ENCOURAGING NEWS

Less than a week out from President Bush's first speech on the Iraqi transition, and the new government in Iraq is almost in place:

American, Iraqi and United Nations officials deadlocked Saturday over the selection of an Iraqi president, even as they appeared to strike a deal over the most important cabinet ministers for the new government that is to take over on July 1.

Lakhdar Brahimi and Paul Bremer are backing Adnan Pachachi for the job as president, while the Governing Council is lining behind Sheik Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar, the current council president. What I know of Pachachi I like, and I would like to see him in office there. But al-Yawar sounds pro-American to me. If someone has to lose these negotiations, it should be Brahimi and Bremer, right? All else being equal, it's better the new president be chosen by Iraqis, not the U.S. and U.N.

RIGHT-WING LIBERALS AND LEFTIST CONSERVATIVES

Allow me to make an observation that isn't really new, but one for which I'm finding new evidence: the right are the new liberals, and the left are the new conservatives.

I remember in college that a point came where I realized my political beliefs put me in the "conservative" camp, but having been raised to think that "conservative" was a bad word, I didn't want it applying to yours truly. And I found some good evidence to support the notion that I was a true liberal. For one, on a university campus, we conservatives were the ones fighting against an entrenched status quo in the classrooms, in the student government, and in the administration. Meanwhile on the national stage it was conservatives who were pushing new policies such as privatizing Social Security, ideas that threatened the status quo of liberals whose decades-old programs were failing or are projected to fail (i.e. Social Security's insolvency date is constantly being revised forward).

Later I realized that arguing against terminology was not a battle I would win in the short term. So I consented to call myself a conservative, some three years or so after I decided I was indeed a righty. But the term is not without some merit: for evidence of my conservatism according the traditional American definition, I would point to my preference for incrementalism -- when society decides to move in a new direction, I want it to have been long-discussed such that a consensus or something close to it will legitimate that change. (As to those who would say George Bush's tax-cutting or ambitious foreign policy goes against this, I would answer that it's been 23 years since Reagan was elected president and four decades since Barry Goldwater published "The Conscience of a Conservative.")

In nearly all things but a handful of social issues like gay marriage, it is conservatives who are now closer to classical liberalism than the liberals who took that as "their" word.

So that's the old. Here's the new, or at least more recent:

Since Bush started moving the nation toward a war with Iraq conservatives have been idealistic and optimistic with regard to the future of Iraq, whereas liberals have been cautious and cynical. This was true in mid-2003 when the war looked more and more likely, and it is true today as we are preparing to give Iraq (not back but for the first time in decades) to the Iraqis.

Some of the current state of affairs is surely attributable to sticking to old positions for the sake of consistency. Most conservatives are, as even Don Rumsfeld himself allowed, at least a little surprised how bloody it has been since the regime was toppled. And liberals are seeing (if not saying) that there does seem to be a moderate Iraqi majority who want to see a unified Iraq succeed.

But it doesn't change the fact that the left and right are behaving differently than one might expect. Even in a polarized political climate, one sees avowed liberals such as Christopher Hitchens morph into Bush-supporting hawks while longtime conservatives like Brent Scowcroft have gone on the record as deeply skeptical. Does this make Hitch a conservative or Brent a liberal? I don't think so.

In this unspoken switcheroo there is, I think, some shedding of old prejudices. The idea that one can invade an Arab Muslim country and install an open society is many things, but it is not conservative. Meanwhile, opposition to a war that in the long run could save millions is many things as well, but certainly not liberal. (Don't get me wrong: opposition to dealing with Nicaragua was not liberal in the mid-80s either, but support for engagement in the Balkans in the mid-90s was.) Is that a mistake for either side? Potentially it is a mistake for both. Obviously it is too soon to tell what will happen in the Middle East over the next few years, much less the next few generations. One side made a serious mistake, and I have placed my feet firmly in the pro-liberation camp, but from time to time even I have my doubts. Conservatives got into this with an inordinate amount of hope. But likewise the so-called liberals went in with too much doubt.

• • •
What, exactly, am I arguing for? For a long time I thought I would like to propose reversal of the common terminology. The right should be called "liberal," and the left should be called "conservative." But that doesn't hold, either: let's say in 20 years, after the aims of the modern right are achieved (knock on wood), the left will try to repeal them or propose new changes to the laws and policies of this country. It is entirely possible, perhaps even inevitable, that such a thing will happen. And at that point, would the right not once again be the conservatives, and the left liberal?

A favorite example of this discrepancy is how the ayatollahs of Iran are frequently described as "conservative," as are the old line Communists in Russia. Neither share much in common with conservatives as they are known in the Anglosphere (U.S., Britain, Canada and Australia) but conservatives, in the apolitical sense, they surely are.

A few weeks ago I noted how John Kerry told an audience of presumed liberals, to great applause, that Bush is not a true conservative. As I've explained above, in some ways that is very true. Likewise, you will find conservatives frequently describe the type of government they want for Iraq as "liberal." But what accounts for that? In both instances the user of the term is harkening back to that apolitical definition.

Perhaps I am really arguing for the abolishment of the terms "liberal" and "conservative." Obviously, the terms are entirely relative and therefore inadequate to describe a constant political philosophy. In conversation I try to stick with "right" and "left" -- more or less neutral words that do not by themselves connote any particular philosophy. They are empty vessels ready to be filled with meaning. And so they have been. But at the same time they are confused with mostly useless terms.

Still, the primary objective of this post is to point out an ongoing discrepancy in the stated prejudices of both camps, which I cannot easily explain. The length of this post should make that clear. And I'm not the first to speculate about this, and this phenomenon is not restricted solely to the war on terrorism, or tax cuts.

It's a brave new world, folks. The liberals are the new conservatives, and the conservatives are the new liberals. And whether they realize it yet it or not, it means major cognitive dissonance for both.

MILITARILY CORRECT

A first I laughted at this. But the more I think about it, I'm not sure that's the proper response. As Michael Barone would say, some are trying to turn "hard America" into "soft America" (with some success, apparently). And I am sure that is not a good idea.

P.S. Where is that Michael Moore post I promised? Yeah, yeah, I'm busy. Shouldn't have brought it up. Maybe this weekend.

ALMOST FAMOUS

Joe Scarborough, the former congressman and sometime rock musician, did a segment on a certain semi-literary self-professed DC slut (who shall remain nameless and unlinked-to here in this space) and then after a commercial break explained the concept of a blog. Now, I understand this kind of explainer is standard in mainstream news coverage of blogs, but I wonder for how long. For those of us long in the know, it's a bit tedious. But not tonight:

You know, our sex scandal blogger story may have left some of you asking, what‘s a blogger? Well, mom and pop, a blogger is one who blogs.  Speaking “Electric Company” style, our guests for that segment keep a political diary online.  It‘s called a weblog.  Take the words web and log and it becomes Weblog.  But since kids don‘t have a sufficient attention span to piece two syllables together, the terms has been mercifully cut down to blog.

More artful than the usual AP/Reuters pap, to be sure. Then this:

SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY's favorite blogs include Wonkette.com and Gawker, of course, InstaPundit, Dawn Patrol, Andrew Sullivan, and the Armed Prophet.

Hey, that's me! Gracias, OBR.

And the keepers of these blogs mix news stories with political viewpoints and personal stories, which really make blogs most interesting. And most blogs are updated daily using software that allows nimrods with little or no technical background, i.e., me, to update their blogs on a daily basis.

That's me too, actually. But wait -- does this mean Joe Scarborough has his own blog? His website reveals none. Maybe it's anonymous? Maybe he's Rance.

GORED

Everybody's piling on Al Gore right now. Republicans are laughing themselves silly, Democrats are rolling their eyes or getting defensive -- ex-Gore aide Ron Klain, on CNBC: "I think what you heard today was a very strong point of view from someone who is representing a lot of Americans who want a change in direction in our leadership" -- and NBC's other cable news venture was playing the Dean yelp over video of Gore's red-faced rant. Between this and the highly negative reviews his new favorite movie is getting even from would-be sympathizers, he's had a bad week. Actually, it's been a bad couple of years; the pre-Florida Gore is a distant memory.

How badly has his judgment suffered? One of President Bush's campaign operatives from 2000 makes a worthwhile observation today at NRO:

As our troops are in harm's way overseas, Gore's contribution to war-on-terror strategy is the idea that we should upend our entire national-security apparatus and go through a half-dozen or so contentious confirmation hearings this summer. Weeks ago, Gore's 2000 running mate, Joe Lieberman, observed, "We're in the middle of a war -- you wouldn't want to have the secretary of defense change unless there's really good reason for it and I don't see any good reason at this time."

That is an excellent point. Lieberman is absolutely right. We're coming up on an election anyway, and if the public (is foolish enough that it) sees fit to replace the commander-in-chief, then the current national security team will be out of a job anyway. Why would Gore want them to resign? If they're as bad as he says, people should be clamoring for them to be fired. Except they're not -- which is why Gore looks ready to cause some gore these days.

P.S. Comstock was on Capital Report last night as well, where she said: "I think Al Gore is really proving himself to be the most irrelevant, comically absurd former vice president since Spiro Agnew." And that's a Republican she's talking about.

UPDATE It may be late to post this -- I'm adding this on Friday afternoon -- but I happen to really like James Taranto's take on this (first item). Yes it's dripping with irony, but I think it's a fuller explanation than my own.

YO, COME ON MOVE THIS

For the life of me I cannot figure out why MoveOn.org is running anti-Bush ads in the Washington Metro (including the one at left). All right, I guess I can -- though of course DC is tiny and overwhelmingly Democrat, the ads are there to be seen by the journalists who write about Bush, Kerry and even MoveOn's activities. The most prominent journalists surely don't ride the Metro system, though the twenty-something underlings they rely upon to keep their ears to the ground do. But this is silly: they already see MoveOn's ubiquitous ads bashing Bush or pushing Kerry on national cable (CNN in particular), where they have been on the air continuously for weeks. So far it isn't getting anywhere. Google News turns up precious few references to the "censure Bush" initiative the ad promotes, all of it by partisans of the left and right.

I say let them waste their money. Better they spend George Soros' money here than in Oregon.

And let them waste their money promoting "The Day After Tomorrow," too. CNN itself ran a segment yesterday interviewing various political watchers about what kind of impact the environmental issue will have on this election. The unanimous response was: zero. Over time, of course, this kind of demagoguery must be rebutted (as it is here) or else their wild claims may be accepted by the public as common knowledge. That is, of course, more so than it already has been today.

DID THEY WATCH THE SAME SPEECH?

Though the mainstream newspapers seemed to think Bush's speech was thin on substance, I have a good reason to disagree. I say there was so much substance in the speech that they couldn't all keep it straight. For example, here's Maura Reynolds and Mary Curtius at the Los Angeles Times, on one part of the speech:

Bush's demeanor exuded confidence, but his words expressed more humility than in past speeches. Several times he acknowledged errors or miscalculations. Estimates of the number of needed troops were too low, he said. Iraqi forces "fell short" in their performance and have needed more training. And Saddam Hussein's loyalists, instead of being killed or captured on the battlefield, "melted into the civilian population" to regroup later.

And Milbank, the bane of my morning reading, actually said about the same thing:

Bush's address, while using many of the same arguments he has employed previously, represented a subtle shift in the way he discusses the U.S. tribulations in Iraq. He gave a more frank acknowledgment of the troubles facing U.S. forces, warning that "there are difficult days ahead, and the way forward may sometimes appear chaotic."

Compare that to Helen Kennedy of the New York Daily News, who wrote:

Bush did not acknowledge any planning shortcomings or the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, nor did he say how much more the operation in Iraq will cost.

The New York Times editorial page saw it this way, too:

It's regrettable that this president is never going to admit any shortcomings, much less failure. That's an aspect of Mr. Bush's character that we have to live with. But we cannot live without a serious plan for doing more than just getting through the June 30 transition and then muddling along…

Oh, for crying out loud -- you get the point. Again I ask: did they watch the same speech?

P.S. Christ. If he wasn't going to get into Abu Ghraib, he wasn't going to get into WMD either. If the press had their way, Bush's speech would have been four hours long -- and then they would have slammed him for that.

P.P.S. Imaginary opening from the speech inside Gail Collins' head: "My fellow Americans, I have failed." Yeah, that would have been ideal.

DID WE WATCH THE SAME SPEECH?

It's a good thing I didn't let the national press decide for me what I thought of Bush's speech. Reaction this morning was very mixed, which was a disappointment. On the other hand, opinions pretty much broke down along partisan lines. Democrats criticized it, Republicans praised it. Conservative newspapers applauded it, liberal newspapers derided it.

I read pretty much everything that appeared in the papers about this today, so if you'll allow me to get my Howie Kurtz on here a moment, I'll tell you how it all broke down.

First of all, when I said above that different papers reacted differently, I meant their editorial pages. On the news pages things weren't much different. Most of the major papers will do a straight recap plus a "news analysis" or reporter's column. Nearly always this means a left-leaning op-ed piece will appear on the front page of the paper; whether written by Dana Milbank at the Washington Post or Elizabeth Bumiller for the New York Times or another writer, this is a constant source of frustration for somebody like me who doesn't share all of their assumptions.

To start off with Milbank, consider his lead:

In an address to the nation, President Bush on Monday night called for demolishing Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison -- the scene of Saddam Hussein atrocities and the U.S. military's prisoner abuse -- as he vowed that the United States would succeed in turning Iraq from violence and chaos to democracy and peace.

If you've been reading Armed Prophet at all lately, you know what my reaction was. Elsewhere in the A section was a news analysis piece by Robin Wright and Mike Allen that was so relentlessly negative I imagine they typed this out with teeth clenched, and they didn't so much type it as slam their fists into the keyboard. A sample:

Bush did not provide the midcourse correction that even some Republicans had called for … Nor did Bush try to answer some of the looming questions that have triggered growing skepticism and anxiety at home and abroad about the final U.S. costs, the final length of stay for U.S. troops, or what the terms will be for a final U.S. exit from Iraq. After promising "concrete steps," the White House basically repackaged stalled U.S. policy as a five-step plan.

In effect, the president said his current plan is good enough to win, and he set out to rally Americans to his cause with rousing language that placed the conflict in Iraq in the context of the larger, more popular battle against terrorism.

What should that "midcourse correction" have been? They don't say. Along the same lines is Dick Polman, a columnist/reporter with the Philadelphia News (and because the Philly paper is Knight Ridder's flagship, he is syndicated at least as widely as the "top three" luminaries mentioned above). He went on a similar tirade:

He never mentioned Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi exile leader and neoconservative favorite who supplied dubious intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, and whose dreams of running Iraq were dashed last week when he was bounced from the U.S.-led coalition, after having collected $27 million from American taxpayers.

Nor did Bush substantively address the prison scandal, except to say that "a few American troops" had dishonored American values - a reading of the scandal that fails to jibe with the suspicions of key Republican senators who believe it goes much higher.

Most important, Bush did not address the most troubling questions about how his vision for Iraq will actually work in practice. And that's arguably what skeptical Americans most want to know.

Polman really thinks Bush was going to talk about Chalabi last night? Or that he would extensively address Abu Ghraib? Polman seems to think Bush should have said everything about everything last night. It seemed to me the explanation that first an interim government will be appointed, before long elections would be set up and then a new constitution drafted met the requirements for how it will "work in practice." This plan is still a work-in-progress, and it may change. Polman doth complain too much.

As with movie criticism, I'm not much a fan of the way some critics focus on what the movie should have done instead of what it did. A political speech is a bit different, and the stakes are (usually) higher, but it can be distracting when the virtues of a film or address are ignored. And if that sounds like lowering expectations, I would like to point out: there are at least five more speeches.

The good news is that all of the coverage wasn't this bad. Case in point, perhaps surprisingly, Bumiller was pretty even-handed. She didn't let Bush off lightly, but neither did she go out of her way to attack him. Her lead:

President Bush on Monday night sought to reassure Americans, Iraqis and other nations that he has a plan to set Iraq on a track to stable self-rule, saying his goal was to make Iraq's people "free, not to make them American."

Nice. That was one of my favorite lines. Also decent was the Los Angeles Times' Ron Brownstein (a full-time columnist rather than a reporter) who wrote:

Bush did not offer any new initiatives — apart from a largely symbolic promise to tear down Abu Ghraib prison, where American soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners — or set a date for the withdrawal of American troops.

But he presented, step by step, moves for vesting sovereignty in a new Iraqi government and ending the American-led occupation.

Brownstein's obvious mistake is assuming that just because he had heard about the administration's plans for an interim government means Joe and Jane Taxpayer had, too. I thought one of the main criticisms of Bush in the last few weeks was that he was just giving boilerplate "stay the course" speeches up to now. Still, I'll take it for that second sentence, which most of the writers above neglected to include.

Okay, enough Kurtz impersonating for now. Bottom line: I was not pleased with the mainstream media's coverage of the speech. Every one of them had a different image in their head of the ideal Bush speech, and most of them were about Abu Ghraib, how much the Iraq war will cost in the end and when the troops are coming home. Bush could not have and would not have given those speeches. Instead, he focused on the major task at hand. Too bad they couldn't hear that speech.

"REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON IRAQ AND THE WAR ON TERROR"

I haven't had a chance to review Bush's speech yet -- it's late -- but the full text is aready available, and I'll be going through it again first thing tomorrow.

In the meantime, the first 1250 words or so that occurred to me:

1. Finally, some details. First, this:
   
   
   The United Nations Special Envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, is now consulting with a broad spectrum of Iraqis to determine the composition of this interim government. The special envoy intends to put forward the names of interim government officials this week. In addition to a president, two vice presidents, and a prime minister, 26 Iraqi ministers will oversee government departments, from health to justice to defense. This new government will be advised by a national council, which will be chosen in July by Iraqis representing their country's diversity. This interim government will exercise full sovereignty until national elections are held.
   
   I like this. I can picture this. Now, I know nothing of the people Brahimi is about to recommend, but this interim government has a few things going for it, and they all boil down to checks and balances. If you didn't notice, there are a lot. The three presidential and vice presidential roles, I expect, are meant to be occupied by one each Kurd, Sunni and Shia. I want more details, but it's a good start.
   
   
2. Again, more details. There certainly were plenty more than anything I'd heard before, and on that level the speech was a success. He'd had nothing to say when he did "Meet the Press" earlier this year, nor anything to say at his big press conference last month. Finally tonight we get more. But I could have used some more dates. When will Brahimi hand over these names? When will each step up to address Iraqis? How will that be done? There was some hint at this when he said John Negroponte (the first post-Saddam Iraq ambassador) "will present his credentials to the new president of Iraq." Presumably on June 30. Maybe ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox will break into their precious prime time schedule to show that.
   
   
3. This:
   
   
   Many of Iraq's cities and towns now have elected town councils or city governments - and beyond the violence, a civil society is emerging.
   
   Good point. You know when us right-wingers complain about how the media never gives any attention to the promising developments in Iraq? This is exactly what we're talking about.
   
   
4. I haven't watched much commentary yet, but the first thing I saw was Charles Krauthammer on Fox saying his one mention of the word "democracy" was insufficient. First of all, that can't be right -- the word shows up eight times by my count. If he thinks Bush gave the short shrift to democracy, by somehow insinuating he would settle for less, then I disagree. His outline of the step-by-step method the Iraqis will take from US-appointed interim leaders to a full vote to a new constitution sounded quite incrementalist, increasing the control Iraqi citizens will have over their government at each step. They're baby steps, but they're also accelerated -- especially when you consider how Japan and Germany both were given nearly a decade (by my recollection of history class) before they had to take full responsibility of their country. The plan in front of us is faster, but let no one ever say again Bush has "no plan" for Iraq.
   
   Besides, in the debate between the neocons and the realists (aka real-cons), Bush improbably comes down on the side of the neocons (i.e. pushing for full democracy) at every step. Krauthammer, of all people, should recognize and be grateful for this. I personally would eventually settle for a stable and liberal-ish, if not entirely democratic, Iraq. Think Singapore. But Bush isn't settling for second-best.
   
   
5. Speaking of acceleration, Bush said "free, national elections [will] be held no later than next January." As an advocate of earlier elections, I'm about half encouraged by this. He didn't say it would certainly happen, but he has room to move if he needs to. And he should be moving those elections up. The reason is simple: less time for the Sadr-ists, ex-Baathists, and Zarqaqi and the al Qaeda-types to disrupt the "occupation." The sooner they are attacking an Iraqi-run government, the faster the acceptability of those attacks will falter. Bush explained again, as per boilerplate, how the terrorists wish only more dead Iraqis and anarchy in the country. The sooner we can be there to back up a legitimate regime in Iraq, the better.
   
   
6. Also, this:
   
   
   General Abizaid and other commanders in Iraq are constantly assessing the level of troops they need to fulfill the mission. If they need more troops, I will send them.
   
   That doesn't mean he will send more troops, and frankly I'm not 100% certain that he should, but this is the first time (I believe) he himself has said more troops will be necessary. I may be wrong. However, recently it was news when Don Rumsfeld has said more troops might be necessary. This time it is likely to be news that Bush himself will send more if need be.
   
   
7. Tearing down Abu Ghraib. It's a totally symbolic move, but certainly a good one. Not necessary, but smart. It didn't need to be there to make the speech, but in light of everything else, it pushed it over the top. On "Meet the Press" and in his recent press conferences, he has had little news to make, and none that really affected the news of the day. Tonight was a different story.
   
   
8. At first there was a brief moment where he erred in pronouncing the name "Abu Ghraib." Yet in doing so, he was attempting to pronounce it correctly, whereas most of the media has settled into "abu jirabe" -- which Slate tells me is wrong. Bush's "abu guhreb" was significantly closer. A moment later, he got it right. Not bad.
   
   
9. Considering that, how worried was I about Bush flubbing a line? Pretty much not. I remember the days after 9/11, up to which Bush was known best for his "Bushisms." At that time, the worst thing I could think of (besides proposing a policy I disagreed with) was him screwing up those important speeches. His reputation in the eyes of liberal-leftists who disagreed with the Iraq war is now almost saved by his statesmanship from about 9/14/01 (his bullhorned "I can hear you" in lower Manhattan) through about the middle of 2002.
   
   Tonight, however, a small pronunciation mistake was no issue. No one ever held Clinton's occasional mispronunciations against him, and I doubt anybody was really thinking about Bush's earlier trouble with the language tonight. Any errors were overshadowed by the overall content of his address.
   
   
10. One of several money quotes:
    
    
    I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American.
    
    A direct rebuke to those who say it's American imperialism that compels us to go abroad and remake the world in our own image. We're not trying to make anyone adopt our society or our rules (seriously, notice how we always encourage parliamentary rather than U.S.-style democracies?) but help people move into the modern world -- and help them win the war against Islamofascism. After all, in the long run it threatens them as much as us.

Surely there is a lot more to say about it, and perhaps even some factual (and typographical) errors to correct in the days ahead, but on the basis of this speech I am more encouraged about the future of Iraq than I have been in months.

One question: What does he say next week?

P.S. Yes, I am incredibly annoyed that, as I mentioned above, the major broadcast networks decided against airing this speech. Originally I was going to write more about this, but I suppose my thoughts on this are evident.

P.P.S. As of 9:30 p.m., the White House website listed the site of the address as the "United States Arm You War College." Reloading just after ten, it's been corrected. No point, really.

P.P.P.S. First complaint heard, by reporter John King, on CNN a moment ago: No word yet on when troops come home. Uh, actually he mentioned that some will stay longer and more will go. Please, one step at a time. In case King missed it, that was what Bush's whole speech was about.

ALL IS NOT LOST

Yes, Michael Moore (inevitably) won the Palm d'Or for what I'm sure is an effective-but-dishonest film, "Farenheit 9/11." Still, I was a bit surprised at the Reuters headline, "Anti-Bush Tirade Wins Top Award in Cannes." Wow! "Tirade"? Even better, the text of the article describes the movie as a "diatribe." The WSJ's James Taranto has done yeoman's work in revealing the anti-American and anti-Israel assumptions (via the same use of loaded adjectives) the Reuters news organization works with, and I largely agree. Perhaps this isn't so much a testimony to Reuters' evenhandedness, but more to the fact that Moore is a propagandist, not a documentarian.

P.S. I have an anti-Moore diatribe of my own coming up in the next day or so. Stay tuned.

FUN WITH THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Slate's Kerryisms are very, very funny. (This one in particular.) They're cleverer than the Bushisms of old and crueler because they pedantically dissect his mistakes rather than let them stand without comment.

But on the other hand, the Kerryism is actually a bit of a favor for Kerry. By picking apart the subordinate clauses of his sentences' subordinate clauses and translating them into plain English, the actual intent behind his convoluted statements is revealed.

In 2000 the hidden strength of Bush's speaking style was that even when he flubbed his lines the actual point behind his statements ("Is our children learning?") was never in doubt. Gore might have benefited from the kind of treatment Slate is giving Kerry now. Am I implying that Slate is self-consciously giving Kerry a boost? Um… actually no. If the helplessly partisan Tim Noah was behind it, I'd say yes. But it seems the Kerryism is the brainchild of William Saletan, a much more evenhanded (if still quite liberal) writer.

Plus, Bushisms took on a life of their own because they were simply so memorable ("misunderestimated," "subliminable," etc.). So memorable in fact that Will Ferrell's faux-Bushism "strategery" is now a favorite word in American journalism (Nexis hits: 299, to 410 for "misunderstimated" -- not bad for an SNL coinage). Kerryisms on the other hand take too much time to read; they can't simply be reprinted by local newspapers with the same impact. So their overall impact is likely to be nil.

But as I said, they are funny.

P.S. I'm a big wordie, you know. I read Barbara Wallraff's "Word Fugitives" in the back of every Atlantic and I once spent an entire weekend reading a year's worth of William Safire's "On Language" column for the New York Times Magazine. Giving them both a run for their money in yesterday's Post is George Will, who takes a break from the struggles in Iraq and the public school system to lament "the era when a journalist telephoned from Moscow to London to add a semicolon to his story." The end of the Cold War notwithstanding, it's a fun essay. But if you ever decide to write to him an e-mail, under no circumstances should you end your correspondence "TTFN" or "C U L8R."

I DON'T GET RESULTS

Sigh. Barely 48 hours after I implored the media to put their obsession with the Abu Ghraib prison abuses on hold until the transition of sovereignty in Iraq goes through, the Washington Post runs with more abuse pictures and even video. I've been unable to avoid a bit of it on TV, but I haven't watched the online slide show. And I'm not going to.

Maybe you have. Did it add a lot to the debate? I've read about the new images, and I don't see what is gained. I know some of it is worse than before and indicates more widespread abuse, but it doesn't change the fact that the Iraq handover is by far the most important thing happening right now. This does not move forward the one issue that we should be talking about -- it diverts our attention away from it.

Apparently these new photos are not the ones Post publisher Leonard Downie said he's been sitting on; the Post got these ones yesterday. Perhaps that makes these "news" in a more legitimate sense. But he should have sat on these, too. I'm sure that sounds to many like censorship. But it's not -- only discretion. If these photos ran in six months time it would hardly affect the story or its consequences.

Of course, I can't really hold it against the Post -- I'm sure that whomever gave them these photos would have given them to the New York Post eventually if no one else would have run them. But a little perspective would help. (Case in point, the annoying online Post columnist Dan Froomkin (just look at him!), who writes: "At long last, administration officials promise that answers [about the transition] will be forthcoming in the next several days and weeks." Agreed. Too bad your colleagues will keep going on about Abu Ghraib for weeks.)

It did take too long for him to get around to it, but kudos to Bush for using his bully pulpit to deliver weekly speeches on Iraq leading up to the handover. For whatever reason, the man hasn't been the same smooth operator he was for the first 2½ years of his presidency. This series of addresses sounds like a return to form. It had sure better be.

P.S. Chalabi. Wow. Since he was one of the longstanding advocates of a free Iraq, I always wanted him to be a hero. I gave him the benefit of the doubt on his fraud conviction in Jordan, but not anymore. His post-war impact has been less than meaningful, so it's no great loss in the long run. But it's too bad when you think what he might have become.

P.P.S. For those of you who have not read Mickey Kaus in awhile, I highly recommend his recent series of "Faster Iraq" posts. Mickey was always coy about his position on the war before it began, but as of late he's been quite vociferous about how the transition should be handled. And I quite agree.

NO MORE ABU GHRAIB

I write the above title having just rattled off two longish posts on the matter, but with the court-martials dominating the news this week, something hit me: the media has got to put this aside -- just for a few months. MSNBC seems to be going the most overboard here (they often do). "The Abrams Report" -- a legal show, usually covering the likes of Scott Peterson and Martha Stewart -- is currently indistinguishable from "Hardball," except that Chris Matthews gets better interviews.

All of the major papers and news networks are going overtime on this issue, and I'm sure they think they're doing us a service by it. And they are -- but perhaps we could do this at another time?

Maybe I'm biased because I hate trials. Maybe the whole O.J. Simpson thing put me off the judicial system as entertainment. But we are now just a little over a month away from the Iraq handover date that George Bush insists we are sticking to. Who's taking over? How much authority are we really ceding? How exactly will the Kurd-Sunni-Shiite power-sharing work? The media's resources are busy with the Abu Ghraib investigation. So tell me how we're being served when something this important is going down on a deadline this short but the national debate is stuck on something relatively trivial. Not absolutely trivial mind you. But right now it's a major distraction.

It's also no great mystery why. Not only does Abu Ghraib have pictures (and the possibility of more) but it lets reporters cover Iraq in a familiar manner: Enron and the Catholic church have given them plenty of practice.

I hear tonight Bush is going to start giving speeches on the war on terrorism and why we're in Iraq. Perhaps that will refocus this country's writers, editors and producers. Not so we the people can meaningfully change things now -- we can't -- but so those who can will themselves be able to refocus, and do so.

P.S. Also, no more 9/11 hearings.

CRI DE COERCION

Mark Bowden, who wrote the Atlantic story on coercive interrogation I linked to in the previous post, returns in the next issue with a short essay on Abu Ghraib. He re-states a critical point that my anonymous commenter (coward!) seemed to conflate with support for what happened at Abu Ghraib:

In certain rare cases keeping a prisoner cold, uncomfortable, frightened, and disoriented is morally justified and necessary

Then Bowden immediately begins adding caveats. In polite company, which the Atlantic surely is, you really can't add enough caveats to the discussion of maltreating other humans. And that's probably a good thing. But Bowden in his care not to offend actually goes too far the other way and managed to offend me. Concerning the fallout from Abu Ghraib scandal, he writes:

There are predictions (including one by Karl Rove, no less) that it will take a generation to repair the damage to America's image in the Middle East.

What? A generation? How about we not overreact, huh? No doubt Arabs are upset about Abu Ghraib; I would be, too. But not for thirty years. And does no one say, the damage done to Middle East's image in America by Nick Berg's murder will take a generation to repair? I doubt Mr. Bowden recognizes the "soft bigotry of low expectations" (as it's come to be known) in his words, but it's there.

HAVING FUN YET?

For a blogger who strenuously advocated for the Iraq war a year ago, I might have something of an obligation to keep writing about it, especially as we're now in the middle of the "hard part" that we all knew was coming but mostly chose to elide past while fighting back diversionary arguments about "imperialism" and "oiiiiilllll!!!!" So what follows is a long-overdue installment.

Belle de Jour is nobody's right-wing blog; assuming it's not a hoax, the writer is a London call girl who is "frightened by the concept of Texas." Nor is it really a terribly political site. Belle may broadly be termed a liberal, but isn't a hardened partisan of the left as are many who follow the same kind of literary fiction she alludes to and emulates in her entries. (Huh huh, "entries.")

So I was a bit surprised to hear myself saying: "Damn straight!" at one post recently. (In my head only, I swear.) The post:

The papers are full of disturbing images, the sort that lead one to think about politics, war, and the politics of war, and how these acts have always happened except we could never see them before. How righteous indignation and backlash sometimes seem products of ignorance, because who could not have guessed this would happen? Did we really need pictures in order to know? Are we truly angry at governments for doing what we knew they would do?

I'm inclined to agree -- this isn't new. People can do horrible things. Small groups of people with power over others have done horrible things (See: Stanford Prison Experiment).

What is new are the pictures, which shatter the illusion that this kind of treatment is out of fashion and give the TV reports a peg to hang their segments (and segments and segments and segments) on. The more pictures that come out, the longer it stays in the headlines. The longer the story stays around, the more it seems that comes out about the chain of command. The more that, the more it sounds like these were interrogation methods and not pranks, and that regardless of how high of levels knowledge of it reaches, they did have a certain place, however once clandestine. (See: this NYT piece. Note: Concept of "waterboarding." Also: I'm with A Small Victory on this, at least as far as I had time to read.)

Up to a point, I'm not against using coercive methods of obtaining information from prisoners. My requirements are pretty simple:

1. Make sure we're doing it to terrorists and Baathists who might actually have information, not Iraqi conscripts. Yet to be cleared up is who the Iraqis being interrogated at Abu Ghraib actually were. The Red Cross has said that 90% of Iraqi detainees were wrongfully imprisoned; not much has been said about the prisoners in this case, where they came from, or where they are now.


2. Hew closer to "coercion" and further from "torture." This may be in the eye of the beholder, but for a good backgrounder on the kind of methods we've been using against al Qaeda, start with "The Dark Art of Interrogation" from The Atlantic last year.


3. At the risk of sounding like an apologist: DON'T TAKE PICTURES. Remember the kids from high school who broke into a nearby house, trashed the shit out of it, and videotaped the whole thing? They got caught, didn't they? That's the U.S. armed forces right now, thanks to these seven jackasses.


4. To be fair, it sounds like those seven jackasses were poorly supported and the result was a breakdown in the chain of command. That said, they're still jackasses.

The past point brings me back to Belle: She doesn't say it exactly, but I think she's in the "let's not release any more pictures" camp. And while I recognize their suppression is ultimately untenable, let's try to hold off for now. One, I think we get the point: Bad Stuff happened. Two, we hold back sensitive national security information all the time -- but whether that's politically acceptable right now Bush and Rumsfeld are about to find out.

One last thing. On those trials: If Rumsfeld really did have full knowledge of the kind of tactics used at Abu Ghraib, then I don't see how he survives in the end. (And I say that as a longtime Rummy fan.) Not really so much because the government is doing these things, but that we might be court-martialing (courting-martial?) soldiers for doing things that were approved by their superiors.

The what-did-Rumsfeld-know question may be about to break wide open -- watch the phrase "Copper Green" closely -- this coming week. But so far today it's been upstaged by Colin Powell's moron of a staff aide who this morning tried to cut off his interview on "Meet the Press."

THE "IT WON'T BE CLOSE" BRIGADE

Three's a trend, right? That's what people say. Assuming such, the notion that the November election between Bush and Kerry will not be a close one is now just one Howard Fineman column away from being the conventional wisdom. Given events of the past few weeks, speculation leans toward a big win for Kerry, but then again we're barely three weeks out from a Fineman column titled "Why the race is looking so good for Bush."

I don't know where the meme started, but the first one I read was Andrew Sullivan, who wrote at his blog on May 6:

My instinct is that this election will not, in fact, be close. Either Bush will convince people that he is winning the war on terror and turning the economy around and win handsomely, or he won't, and Kerry will win big.

The first published but second to pass my corneas is an essay in the Washington Monthly, by the Hotline's Chuck Todd, making the counterintuitive argument that Bush is Carter (no, seriously). Title: "A Kerry Landslide?" Bottom line:

Elections that feature a sitting president tend to be referendums on the incumbent -- and in recent elections, the incumbent has either won or lost by large electoral margins.

Then on the Sunday shows this morning Christian Science Monitor reporter (and major DC hottie) Liz Marlantes repeated the meme at the prompting of Chris "tell me something I don't know" Matthews. She didn't predict the beneficiary of this supposed landslide, but after a half-hour of Abu Ghraib hand-wringing by the panelists (including Peggy Noonan), I don't need to draw you a chart.

That's three. And I expect more soon, especially from H-Fi, whose next column should be up sometime today. (His one from last week registers the good news for Kerry, but it's still written as if he's expecting a squeaker. Also not counting: John Zogby's much discussed "The Election Is Kerry's To Lose" essay, which calls the electorate "frozen in place" with "very few undecided voters.") As the next six months pass, many more commentators will try out the will-win-big theory for both candidates (here's the WSJ's James Taranto, using different indicators than Todd to make a reverse-Carter argument; see third item).

What I want to know before passing judgment is: What constitutes a landslide? 15 points? 10? 5? Compared to the 2000 election, anything more than a couple points could be interpreted as a big shift in this famously 50-50 (or is it 49-49?) country. The higher the threshold for "landslide," the more skeptical I get. If all we're talking here is "more decisive than last time," then count me on the bandwagon. Then again, considering just how preposterously close the last election was, it's no risky statement to guess that this one will fall outside the margin of error.

IT DOESN'T MATTER TO ME

Pardon me while I finish rolling my eyes... Okay, better now.

How bad is disgraced "ex-conservative" David Brock's new website, Media Matters? Pretty awful when you just look at it, but worse when you realize he has a staff of researchers at a K Street office thanks to funding from John Podesta's new liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress. Every third item seems to be about a dumb comment by Rush Limbaugh, followed by a fourth item expressing outrage that Scott McClellan didn't want to get into whatever Limbaugh said at the latest White House press gaggle. Items one, two, five, six and eight -- reminder: not actual numbers -- concern how Fox News commentators criticized liberals. Number seven is about how Dick Morris' new book about Hillary Clinton contains conflicting portrayals of the New York senator.

Granted, Morris is a bit of a backstabbing, self-aggrandizing ass. But the Media Matters point-by-point critique (which happens to resemble Wonkette's Thursdays with Tina feature) is hardly evenhanded. If you already love Hillary and hate Morris, well, don't expect to be moved.

A recreation:

Morris: Gore "Claimed to Be the Father of the Internet": "When Al Gore claimed to be the father of the Internet, or that his marriage was the basis for Love Story, his exaggerations tripped him up." [Morris, Rewriting History, p. 13]

The Truth: No, He Didn't: Princeton University Professor Sean Wilentz (among many, many others) has debunked this myth: "On March 9, 1999, questioned by CNN's Wolf Blitzer ... Gore remarked: 'During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.' ... Upon viewing the Blitzer interview, though, a lazy reporter from Wired magazine picked up the story, sarcastically mischaracterized Gore in the Web pages of Wired News as claiming he was 'the father of the Internet,' and pointed out that research leading to the Internet began as early as the late 1960s. 'Vice President Gore tells a reporter the Internet was his idea,' Wired News concluded, inaccurately, adding the kicker, 'Nice try, Al.'" [Wilentz, The American Prospect, 9/25/00-10/9/00]

Ugh. The internet inventing thing? This topic is more tired than Rip Van Winkle on Nyquil. For (hopefully) the last time, remember: It is not unreasonable to understand "took the initiative in creating" as a statement of authorship, inventorship, fatherhood, etc. Also, please stop citing liberal writers at face value. Using partisans as evidence that other partisans are um, partisan, is just silly.

For a watchdog group, Media Matters seems to need watching of its own.

RALL THE TROUBLE IN THE WORLD

I am not kidding when I say that until today I hadn't thought once about the hateful Marxist cartoonist Ted Rall since his semi-infamous (because his famy isn't that great) "terror widows" strip. But today, this. (Thanks, Drudge.)

That this strip is far outside the bounds of legitimate discussion is obvious. The line about Afghanistan having nothing to do with 9/11 because Saudi-funded and Pakistan-based is perhaps too bizarre even for Dennis Kucinich. (Hey, Ted -- Taliban protection? Training camps? Tora Bora? Any of this ring a bell?) What also occurs to me, however, is just how inside the bounds of such discussion it once was for me.

I don't seek out conspiratorial politics, and I never did. But within the past few years I was a frequent combatant in the "war of ideas" (as we liked to call it) on a public university campus, where Rall finds many fellow travelers; now I follow Congress from the Beltway, where debate over whether the Rasmussen poll is at all reliable is much more heated.

Besides, arguments about whether or not the United States is a racist imperialist menace to the globe eventually grew to bore me.

Though August will mark my second anniversary in the District of Columbia, this week I'm actually back in the blue parts of deep-purple Oregon -- Portland right now, where Kucinich held a protest/campaign event yesterday, and Eugene later this week, where the large anarchist contingent skews the city's political center of gravity somewhere to the left of Ted Kennedy. Ted Rall may not be famous in the Beltway, but his Q-rating in the Willamette Valley is probably on par with, say, John Kerry.

It's been ages since I've debated anarchists on the pros and cons of industrialization and the morality of capital, and frankly I'm a little out of practice. But it may well come up this week. Many thanks to Ted Rall for getting me back in the right mindset.

P.S. Rall (he calls himself TR) has an important, newsworthy bulletin. But even better, it's timely!