestrated by Israel? What of Richard Perle's conflicts of interest in this war? Cheney's Haliburton conflicts have already become cliches.

I hope that this kind of story about Bandow grows into a larger discussion about institutions and their responsibility to the public.

Another recent departure from the Cato Institute was Chuck Pena, then Director of Defense Policy Studies at that institution. In contrast to Bandow who already has "former" attached to his bio on the Cato website, Pena -- who is no longer there -- still reads as if he were a current employee.

Within weeks of departing Cato, Pena wrote an important critique of the trap think tanks were in because of the Iraq war and the constraints of ideology, and ideological funders. He argues, and TWN agrees with him, for an "emancipation of think tanks".

Despite the few articles out there, some are discussing what is driving real corruption in Washington -- and why institutions that span the range from 501(c)3, 501(c)4, 527, and other policy and/or political incorporated entities are increasingly becoming money launderers for lobbyist's objectives.

It's time we began to think about "best practices" in the ideas industry and began to move the norms of this town back in a direction of which we can be proud.

-- Steve Clemons

** UPDATE: I have modified my position on this matter and think that there should be criteria for guest-bloggers on TWN, including Doug Bandow. I hope he is able to meet them in the future, but further commentary can be read about my reconsideration of this policy at this comment: "Posted by Steve Clemons at December 16, 2005 05:36 PM" (just click on comments and scroll to the noted time of this comment). I did embrace the notion of Doug Bandow guest-blogging again prematurely as there need to be established ground-rules. That said, I rarely have guest-bloggers and have only done so once in the history of TWN. Thanks for the constructive counsel from readers.

-- Steve Clemons

Murray Waas has just published a long, in-depth piece in National Journal on new dimensions in the all important conversation between Bob Novak and Karl Rove in which Valerie Plame's CIA identity was discussed.

But Waas makes a solid case that Rove was prepared to talk to Novak about the president's intention to make Fran Townsend Deputy National Security advisor for Combating Terrorism, not necessarily a campaign to out Plame. The Plame discussion followed a long-ish exchange about Fran Townsend, whom Novak planned to savage as a Janet Reno-admiring "enemy within."

Rove's charge that day had been to defend Townsend. What is really fascinating is Waas's depiction of Scooter Libby's and David Addington's campaign AGAINST Townsend. Waas shows that the Vice President's henchmen and Karl Rove were working at cross-purposes on Fran Townsend -- but then seeming working in sync regarding the vengeful outing of Valerie Plame as a way to get back at Joe Wilson.

This does not alter the prospect that Rove was potentially fabricating answers or giving deceptive statements to Patrick Fitzgerald and the Grand Jury in this case, but it does add much more detail -- nuts and bolts style -- to what these retainers to Bush and Cheney were doing, and why they were doing it.

It's a long, long article -- but well worth reading. In my view, Murray Waas is quickly emerging as the kind of investigative reporter Bob Woodward used to be.

-- Steve Clemons

In the year 2000, I was invited to a speech by the then Minister of Commerce, Industry and Energy about the ten industries of the future that Korea planned to invest heavily in.

Nine industries on that list were the same bets Korea had had on its list before -- including flat panel development, semiconductor chips, aviation technology, etc. But the tenth item he discussed was "cloning."

While the Minister's comments were translated, I was stunned by the bluntness of one admission he made about cloning.

He stated: "Korea may have an advantage in the arena of human cloning because America and Europe will struggle with moral dilemmas about that practice which the Korean culture will not. This will give us an advantage over the U.S. and Europe."

I thought at that time that the Minister was right. It was well-known Japanese social anthropologist Chie Nakane who stated that Japan was neither moral or immoral -- but rather amoral. I thought at the time I heard this that Nakane's views perhaps applied to Korea as well -- and that this amoral pragmatism in business and technological pursuits was now being promoted in Korea as a "national economic advantage."

There is much more to the cloning story unfolding in Korea. The latest controversy in the previously thought successful cloning case is that the senior researcher, Hwang Woo Suk, faked data.

Bad researcher. But before the world gets all high and mighty about Korea's hiccup in human cloning, the fact is that Korea is racing ahead of most of the world on the cloning front -- despite this controversy -- and has made extremely larege national investments in this technological pursuit that will probably still pay off.

So, yes -- a researcher has stumbled over a set of "ethics issues." But the world that is now guffawing over this needs to remember that that was always part of Korea's national cloning plan.

Korea is no where near out of the human cloning business.

-- Steve Clemons

John McCain has earned his Senate salary these last few months.

Beating the White House is no easy feat, and yet his success and the success of others -- as in the battle against John Bolton's confirmation -- is showing that the White House can be tackled and compelled to stand down.

From the Washington Post this morning:

Bush gave his support publicly in a joint appearance with McCain in the Oval Office yesterday, one day after the House gave veto-proof support for the senator's language in a symbolic 308 to 122 vote. The Senate had already approved the provision 90 to 9. Bush praised McCain's effort.

"We've been happy to work with him to achieve a common objective, and that is to make it clear to the world that this government does not torture and that we adhere to the international convention [on] torture, whether it be here at home or abroad," Bush said.

Though the White House held out the agreement as a compromise, McCain retained the language he has been proposing all along, which would prohibit the abuse of any detainee in U.S. custody and would also make it a legal requirement that Defense Department interrogators abide by the rules in the Army's field manual on interrogations.

This same article suggests that Senator Lindsey Graham's legislation, which is still working its way through the Congress and which would restrict the habeas corpus rights of Guantanamo detainees, may undo some of what McCain has succeeded.

So, this fight to uphold norms consistent with American democracy as well as to protect basic human rights is still not finished.

But McCain does deserve a salute and applause for standing his ground against Cheney and his henchmen.

Anyone know what Cheney was doing when Bush was telling the world that he strongly supported John McCain's efforts?

-- Steve Clemons

Senator Dianne Feinstein asked the Congressional Research Service to sort out President Bush's claim that before the Iraq invasion, his office and the Congress shared the "same intelligence."

To give you the punch line early, CRS's answer to the President is that that is simply untrue.

According to the report:

The executive branch generally does not routinely share with Congress four general types of intelligence information:

the identities of intelligence sources;

the "methods" employed by the Intelligence Community in collecting and analyzing intelligence;

"raw" intelligence, which can be unevaluated or "lightly" evaluated intelligence, (18) which in the case of human intelligence (19) sometimes is provided by a single source, but which also could consist of intelligence derived from multiple sources when signals (20) and imagery (21) collection methods are employed; and,

certain written intelligence products tailored to the specific needs of the President and other high-level executive branch policymakers. Included in the last category is the President's Daily Brief (PDB), a written intelligence product which is briefed daily to the President, and which consists of six to eight relatively short articles or briefs covering a broad array of topics. (22) The PDB emphasizes current intelligence (23) and is viewed as highly sensitive, in part, because it can contain intelligence source and operational information. Its dissemination is thus limited to the President and a small number of presidentially-designated senior administration policymakers. (24)

Furthermore, the CRS report outlines other "structural reasons", many quite sensible in TWN's view, why Congress does note receive routine access to certain intelligence.

Nonetheless, the claim that the President made rang hollow from the moment he uttered it.

From the report:

Reasons for Congress Not Receiving Routine Access to Certain Intelligence.

In not providing Congress routine access to source identities, executive branch officials cite the need to protect against "leaks" or unauthorized disclosure of information that the Intelligence Community generally considers to be the most sensitive in its possession.

As more individuals are briefed about sources, it is contended, the greater is the risk that this information will be disclosed, inadvertently or otherwise. Such leaks could jeopardize current or future access to possibly valuable intelligence, and endanger the lives of intelligence sources providing the information.

Executive branch officials similarly point to security-related concerns in explaining why Congress is not routinely provided intelligence methods, particularly collection methods. As in the case of source protection, officials argue that effective intelligence collection demands that the methods - human and technical -- used to collect the intelligence be protected by limiting the number of individuals witting of those methods.

Officials, in part, also cite security concerns in withholding raw intelligence. Because raw intelligence sometimes is derived from a single source, the source is arguably more vulnerable to identification and ultimate exposure. Even when intelligence is collected from multiple sources, as is sometimes the case when signals and imagery intelligence collection efforts are employed, knowledge of those collection methods can sometimes be determined from the underlying raw intelligence.

They cite two additional reasons for restricting congressional access to raw intelligence. First, they contend that it would be "dangerous" if a Member of Congress were to gain access to, and possibly make policy decisions based upon, raw, unevaluated intelligence that has not been placed in context. Second, they argue that as a practical matter Congress lacks the physical capacity to securely store the volume of raw intelligence the Intelligence Community generates. (25)

Finally, executive branch officials restrict congressional access to written intelligence products -- including the PDB -- that are tailored to the needs of individual policymakers. They assert that it would be inappropriate to provide these products to Congress because they are tailored to the specific needs of individual policymakers, and often include information about the policymaker's contacts with foreign counterparts, as well as the reactions of those counterparts. (26)

Although PDB consumers have access to all such intelligence, it should be noted that intelligence sources, methods and operational information historically have been tightly restricted within the executive branch, as well. Intelligence Community analysts, for example, have rarely if ever have had access to such information. To the limited extent that they have, their access has been based largely upon their need to know the information for the purposes of conducting analysis. (27)

While congressional intelligence officials have not routinely requested access to the types of intelligence information discussed above, they have questioned the executive branch's security concerns with regard to certain raw intelligence, noting that it generally is more widely available to executive branch officials. (28) Their comments suggest that they dispute whether Congress is less capable than is the Executive in its ability to evaluate and safeguard sensitive intelligence.

Three quick reactions to this logic on WHY national security intelligence is not more routinely shared with Congress.

First, while TWN believes that the logic outlined above is largely sensible, that doesn't mean that there should not be constant efforts made to find management structures for intelligence that do allow greater Congressional access to this material because it would enhance the quality of information that feed into Congressional legislation and decisions. More efforts should be made to make sure that over time Congress sees more of this intelligence, not less -- which is the case today.

Second, the concern about "raw intelligence" applies to members of the administration who see such "unpackaged" information as well. John Bolton, with the help of his CIA-employed chief of staff, became a consumer and a purveyor of raw intelligence in his role as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. There should have been an effort to curtail Bolton's use and abuse of intelligence early in his tenure. The Vice President's office also engaged in this abuse of access to unfiltered intelligence and committed the same serious mistakes that the administration fears Congress would make in their justification not to share this material with legislators. This makes no sense if the White House can't police its own team on this front.

Third, in unique policy matters such as the decision to go to war when the lives of American men and women are being put on the line, the process of "routine" intelligence information management should be suspended.

The Executive Branch's near-monopoly of control over the gathering, interpreting, and dissemination of intelligence must be accessible -- fully -- to Congress when there are matters of war and peace being weighed. Congress is an equal branch of government with an oversight duty over the Executive that requires it to be made aware of information that informs the President in this high-stakes matters.

Congress must re-assert its rights on this front and knock back the naturally expansive powers of the presidency.

Executive privilege should be suspended after it becomes clear that the White House deceived the American public. Furthermore, President Bush's claim that the war against Iraq was justified even if the intelligence on WMDs had shown that Hussein's WMD arsenal was empty is enough for Congress to compel the White House to more systematically share intelligence in all national security matters.

The President was given a mandate for the "possibility of going to war", among other options, based on intelligence estimates about Iraq's capabilities. For Bush to say that the intelligence wouldn't have mattered one way or another is an outrageous and unacceptable admission.

The continued fabrications and spinning that come out of the White House about why it was justified to kill tens of thousands of Iraqis and American soldiers in this "war of choice," as Richard Haass has called it, should disgust most Americans. President Bush and Vice President Cheney have deeply damaged the power, status and moral credibility of the United States.

I have some confidence that some serious moderate Republicans are crafting a "successor regime" to Bush that will try to change the course Bush has set. But it's also important for Democrats to get into this game.

Jack Murtha opened a door, and Senator Reid's Rule 21 move was a good one to keep the American conversation on the question of the White House's use and abuse of intelligence -- but frankly, we are still waiting for a cohesive, compelling national security vision from leading Democrats that indicts this White House for its errors and gives American citizens confidence that Dems might get it right if they get the helm in 2009.

-- Steve Clemons

The White House and various Congressional watchers are suggesting that a deal has been forged that accepts John McCain's language that Americans and their agents will not engage in torture or inhuman treatment of prisoners. But no one really knows the legislative details, and even Congressman Duncan Hunter has said that lots still needs to be worked out.

I don't trust Vice President Cheney on this front -- and nervous rumors are leaking out of the White House and State Department that Vice President Cheney's supposed "containment" by Bush was a ruse, or at least was just temporary.

Some are suggesting that Cheney and his people are back -- and that he has even sent word out on one front that "diplomacy with North Korea will be suspended." Rice may not yield to Cheney, but what is important to note is that some of those who thought that the Libby indictment and combination of bad news items crippling the White House had harmed Cheney's status are now reversing themselves. At a minimum, they are talking less definitively about Cheney's downfall.

The New America Foundation and I are hosting a small dinner tonight at Washington's Cosmos Club with Lawrence Wilkerson, former State Department Chief of Staff, and I'm sure that this topic will come up. I'll report back if anything new comes to the surface.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Several people in high places, both in the State Department and in the United Nations, have commented to me that John Bolton really surprised them when he embarked on his new duties after moving into the Ambassador's apartment at the Waldorf-Astoria.

They said that it was like Bolton had gone to charm school and went out of his way to "meet and greet" everyone, from high-ranking to the lowest of low-ranking staff at the U.N. One senior NGO official and former diplomat told me that the facilitators of the Millennium Summit document process -- about 30 people -- were shocked that Bolton had sought each of them out to say hello and offer a genuine human connection, sort of a "Bill Clinton type thing" to do.

The storm about the Millennium Summit document, and Bolton's 750 suggested line changes, came later, but at least they thought he was a far nicer guy than his critics had described.

Now, it seems that the real John Bolton has boldly stepped beyond the veneer. And true to form, just as he woke up each morning for the first four years of the Bush administration asking what he could do to make Colin Powell's life miserable and, at the same time, doing Vice President Cheney's bidding, John Bolton has now target Condoleezza Rice's efforts to get America back on a more balanced foreign policy track with the rest of the world.

The American Prospect's Mark Leon Goldberg writes the first serious assessment of John Bolton's tenure thus far as the recess-appointed U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

For a pdf version of this article, TWN readers can email for a copy at steve@thewashingtonnote.com. (The article is now also available on the web here.

The headlines for the piece titled "The Arsonist" run:

In his first six months at the UN, John Bolton has offended allies, blocked crucial negotiations, undermined the Secretary of State -- and harmed U.S. interests.

We expected bad; we didn't expect this bad.

Goldberg establishes that John Bolton has approached his job with the zeal of a true believer -- arriving at work first and often leaving the office last. He is taking his job seriously and has complete confidence in his ability to twist the U.N. bureaucracy, and maybe the State Department as well, to his will.

But what drives Bolton's impressive work ethic?

Goldberg notes that among his efforts have been gutting global efforts to begin to try and get the "developing nation problem" right during the historically important U.N. Millennium Summit, which for many reasons -- and mainly Bolton's undermining it -- turned out to be a dud.

In his first moves at the U.N., Bolton made the "eye-popping" proposal to rid the Millennium Summit document of any of the 14 references to Millennium Development Goals. Goldberg documents the uproar that ensued, and no less than Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had to put this diplomatic fiasco he created back in order –- compelling Bolton at the end of the day to step back and relent.

But the big news that Mark Goldberg breaks is that the American Prospect has confirmed that it was John Bolton himself who scuttled Secretary of State Rice's efforts to offer Syria a Libya-like opportunity to get itself out of the international dog house. Goldberg writes:

. . .the tension between Rice and Bolton has grown dramatically in several areas, most notably with regard to Syria: The Prospect has learned that Bolton was the source of an October leak to the British press that submarined sensitive negotiations Rice was overseeing with that country.

Goldberg's piece is good through and through, but the juiciest, news-breaking revelations come in this depiction of Condi's commendable efforts with Syria:

Indeed, it was Rice, not Bolton, who achieved the one significant success of Bolton's first 100 days at the United Nations: a unanimous October 30 Security Council vote requiring Syria to fully cooperate with a UN investigation into the suspected Syria-sponsored assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

The Prospect has learned that in the days and weeks leading up to the late October UN report on Hariri's assassination, Rice sought to sideline Bolton from the negotiations over the Security Council resolution that the report inspired. She also made the State Department, not the U.S. Mission to the UN, the central address for
discussions on the resolution.

One of the first signs that a bureaucratic battle was brewing between Bolton and Rice over Syria came on October 18, when the State Department press corps was shocked to find that Rice had unexpectedly flown to New York to meet Annan. A State Department spokesman explained that the two met to "compare notes" in advance of a widely anticipated report by Detlev Mehlis, the secretary-general's special investigator for the Hariri assassination.

Yet Bolton, the man in charge of the United States' day-to-day operations at the UN, was conspicuously absent from that meeting. In what appears to have been less of an accident than a matter of intentional timing, Rice made her trip to New York on the very morning that Bolton had to be in Washington, testifying before the Senate on the progress (or lack thereof) of UN reforms.

The Prospect has further learned that, rather than forging Security Council strategy with America's European allies at the UN building in New York, much of the diplomatic legwork has been carried out in Foggy Bottom.

On October 22, a French delegation from the UN traveled to Washington for initial discussions on the Syria resolution (later called Security Council Resolution 1636), of which the French were the original authors.

According to a diplomatic source, Bolton was not initially invited to that meeting. The French, however, insisted on his presence. So Bolton attended, but not without three chaperones: Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch, Welch's deputy (and vice-presidential daughter) Elizabeth Cheney, and National Security Council Middle East chief Michael Doran.

"It's like they stuck a strong team from the [State Department and National Security Council] to watch him," said the diplomat.

Despite Rice's tight oversight of the resolution negotiations, the unanimity of the council was still in doubt one day before the Security Council meeting. Finally, in a last-minute lunch meeting with her foreign-minister counterparts from the veto-wielding permanent five Security Council members, Rice personally removed references to sanctions that had been inserted by the United States. With those obstacles to unanimous consent gone, Resolution 1636 passed 15 to 0.

Rice's involvement came after Bolton had won round one in the Syria battle. Bolton and Rice's bureaucratic tiffs over Syria had actually boiled over two weeks prior to the Security Council vote. Journalist Ibrahim Hamidi, writing in the Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat, reported -- and the Prospect has independently confirmed -- that Bolton had leaked to British newspapers that the Bush administration had signaled its willingness to offer Syria a "Libya-style deal" -- a reference to Libyan President Muammar Quaddafi's decision last year to give up pursuing weapons of mass destruction and renounce terrorism in return for a restoration of relations with the United States and the United Kingdom.

According to The Times of London, Syria responded positively to the secret U.S. offer, which was made through a third party. But after Bolton publicly aired the details of the potential deal -- which would require Syria to cooperate with the Mehlis investigation, end interference in Lebanese affairs and alleged interference in Iraqi affairs, and cease supporting militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah -- Damascus quickly denied that such a deal was in the offing.

"It is no secret that Mr. Bolton and Dr. Rice are not the closest friends," a well-placed UN official told the Prospect. "Indeed, I've heard it said that the main reason he came here was that she didn't want him in Foggy Bottom."

In conversations with a senior State Department official, TWN has also confirmed that relations between John Bolton and Secretary Rice have grown more strained, and that while this individual was not surprised by the "confirmation" that Bolton worked to sabotage Rice's Syria efforts, this information was certainly going to complicate their relationship and probably result in the State Department again deploying a "Put Bolton in the Box" effort much like former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson said had been applied when John Bolton was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.

Mark Goldberg then exposes Bolton's pugnacious obsession with attempting to single-handedly shut down U.N. financing pending reform implementation.

The sad truth is that many of the reforms Bolton is seeking make a great deal of sense. The problem is that his manner and approach undermine his and America's interests and objectives.

Goldberg writes:

By December, a looming crisis over the UN budget was testing Bolton and Rice's relationship once again. At the time of this writing, the United Nations was in chaos. Kofi Annan had just canceled a trip to Asia to oversee negotiations over the UN's biennium budget, which was being derailed by an American threat to withhold support for the UN's two-year operating budget until a number of management reforms are passed.

With a December 31 deadline looming, Bolton proposed that the world body adopt a three- or four-month interim budget -- just enough time to force other member states to accept the reforms. These reforms are backed by Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the secretary-general himself. Yet Bolton's strong-arm tactics led their representatives to warn that his proposal would starve the United Nations and disrupt other important UN business like peacekeeping operations.

The rumor mill at the Vienna Cafe has suggested that Bolton must have bypassed Rice and received support for holding the UN budget hostage from the President himself -- a view widely held as the truth among UN diplomats. Regardless of the accuracy of this rumor, Bolton's move is paradigmatic of his self-defeating approach to the UN: Instead of banding together with powerful allies, he alienates them.

And in doing so he empowers adversaries like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and other spoilers content with a UN that is tied in knots. Critics feared that Bolton's tenure would be problematic for American interests. The evidence suggests it's been even worse.

On the personnel front, Goldberg captures the "fear factor" to which Bolton treats his staff (TWN notes, however, that this tactic is used regularly in many offices in Washington. . .).

Goldberg writes:

Bolton arrived at work, already living up to his boss-from-hell reputation. Eight months before, he had sent shivers down the spine of staffers at the United States Mission to the United Nations with an e-mail from his chief of staff saying he required a copy of everyone's resume. By the time he set foot in his new office, morale was already low.

The Prospect has learned that Bolton's first staff meeting did little to improve things: He told the roughly 100 people present that he wanted to personally sign off on every cable from the mission to Washington.

There can be up to five of these cables sent to Foggy Bottom each day, and though the ambassador technically signs them, in practice previous UN ambassadors would not normally read them all. "He wanted to get in the weeds," said someone present at that meeting. "It seemed to be his way of scaring people."

Given Bolton's obsession with National Security Agency intercepts in his old job, TWN is not surprised by Goldberg's finding about Bolton's desire to micro-control his staff and get into the 'roots' of the weeds.

Besides demanding to eyeball every cable that went to Washington, Bolton stopped his staff at the U.S. delegation to the United Nations from traveling to Washington to confer and coordinate with State Department officials who worked in the same portfolio area. He also seriously curtailed the "representational funds" account that allows America's U.N.-based foreign service staff to have lunch and dinner meetings and engage in the kind of meal and drinks-led public diplomacy that helps America secure what it wants from other foreign missions at the U.N.

What TWN finds most disturbing about Bolton's efforts, however, was his effort during the Millennium Summit document preparation process to remove any references to disarmament, arms control, and nuclear non-proliferation.

As Mark Goldberg writes:

Bolton tried to purge the section concerning nonproliferation of any mention of disarmament. The alliance of Israel, India, and Pakistan—nuclear powers that are not parties to the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons -- retorted by introducing language emphasizing disarmament and deleted references to the non-proliferation treaty.

"We could not get back the balance between nonproliferation and disarmament [from earlier drafts]," a European diplomat told Jim Wurst of the Global Security Newswire. Eventually the entire section was scrapped. By the time heads of state signed on to reforms, the document contained not a single word on nuclear nonproliferation, and had even lost its pledge to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists.

John Bolton has two weeks of paid employment in his UN job left this year and then a full work year of 365 days in 2006, plus a few extra days until the next Congress convenes in January 2007.

His term will then end, by law -- if not earlier by his resignation or via a "nudging out the door" by the Secretary of State who promised Senator George Voinovich she would "manage him."

John Bolton is not perceived at home or abroad to be the legitimate Ambassador of this country to the United Nations without confirmation from the United States Senate. The President may want Bolton to hold his position without the legitimating seal of approval of the Senate, but the damage he is now doing needs to be contained.

It's time to limit Bolton's freedom of movement and encourage Bob Zoellick to do what Richard Armitage and Lawrence Wilkerson did for the Secretary of State for whom they worked -- shut Bolton down.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm literally rushing to the gate, but check back in a few hours for a sneak peak at a major new article assessing John Bolton's tenure thus far as the unconfirmed, recess-appointed U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. It's not yet on the American Prospect website, but I've got it.

More later. . .need to catch the plane before doors close.

-- Steve Clemons

I had one of those special, memorable-for-all-time mornings today, jumping from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to Jericho to Ramallah. The afternoon had me back in Jerusalem, and now I'm sorting out what happened today in Tel Aviv.

I don't have time to post much at this moment about all that was learned, but the morning started in spectacular form with a fascinating session in Amir Peretz's personal office, which is the smallest office I have ever seen for a trigger of a political earthquake. He's an interesting man and gave his support staff the larger part of the office, which most Knesset members reserve for themselves. He has a bold modesty that is seductive and matter-of-factly stated that he took the tiny office because his staff are there more often and need the space to get stuff done.

I've been in a lot of Congressional, National Assembly, Bundestag, Parliament, People's Assembly, and National Diet offices before and never heard that line before. A first of many firsts today.

He asked me if I might be interested in joining the lower part of the Labor Party list for the elections next March (not really; actually by the end of the meeting, I was trying to get him to ask me). . .but all this aside, this guy is very compelling.

Ariel Sharon is getting lots of headlines with his new Kadima party, but without much analysis of what's going on here -- my gut tells me that Sharon's moves are too frenetic, and the news he is generating is peaking far too early.

Peretz shared a lot of his views with my colleagues and me, on an off the record basis, and I'm impressed. . .really, simply impressed.

More later on him, as well as TWN's take on the state of Israeli politics and public policy.

Let me say that as fascinating as I found Israeli politics during this trip, I'm mesmerized by what is going on on the Palestinian side.

I need more time to assemble some reactions -- and to those who are emailing me on the "Bush Bombing Memo," yes -- the wheels are still turning.

-- Steve Clemons

Matthew Waxman has fought at the Pentagon for the last two years -- unsuccessfully but heroically -- to get the Department to stop condoning any form of prisoner handling that approximated "torture or inhumane treatment."

Waxman has been arguing for the spirit and law of the Geneva Conventions. He has fought for the same language for which Senator John McCain has been valiantly fighting. He has been trying to make "real" the kind of hard-to-believe assurances and promises by Condoleezza Rice this last week in Europe that America does not torture its detainees or condone it elsewhere.

But now, according to the New York Times, this champion of conscience hired to undo the damage done by Abu Ghraib is being transferred out of the Pentagon and over to the State Department -- which despite John Bolton -- is assembling an impressive team.

The problem is that Rumsfeld is at Defense, and the Pentagon has about 15 times the budget of the State Department.

From the Times:

The Pentagon's chief adviser on detainee issues is leaving to take a high-level policy job at the State Department, administration officials said on Saturday.

The adviser, Matthew C. Waxman, will become the principal deputy director of the department's policy planning staff, said administration officials who were granted anonymity because Mr. Waxman's new job had not been officially announced.

Since filling a position created nearly two years ago to help correct the damage caused by the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, Mr. Waxman has repeatedly clashed with top aides to Vice President Dick Cheney and senior Pentagon officials. These have included Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence policy, and William J. Haynes II, the department's general counsel, who have pushed to limit the rights of terror suspects and other detainees.

Several weeks ago, David S. Addington, who was then Mr. Cheney's counsel, assailed Mr. Waxman during a briefing, objecting to his insistence that a new set of Pentagon standards for handling terror suspects adopt language from the Geneva Conventions barring cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment.

I'm hoping that Matthew Waxman finds the courage to find a way to share what he knows about the detainee abuse issue and how some of the practices that have made their way into our system were promulgated and condoned by senior officials. This information would dovetail nicely with material already shared by former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson.

But in the mean time, let me send BARBARA BUSH a friendly note.

Mrs. Bush, please take note of who is naughty and nice.

Matthew Waxman has been nice -- and has helped your son's administration even though it has given him virtually no support in doing so.

In contrast, David Addington, Stephen Cambone, and William Haynes really deserve our whole-hearted derision for the nefarious practices that they have promoted in their respective roles.

Mrs. Bush, if you are working to oust a few people at the White House in January and February, please add these three to the list -- and when visiting your son and daughter-in-law, make sure you have Matthew Waxman over to the White House for a drink, and make sure Addington sees you.

-- Steve Clemons

I've had about a dozen appointments today, all over Tel Aviv. I think I've learned a lot about this place but also know that I haven't yet really scratched the surface of the Israel-Palestine dance around an eventual, permanent two-state agreement.

Tomorrow is Palestinian Day, and I'll be in Ramallah.

But one can just sit around here, in meetings, and feel that earthquakes are going on all around. While I sat in former Israel Justice Minister Yossi Beilin's office this morning, news came in over my guide's cell phone alert system that Defense Minister Shaul Mafaz -- a tough, right-wing member of the Likud Party and a candidate for head of the Likud -- had quit that party and joined recently defeated Labor Party head Shimon Peres, Chaim Ramon, and a variety of other Labor Party and Likud Party members following Ariel Sharon into a new, seemingly-centrist party called Kadima.

There is a lot of tension about this new party Kadima. Some here are comparing Ariel Sharon to Argentina's late Juan Peron. One observer said that everyone -- on the right and the left -- is lining up to be a Peronist, well a "Sharonist" in this case.

At another meeting today, this one at the Ministry of Defense, we learned that the U.S. Ambassador to Israel had been there for a couple of hours that very day pressuring the Israelis to move faster regarding various parts of the 'framework agreement' that Condoleezza Rice had secured during her recent visit. The Ambassador supposedly stated that he is reporting back to the Secretary on a daily basis and that he feels under great pressure to get all aspects of this recent accord implemented by agreed timelines.

The officials we were meeting with, however, made the point that there is virtually no one at the "working level" of Palestinian's civil government to work with. There is "no address" of a person to work with -- and this refers to some of the logistical issues involved with removing check points, or setting up a convoy system from Gaza to the West Bank, and many other issues -- including the shipping of Palestinian strawberries to Europe via new cargo docks the Israelis built -- because there is literally no one consistently working at the lower-level of civil management on the Palestinian side.

There is a lot I don't yet understand. But I have learned that the Palestinian-Israeli quagmire is much more complex than I imagined.

But I also feel -- both from the empirical evidence that I observed -- that the U.S. Ambassador meeting with working level Israelis is a sign of roll-up-the-sleeve seriousness about moving parts of the Palestinian agenda on self-determination forward.

I am not sure what Ariel Sharon is up to with his right-left, newfangled party, but it is clear that the 'status quo' which Likud was trying to preserve is no longer an option.

Fascinating day, and tomorrow in Ramallah should be even better.

-- Steve Clemons

After a three hour lunch with Abdul Barri Atwan, an iconoclastic and important journalist who heads the Arab newspaper, Al Quds, I went to Heathrow Airport which was a mob scene because dozens of flights cancelled due to fog problems.

I made it to Frankfurt that night, arriving many hours late -- and had to stay there til the next morning to catch a flight to Tel Aviv, where I am now.

Today, I'm meeting a long list of people in Israeli political and journalistic circles and will be back to the blog soon.

On the "Bush Bombing Memo" front, there is something there.

The Brits plan to resume prosecution on January 10th of the two civil servants that let the news out about the 5-page brief under the UK's Official Secrets Act. TWN has been in touch with former British Minister of Defense Peter Kilfoyle as well as others who have made important public comments about the memo.

I'll put what I've learned into a post tonight or tomorrow.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

I just got off the phone with a prominent Arabic journalist producing a program on the politics and practice of rendition.

This journalist, Yosri Fouda, has interviewed at length Khaled El-Masri, the innocent victim of American kidnapping and rendition gone very wrong.

I have not read extensively about El-Masri's case, so this may be public record, but what I did not know when I wrote last night's post were the details of how he was "dumped" after American authorities learned he was innocent.

Get this now. El-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, was kidnapped while vacationing by American intelligence agents. He was transported and "questioned" -- allegedly roughly -- by American authorities in Afghanistan. Along the way, these investigators finally figured out he was innocent and reported back to CIA Director George Tenet. Tenet had him held ANYWAY for another two months.

And then. . .you might ask, could it get worse? Well, yes.

We dumped him blind-folded in the deep forest, mountainous triangle area between Albania, Serbia and Macedonia. He had to walk out with no money, no identification.

He got to a border guard station -- and because of his inability to identify himself and because of how "outlandish" his story sounded to the border guards he met, he feared that the entire process would begin.

We dumped him blindfolded in a forest in one of the roughest regions nearby. Were U.S. authorities hoping he'd just be shot by someone else? What were they thinking?

Let's make sure that one of the journalists TRAVELING with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice asks about this detail of the story that had escaped me and others before. What is this about DUMPING a known-innocent guy in the Serbia-Kosovo-Macedonia triangle?

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

UPDATE: My friend, journalist Eli Lake, has suggested in the comments section that someone (including TWN) pose the question of how the El-Masri case occurred to the CIA, which handled this case. He has a good point, and we will follow up on it. But others in the press corps ought to also follow up with the CIA. SCC

Condoleeza Rice is having a tough time in Europe selling the line that the Bush administration doesn't believe in torturing detainees -- and would not "render" terror suspects to other countries for legal processing unless we were sure that they would not be tortured there either.

Yes, she's been saying that -- without coughing or choking -- but much of Europe can't quite gulp down what she's offering.

From the New York Times:

Responding to pressure at home and abroad to set clearer standards for the interrogation of terrorist suspects, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that the policy of the United States was not to allow its personnel, whether on American or foreign soil, to engage in cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners.

But her statement did little to clear up widespread confusion about where the administration draws the line or to dispel hints of an internal debate among President Bush's inner circle on that topic. It was interpreted variously as a subtle but important shift in policy, a restatement of the administration's long-held position or an artful dodge intended to retain flexibility in dealing with detainees while soothing public opinion in the United States and Europe.

Ms. Rice, traveling in Europe this week, has faced constant questions about the treatment of detainees, partly prompted by reports that the United States maintained secret detention facilities in European countries. On Tuesday, the issue surfaced in talks with the new German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

And in Washington, the administration is facing a strong push by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, for legislation to bar inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees.

Speaking Wednesday in Kiev, Ukraine, Ms. Rice suggested that the prohibitions contained in an international convention against the use of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment were applied by the United States to American personnel working anywhere in the world.

Rice 'finally' confided to German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the United States made a mistake in rendering an innocent man, a German citizen, Khaled El-Masri, to an Afghanistan prison for 'questioning.'

El-Masri is now seeking damages of at least $75,000 in what is being called by some a landmark lawsuit against the U.S. government and the private transportation firms involved in his rendition.

But why a low bar of $75,000.00?

First, Khaled El-Masri was kidnapped by agents acting on behalf of the U.S. government while he was vacationing in Macedonia. Second, He is a German citizen of Lebanese descent, and we sent him neither to German authorities or to Lebanese authorities; we sent him to Afghanistan. Third, he languished in prison for two months AFTER George Tenet was informed that he was innocent. Fourth, the U.S. kept him on a security watch list after confirming his innocence and rejected his entry into the United States through Atlanta -- only recently reversed by the Secretary of State herself days ago.

Sidney Blumenthal has a great piece on this very subject that was posted moments ago on Salon, titled similary "Condi's Torture Tour." I recommend reading the whole piece.

Whether one supports or opposes any form of rendition practices, when America gets something as systematically wrong as this, the government should have a "restitution program." George Bush & Co. should be quickly offering this man at least a million dollars for the humiliation and scars from this episode -- but the Bush administration repeatedly shows that it needs to be beaten up by peer pressure and public opinion to do the "right thing."

When the British shoot an innocent man in the head on their subway system -- as they did -- and lie about the circumstances of his behavior and their surveillance, their should be publicly transparent restitution to that man's family. When American authorities mistakenly shoot anyone in the name of broad national security objectives -- and there was a misapplication of power and force, no matter what the circumstances -- there should be restitution and an effort made to understand why that error occurred.

Frankly, when innocent Iraqis are killed by the tens of thousands in America's so-called effort to liberate them, the only way to encourage military authorities to modify their tactics and stop killing innocents is to somehow acknowledge their deaths, to know their faces, and to offer restitution to those wrongly, mistakenly killed and injured.

And this man is seeking just $75,000.00? It should be $75 million.

-- Steve Clemons

UPDATE: A loyal TWN reader, ACP, shared the following: "$75k is the minimum jurisdictional amount for a case brought in diversity in federal court so in the complaint you have to allege 'at least $75,000.00' in damages."

This is a useful technical complement to the above post, but that said, a prominent journalist friend of mine from Egypt stated that winning just "one single dollar" in such a lawsuit would be historic and have significantly positive implications.

-- Steve Clemons

My schedule in London has been packed today. I haven't had the time to post I had hoped. Tomorrow may be better.

That said, I am surprised about something. Although I did have a number of posts below on the subject of George Bush's alleged comments about bombing Al-Jazeera, I thought that there must have been some missing context -- like humor wrongly applied -- or some other explanation.

As I have dug into the details of this memo, the legal action the UK is taking against a couple of bureaucrats who leaked its supposed contents, and other details regarding Prime Minister Blair's reaction, I am now gaining confidence that this memo recounts something quite serious.

There has been far less coverage of the Bush bombing memo in the U.S. than in Britain. After all, the White House doesn't control the memo that recounts the meeting between Blair, Bush, Colin Powell and others. The Brits have that memo -- and most of the action will be here in London.

However, I hope to share tomorrow more of what I have learned. I also have some thoughts on how the battle for access to this memo should be waged.

More tomorrow, and many thanks to those loyal TWN readers and other bloggers I had the pleasure to meet with today near Whitehall.

-- Steve Clemons

Just a short note on this interesting article a loyal TWN reader sent me. It focuses on Castro, Guantanamo Bay, and America's "prisoners in paradise."

One thing that must be said. Fidel Castro has been uncharacteristically quiet about our use of the facilities at Guantanamo to detain "enemy combatants."

Why?

In my view, Castro realizes that America can't exactly criticize him about jailing political prisoners anymore -- as we are doing much the same thing on Cuban soil. I do get the fact that there is a difference between prisoners of conscience in Cuba -- whose civil liberties have been terribly violated by Castro. But detainees held indefinitely without being charged of crimes and not availed of a fair legal process make it practically impossible to morally distinguish between these cases.

America has forfeited the moral highground -- and Castro is enjoying it.

More tomorrow.

-- Steve Clemons

Ed. note: Thanks to VS for sending the article.

This is just a quick alert. Live from the Savoy. . .

I'm about to spend some time on Ian Masters' Background Briefing. You can listen here.

The show begins in three minutes, but you can download a podcast from Ian Masters site later if you missed this.

I've been alerted that he's interested in the Barbara Bush story.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm off to London. I really want to check in with some friends who know some stuff about this so-called "Bush Bombing Memo".

But I'm meeting a variety of people this next week. I have a flurry of posts I'll be preparing on the plane -- so be sure to check in Sunday morning.

Until then, enjoy an open thread. . .

-- Steve Clemons

We don't have an accurate count of Iraq's casualties because Marla Ruzicka -- who was trying to get some transparency about the impact of this war on Iraqi people and families -- was herself killed near Baghdad. We do know that Iraq's casualties are in the many tens of thousands.

However, we do have a very accurate count of the number of U.S. military killed in this war. Here is a breakdown by state:

Alabama 34

Alaska 5

American Samoa 5

Arizona 51

Arkansas 29

California 221

Colorado 30

Connecticut 18

Delaware 8

District of Columbia 3

England (U.S. Citizen) 1

Micronesia 2

Florida 93

Georgia 62

Guam 1

Guatemala (U.S. Citizen) 1

Hawaii 6

Idaho 14

Illinois 84

Indiana 43

Iowa 25

Kansas 21

Kentucky 32

Louisiana 48

Maine 9

Maryland 32

Massachusetts 33

Michigan 67

Minnesota 27

Mississippi 34

Missouri 30

Montana 10

Nebraska 20

Nevada 13

New Hampshire 7

New Jersey 42

New Mexico 14

New York 100

North Carolina 44

North Dakota 10

Northern Mariana Islands 3

Ohio 102

Oklahoma 36

Oregon 34

Pennsylvania 106

Puerto Rico 18

Rhode Island 8

South Carolina 32

South Dakota 11

Tennessee 46

Texas 190

Utah 9

Vermont 14

Virgin Islands 3

Virginia 60

Washington 40

West Virginia 14

Wisconsin 49

Wyoming 6

Then, when you have a bit of time and can think about what this "war of choice" -- as Richard Haass has appropriately called it -- has cost America in terms of the lost contributions of these people, stroll through the names and neighborhoods of this list here.

-- Steve Clemons

Barbara Bush is allegedly TICKED off at Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Andy Card, nearly all of them -- except Karen Hughes -- for how her boy is faring in the hearts and minds of Americans.

The matriarch of the Bush clan is colder than North Pole ice right now to those around her son who she thinks have undermined him. I'll tell who my sources are if Patrick Fitzgerald gives a call and makes me -- but the sources are very close to Poppa Bush (41), who has been traveling a bit with some of his old entourage, including Brent Scowcroft and others of the first Bush regime.

While TWN has been able to confirm that Laura Bush's mother-in-law wants to do more than put coal in the stockings of the Vice President and the other top handlers of her son's White House, we have not been able to confirm a slightly stronger bit of the rumor, which is that Barbara -- not Laura -- was planning to call on Nancy Reagan just to get a refresher lesson on how she took on and kicked out then Chief-of-Staff Donald Regan. (I embellish here; Barbara Bush is not going to take lessons from Nancy, it just sounded good. My source told me that Barbara was about to "pull a Nancy Reagan" on these attendants.)

Cheney may be tougher to dump than Don Regan, but then again, Barbara Bush is one of those wonders of nature (we hear) who knows no limits and can easily surge beyond category 5 hurricane winds.

Should be interesting to watch the role of the First Mother in the coming couple of months. Watch for a lot to change right after the State of the Union address, I've been told.

And if you are near the radio or internet termninal, I'll be chatting with Sam Seder of Air America's Majority Report tonight at 7:50 p.m. ET for a quick ten minutes.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

We must not leave. So says Joe Lieberman in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. It reads as if he is positioning himself to run for VP again with John McCain at the head of the ticket.

Get Out of Iraq If We Want Stability in the Middle East. So says General William Odom, former Director of the National Security Agency and Commandant at West Point. He makes a compelling case for departure -- and he's as tough-minded and tough-edged as they come.

The Case FOR Cutting and Running. So argues my colleague and friend Nir Rosen in the latest Atlantic Monthly. Nir's arguments are blunt, reasoned, and the most compelling two pages on why getting out is the most sensible way forward.

-- Steve Clemons

The smartest guy I know in the nation-building business sent me the note that follows. It addresses my earlier post about the $1.3 billion Agency for International Development request for proposals from "qualified sources to design and implement a social and economic stabilization program impacting ten Strategic Cities, identified by the United States Government as critical to the defeat of the Insurgency in Iraq."

He writes:

The Iraq Strategy, the Strategic Stabilization plan for 10 cities and the DoD Stabilization Ops Directive signed this week are all part of a package.

I've attached a fresh copy of the Stabilization Ops directive for you. Reading it takes me back to my four years in the Indochina War where our strategy was similarly embedded within heroic assumptions about the nature of the conflict and the limitations of our enemy.

The Strategic Stabilization of the 10 Iraqi cities where the insurgency in strongest assumes an environment sufficiently permissive for extensive civilian expat operations in the urban core.

Yet the reasons for choosing these 10 cities is that the strength of the insurgency has made the environment relatively impermissive.

As in Fallujah, we may find ourselves saying that we "have to destroy the city in order to save it"!

I remember the days when the typical US Provincial Rep in Vietnam was an idealistic 22 year old with a freshly-minted BA in poli sci from XXXXX College (redacted by TWN) who had never been farther than Chicago before he hit Phuoc Long Province in III Corps.

Six weeks into the job and our young Prov Rep would be carrying his Swedish K with panache, squiring his new jungle-bunny girlfriend around the town, and being regularly deceived and defrauded by cynical and manipulative Vietnamese provincial officials who were feathering their nests prior to a stealthy departure for California with their mistresses.

I suspect that we may have some tough times ahead, Steve.

This seasoned foreign service officer makes a key point that must be repeated:

The Strategic Stabilization of the 10 Iraqi cities where the insurgency in strongest assumes an environment sufficiently permissive for extensive civilian expat operations in the urban core.

Yet the reasons for choosing these 10 cities is that the strength of the insurgency has made the environment relatively impermissive.

The entire package of requests and commitments contained in Department of Defense Directive, Number 3000.05, signed by Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England and titled: "Military Support for Stability, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) Operations" is available here.

Although the $1.02 billion for strategic city stabilization, in addition to another $300 million for performance, bringing the total to $1.3 billion is just a small line item in this overall directive, a little quick 'back of the envelope' math is interesting.

We can probably assume that Kurdistan cities are probably not part of the strategic stabilization objectives of the Department of Defense, so the population in that region can be dropped from calculations.

I have been scouting around to assess the size of Iraq's largest non-Kurdish cities and have been unsuccessful, but I did see that Fallujah had a population of 300,000. So, for argument's sake, let's propose that 8 million people populate these ten largest cities.

Taking just the $1.3 billion from this stabilization line-item and dividing by 8 million people comes out to $162 a person. Most households in Iraq have 7-8 people, meaning that a household of 8 would receive $1,296. While the CIA lists that purchasing power parity per capita income in Iraq is $2,100, that figure is vastly inflated. The reality is that in pre-invasion Iraq, doctors -- who are on the upper end of the economic food chain -- were fortunate to bring up $100/month. Most of Iraqi society subsists on far less.

Being able to distribute "incentives" to Iraqi citizens via loans and grants, or subsidies for certain kinds of social capital-building endeavors could have profound impact. Some will call such distribution bribes. Others have suggested -- like Charles Wolf in the Wall Street Journal the other day -- that "shares" of Iraq Oil, Inc. be distributed to Iraq's citizens.

To escape accusations of creating new "welfare dependency", perhaps another route would be to hire Iraqi firms and personnel to carry out this stabilization initiative.

My basic point is that $1.3 billion, which turns out to be a small slice of what America is committing to Iraq, is a huge sum that could be directed towards Iraqi citizens to incentivize support and to keep American or other non-Iraqi civilians from increasing the footprint of the American flag inside Iraqi borders.

While I opposed the invasion of Iraq, once we crossed the line and became occupiers, it became hugely important to get the occupation "right". The only way occupations go well, in my view, is if the occupier creates a class of political and economic "winners" that become the backbone of the society that emerges and which are thankful for the role the U.S. played -- but also happy about the occupier's departure and the resumption of genuine sovereignty.

We did nothing like this -- and we continue to ignore the reality that the chief beneficiaries of our involvement were characters like former Prime Minister Allawi and current Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi and their minions. Those are the financial beneficiaries, but the real winners have been Shia theocrats who have moved quickly to consolidate power in the void left by the invasion and dismantled Coalition Provisional Authority.

I don't think America can meet its objectives in Iraq any longer -- and our "brand", as a nation, has been tragically tarnished by our missteps and fumbling in Iraq.

That said, if we are still able to generate contracts on the order of $1.3 billion, perhaps we can begin improving the fiscal circumstances of a broad cross-section of Iraqis -- broadly distributed -- and not centralized in the clutches of thugs and city bosses.

I recognize that to many in the nation-building business, my thoughts may seem naive, but mutual interest and cohesiveness among people can be influenced by force or by greed.

Rather than satisfying the greed of our contractors and sending them into unstable and unsafe areas of Iraq -- where there mere presence helps inspire anti-occupation insurgency, let's consider strategies that appeal to a broader cross section of Iraqi citizens and "reward" them for owning up to the task of stabilizing their own cities.

-- Steve Clemons

The U.S. government is offering $1 billion over two years to help "strategically stabilize" 10 cities in Iraq.

A TWN reader involved with several important institution-building efforts in Iraq sent this to me last night.

IRAQ: Strategic City Stabilization Initiative (SCSI)

Description

The United States Agency for International Development is seeking applications for an Assistance Agreement from qualified sources to design and implement a social and economic stabilization program impacting ten Strategic Cities, identified by the United States Government as critical to the defeat of the Insurgency in Iraq. The number of Strategic Cities may expand or contract over time.

USAID plans to provide approximately $1,020,000,000 over two years to meet the objectives of the Program. An additional option year may be considered amounting to $300 million at the discretion of USAID.

Funds are not yet available for this program.

please contact:
Yvette Feurtado, Iraq Contracting Officer, Phone 962-6-590-6477, Fax 962-6-590-6333

Maybe some of the Iraqi Security Battalions President Bush thinks are performing better than many NATO Member battalions ought to apply for the job and the cash.

-- Steve Clemons

Ed. Note: Thanks to JSB for the tip.

The Guardian Newspaper has run an oped style query titled "Why Do You Want to Bomb Me, Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair?" by Al-Jazeera Managing Director Wadah Kanfar today, and it's very interesting, particularly because it reminds us that Al-Jazeera was thought of very differently before 9/11.

One point of headline confusion though. It is my understanding that the memo the British don't want to release and about which a prosecution may be underway under the Official Secrets Act states that President Bush wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera. Tony Blair, in contrast, was trying to dissuade our Commander-in-Chief from doing so. Just want to make sure that Tony Blair gets credit for decency here.

Furthermore, TWN has confirmed this morning that there were several other government officials and civil servants in the meeting between Bush and Blair and that Secretary of State Colin Powell was one of them. Powell would have known that few things would be worse for America's image than bombing Al-Jazeera's Doha headquarters, so let's hope that he helped broker restraint. So far, Powell has continued his silence on these closely-held policy discussions.

I also had no idea that Al-Jazeera was the "fifth most influential brand name in the world," following Starbucks, Ikea, Apple, and Google.

Here is a longish excerpt of Kanfar's article, but do read the whole thing:

I have lost count of the number of accusations levelled against al-Jazeera and the incidents of harassment to which it has been subjected since it was founded in 1996. It was rumoured to have been set up by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency with the purpose of improving Israel's standing in the Arab world. It has also been accused of being a CIA mouthpiece designed to disseminate western culture among the Arabs.

Some have suggested that it is part of an international conspiracy to break up the Arab world by means of stirring up discord and creating problems for the Arab regimes. Others decided it was a front for Osama bin Laden and the Taliban; or funded by Saddam Hussein. And, at the same time, it has been condemned by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and bitterly criticised by Donald Rumsfeld.

We know that the intelligence services of some Arab regimes have resorted to spreading rumours about al-Jazeera in an effort to deter Arab viewers from watching it. These are the same regimes that recalled ambassadors from Qatar in protest at its hosting al-Jazeera, and the same regimes that closed the station's offices in their countries and detained its correspondents.

Until 2001, al-Jazeera was perceived in a positive way in the west as a whole and the US in particular. It was seen as the single most important force for reform and democracy across the Arab region. Harassment by Arab regimes was considered proof of its professionalism and testimony to its objectivity.

Indeed, al-Jazeera had from its foundation the slogan of "the opinion and the other opinion" and refused to favour one side over another at the expense of truth. As a result, in record time al-Jazeera became the Arabs' number one channel, and last year it was voted the fifth most influential brand name in the world, after Starbucks, Ikea, Apple and Google.

In the aftermath of the September 11 events, al-Jazeera found itself on the frontline of media coverage in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The greater its reputation became globally, the more frustrated some western governments became.

The "other opinion" this time did not seem to suit international decision-makers. Criticisms started pouring in and created an opportunity for some Arab regimes to incite the US administration against al-Jazeera; some have even gone as far as demanding the closure of al-Jazeera as a precondition for full cooperation with the US.

Iraq has been a crucial turning point not only in al-Jazeera's work but for media coverage as a whole; 74 journalists, crew and their translators have lost their lives since the start of the war - two of them belonging to al-Jazeera. As far as harassment goes, al-Jazeera has incurred the biggest share.

It has been accused by the US of inciting violence through the broadcast of al-Qaida tapes and of playing footage of beheadings. Our viewers know that no beheadings whatsoever were shown on our screens. And we follow strict professional rules in handling the tapes of Bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders; we only play short, carefully selected and clearly newsworthy clips, and they are followed by analytical discussion, frequently including American commentators.

Al-Jazeera's offices in Kabul and Baghdad were bombed; we were told at the time that both bombings were mistakes. We pushed for an official investigation, but thus far have received neither the findings of any investigation nor any official apology.

Wadah Kanfar is planning a trip to Washington soon, and if I am here, I plan to meet him to dig more deeply into what Al-Jazeera knows about the memo itself.

I'll give fair warning to the blogging-addicted political commentators in London and Tel Aviv that I will be on their turf soon. I'll be in London from December 4 til the 9th, and then Tel Aviv from December 10th til the 14th.

Also in The Guardian this morning was a piece on Bush's Iraq victory strategy by D.C. Bureau Chief Julian Borger, who was good to include a short missive by TWN's publisher:

Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Programme at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank, said Mr Bush's war aims failed to address the strains on US armed forces imposed by Iraq.

"It's a very expansive commitment and it blows by the structural questions," Mr Clemons said. He added that those problems could only be resolved by a withdrawal, changing the current rules limiting the frequency of combat tours for individual units, or by moving towards a draft. He said Mr Bush was trying to escape those problems by portraying Iraqi forces as more ready than they actually are.

In other words, George Bush engaged in some very duplicitous "grade inflation" yesterday in his rosy performance assessment of Iraqi security battalions, kind of like giving an illiterate high school graduate a passing grade.

-- Steve Clemons