In the "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" category, here's a story about a law professor [whoever said they were savvy], who got scammed by the same Nigerian get rich quick scheme we have all received in our email.

Note: I've got this great bridge in New York for sale....

I just scanned [quickly] Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds' long post on torture. What it boils down to for me is: what are we, as a nation and a people? One of his emailers asks, "If we have to do something that would heretofore have been considered barbaric in order to extract information that will save innocent lives, so be it." I disagree. Because our opponent tortures and horribly murders its captives, that in no way justifies us using torture tactics for those opponents in our custody.

This begs the question, of course, "what is torture?" We have operated for many years under the definitions set forth in the Geneva Convention, which definitions the Administration apparently seeks to change, via the policy memo written by AG nominee Gonzales. I still have not heard a convincing rationale to change that well-established definition. On the contrary, abusing our prisoners cheapens us internally and in the eyes of the world, and it places our people in greater danger; our abandonment of humane treatment standards will inevitably lead to other nations doing the same.

We are a nation of laws, committed to the rule of law in the way we live and conduct ourselves. When it is most difficult to remember that, such as now, is when it is most important to adhere to our basic values: good faith, fair play, and the law. If we slide down the slope to where the enemy wallows in the muck, we will soon have as much mud on our face as the enemy.

It's gut check time, and the United States is in danger of failing the test.

I'm playing around with a new browser, called Firefox, created by Mozilla. It's pretty cool, and apparently deals with a lot of the security holes present in MSIE. The best part so far is that you can open multiple browser tabs [different web sites] in one window. Apparently, lots of functionality, it seems significantly faster than MSIE in opening and drawing pages, and it's open source code, too, for those who don't think much of the Microsoft stranglehold on the cyber-world.

UPDATE: I learned of Firefox from this NPR Morning Edition Story.

For any fans of the rock group Chicago, here's a review I did on Amazon [with links inserted for this blog] for Robert Lamm's 2003 album, Subtlety and Passion:

Robert Lamm is one of the creative voices behind Chicago, the band that revolutionized pop/rock music in the 1970s. While Chicago has not released an album of original music since 1991 (the unreleased, yet still awfully good 1994 Stone of Sisyphus is widely available online as a bootleg), Lamm has become a de facto solo artist, releasing several albums in the past decade. None, however, had that stamp of Chicago, which endeared him to legions of fans. Although members of Chicago are quite close-mouthed about the rationale, it appears that there will be no new new album of Chicago originals for quite some time, if ever. Lamm makes up for it, however, with his 2003 collection, "Subtlety and Passion."

Featuring several members of Chicago, this album is, more or less, what a new Chicago release could have been. Opening with "I Could Tell You Secrets" Lamm sings that "All things are connected, much more than we suspected, nothing is by chance, how would you know." True words, here. Reading between the lines, and reviewing the online session notes, reveals that several of the S&P tunes were demoed for a Chicago release in 2001. Clearly, when the group failed to get its act together, Lamm went ahead and did his own thing.

Other highlights of this collection include "Somewhere Girl," which includes a nifty horn break with some some 6:8 measures thrown in for good measure, "Another Sunday," a wistful look at dreams once had and still hoped for, "Gimme Gimme," a biting and gutsy look at the plethora of awards shows and competitions, and "For You Kate," a sweet but not sappy love song to his daughter.

Lee Loughnane, Chicago's trumpet-meister, plays throughout the record, with appearances also by Walt Parazaider and James Pankow, Chicago's reed and trombone men. The horn arrangements, although often written by others, are pure Chicago in style, tone and composition. And, in a techno-achievement reminiscent of the Beatles recording new songs over old John Lennon demos, Lamm and producer-co-writer-co-performer Hank Linderman have taken a 1972 Chicago demo called "Intensity" with a Terry Kath guitar break, and constructed a contemporary song around that solo. Touches in this song remind the listener of Chicago in its best period, with horn riffs straight out of Chicago VI and VIII, and even an audio artifact at the beginning of the song that sounds just like the beginning of "What's This World Coming To," off VI. Definitely cool.

The best part of S&P, however, is that -- finally -- one of the sources of the Chicago sound has given us the next best thing to a Chicago-in-its-heyday album, full of hope, full of musicality, and full of promise of things to come. At this late date, and with the principals approaching and passing age 60 (scroll down), we may never see or hear the Chicago that got us excited years ago. Robert Lamm's "Subtlety and Passion" comes close, however.This is the best composition, performance and horn work on a Chicago (or proto-Chicago) record since Chicago XIV, released in 1980. Any fan of Chicago, or horn driven rock and roll, must have this album.

Others, i.e., Instapundit, have commented on the Administration proposals for lifetime imprisonment of suspected terrorists. Call me a raging radical if you will, but when I hear of things like lifetime -- or indefinite -- imprisonment, without due process, right to counsel, burden of proof, adnd the like, I think two things: (1) ridiculously unconstitutional; and (2) gulags/concentration camps.

What we've been hearing is that the idea has come about because these are terrorists; we just can't prove it. Not to be too skeptical, but shouldn't we have to prove it?

Fortunately, Senators from both sides of the aisle seem to agree.

Instapundit thinks it's an Administration trial balloon. OK, if it is, and the Administration pretty much knows it'll get shot down, then what is actually on thir collective minds? Even so, it sticks in my craw that the President of the United States is floating a trial balloon suggesting establishment of an American version of some of the worst that the Nazis or the Soviets ever perpetrated. That we can treat it so lightly is -- or should be -- of great concern to us as a society.

In the wake of the extraordinary disaster in Southeast Asia, help is coming from all quarters:

Four doctors from the Hadassah Medical Center at Ein Kerem left Israel for Colombo, Sri Lanka on Sunday to aid victims of an undersea earthquake that struck off the coast of Indonesia.

Prof. Avi Rivkind, Head of General Surgery and the Trauma Unit, Prof. Dan Engelhardt, the Head of Pediatrics, and anesthesiologists Prof. Yoel Donchin and Dr. Yuval Meroz were sent at the request of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and will use their vast experience and expertise to provide medical services to those suffering in the aftermath of the catastrophic tidal wave.

Israel and the Hadassah Medical Organization have a long history of sending rescue missions to parts of the world affected by natural disasters and war, most recently including the Turkish earthquake and the war in Kosovo, where Drs. Engelhardt and Donchin set up a Macedonian mobile medical unit to treat refugees from the war.

Every little bit counts.

A bad review for Amazon. I ordered a Spider-Man book for my seven year old, who loves the old original comics. I pleaced the order from Amazon about December 2. The confirmation said delivery would be made by December 9 or 10, that the book was in stock, and it would be shipped within 1 to 2 days. That would work, because I wanted to give it to Brian for Hanukah, which was for eight days, from December 7 through December 14.

On December 11, still having not received thebook, I checked the order at Amazon, and discovered that it had not even shipped yet. OK. I cancelled the Amazon order, and bought a copy of the same book through Ebay. I'll still miss Hanukah, but I wasn't going to do business with Amazon under those circumstances.

This episode is somewhat out of the ordinary, because my previous Amazon experiences have been pretty good. Xmas rush problems?

I love Nelson Demille's books. He tells a good story, and his prose is sometimes drop dead funny. Check out his new one, Night Fall. Here's a review. Set in the summer of 2001, FBI terrorism task force agent John Corey delves into the 1996 TWA 800 explosion and crash off Long Island. The official conclusion: mechanical problem in the center fuel tank. Corey's conclusion: read the book. Well written, and disturbing, too.

Well, I've entered the world of wireless networking, via the Netgear WGT624 router and WG511T PC card. I'm supposed to be able to get 108 mbps [or up to it, anyway], but it only wants to connect at a maximum of 54 mbps. At least it works. Sort of. The signal strength weakens badly at the outer edges of my office, so some sort of amplifier or booster will probably be necessary. Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds is picking me up for lunch in a few, so I'll be able to try it out in a wi-fi restaurant.

Here's an insider's view on the fight for Fallujah. I've typed this once already, and the damned Blogger crashed -- lost it all! Anyway, this first-hand account of the recent battle comes from a retired Army Colonel, who obviously got it from someone on the ground. We are also directed to a good presentation on Fallujah facts. Some interesting things to know: 60 out of 100 mosques in Fallujah were used as fighting positions/weapons caches; 3 hospitals were used as defensive positions; 203 major weapons storage areas have been found in the city.

Here's the story, a lot of which we have not heard before:

Well Task Force 2-7 Cav made it back from Fallujah earlier than expected, mission accomplished. It feels so good to be back from a second successful mission that was as difficult as it was dangerous. We left Camp Cooke on Nov 1 and staged at Camp Fallujah for about a week. While there, we got the good news that George Bush was re-elected and we had busy days and nights of planning and rehearsals for the big attack. 2 days before "D Day," a 122 mm rocket impacted 50 meters away from our tents that sent everyone to the floor. We staged there at a remote part of the post and it was obvious that a local national tipped off the "mujahadin" (Arabic name for the enemy) where we staged. From that attack, we lost one soldier and 4 more were wounded. That attack gave the rest of the Task Force enough anger to last the whole fight. After all the drills and rehearsals, the day for the attack finally came on Nov 8. Prime Minister Allawi gave the green light and Coalition and Iraqi forces went all the way.

On Nov 7, a battalion of Marines seized the peninsula to the west of the city to prevent insurgents from fleeing. A brigade (4,000 soldiers) from the First Cav set up another cordon around the city to catch anyone fleeing. The plan was to make sure the insurgents would either surrender or fight and be killed. Intelligence estimates put the enemy between 3,000 - 5,000 strong, so we knew we had a tough fight ahead of us. One of the interesting factors to this fight was the weather although Iraq is unbelievable hot in the summer (up to 130 in Najaf), it was colder out in Fallujah than it was back in New York. Temperatures were typically in the upper-30s and low 40s between 5 pm 8 am. The average temperature here has dropped about 30 degrees in the past month or so.

We moved all of our vehicles and soldiers from Camp Fallujah to a position about 1 mile north of the city. That's also where we set up our TF support area (re-fuel, re-arm) and where we set up the Tactical Operations Center. All day long while were setting up at that location, Air Force and Marine Corps aviators shaped the battlefield with laser-guided bombs and hellfire missiles. Although American forces had not been into the city since April, we had been collecting intelligence on the city for months through unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's), human intelligence, and Special Forces. So we knew exactly where they stored their weapons and where they held meetings, and so on all of these attacks from the air were precise and very effective in reducing the enemies ability to fight us before the battle even started. With each attack, secondary explosions of weapons/ammo blowing up were heard. The Coalition also threw the enemy a curveball by destroying all the vehicles that had been parked in the same location for more than 3 days---the enemy planned to use these as car bombs when we attacked. Again, almost every single vehicle the air assets attacked had huge secondary explosions.

After 12 hours of massive air strikes, Task Force 2-7 got the green light and was the first unit to enter the city. There is a big train station on the city's northern limit, so the engineers cleared a path with some serious explosives and our tanks led the way. While this was happening, my intelligence shop was flying our own UAV to determine where the enemy was. It is a very small plane that is launched by being thrown into the air. We flew it for 6 hours and reported grids to the tanks and Bradley's of where we saw insurgents on the roof and moving in the street---so our soldiers knew where the enemy was, before they even got to the location. We crossed the train station just before midnight and led the way for the Marines by killing everything we could in our way. It took our tanks and brads until 10 am the next day to get 2 miles into the city. They killed about 200 insurgents in the process and softened the enemy for the Marines. 5 of our soldiers were wounded in this first 10 hours, but we accomplished our part of the plan. The Marines mission was to follow TF 2-7 and fight the enemy by clearing from building to building. A lot of the insurgents saw the armored vehicles and hid. They waited for the Marines to come and took their chances by fighting them since the Marines weren't protected by armor like we were. In that first day of fighting, the Marines took 5 KIA and many more wounded, but they also did their job very well. Along the way, they found HUGE caches of weapons, suicide vests, and many foreign fighters.

They also found unbelievable amounts of drugs, mostly heroin, speed, and cocaine. It turns out, the enemy drugged themselves up to give them the courage" and stupidity to stay and fight. The enemy tried to fight us in "the city of mosques" as dirty as they could. They fired from the steeples of the mosques and the mosques themselves. They faked being hurt and them threw grenades at soldiers when they approached to give medical treatment. They waived surrender flags, only to shoot at our forces 20 seconds later when they approached to accept their surrender.

The next few days, TF 2-7 maintained our battle positions inside the city, coming out only for fuel and more ammo. We fought 24 hours a day and continued to support the Marines as they cleared from house to house. If they were taking heavy fire or RPG fire from a house, they would call on our tanks. Our guys would open up on the house with 120 mm main gun or 50 cal. After 5 minutes of suppressive fire, then the Marines would go into the building and clear it. There was rarely anyone left alive by that point. The problem is that we couldn't be there to do that for all the Marines and when we couldn't and they had to clear the building without our help, they took heavy casualties because the insurgents didn't stop firing until the Marines got into the building and killed them.

After 3 days, half of the city had been cleared and Iraqi Forces followed the Marines to re-clear the buildings and clean up the caches. Sometimes the insurgents who had managed to hide from the Marines would stand and fight the Iraqis, so they took some casualties as well. But they did a good job of securing the area and collecting the thousands of AK-47s, RPGs, mortars, and IEDs that were in these houses. All that ammo proved just how intensely the enemy planned to defend the city; after all, Fallujah was the symbol of the resistance against the new Iraqi government. They wanted to keep their safe haven for terrorists like Zarqawi to behead innocent people. Since no Coalition Forces were allowed into the city, they were able to get away with those atrocious acts without much trouble. On day 3 of the fight, we had the most exciting moment for me personally when our Task Force Support Area and TOC came under attack. Insurgents fired mortars and rockets at us everyday, some landing as close as 30 meters from us.

But on this day at 6 pm, just as it was getting dark, we took 3 rounds very close and then to the north 8-10 insurgents opened up with small arms fire on the TOC. Luckily, a tank platoon was back re-fueling and along with the scout platoon, laid down some serious firepower and killed them all in a matter of 5 minutes. But all of us in the TOC got to go out and be part of the fight, firing rounds and seeing the tanks unload on these insurgents. None of us were hurt, but it was an exciting 10 minutes. THEN came the second push through the rest of the city. Although by day 4, the Coalition had already killed over a thousand, many of them fled to the southern portion of the city and took up positions there. Again, Task Force 2-7 led the push a little before midnight. Same mission, same purpose: To soften up enemy strong points and kill as many insurgents as possible to enable the Marines to follow us when the sun rose. The Marines from Regimental Combat Team 1 did just that for the next 5 days---fighting house to house, finding more weapons, more torture chambers, more ammunition, and more insurgents ready to fight to the death. One fighter came running out of a building that our tanks set on fire he was on fire and still shooting at us.

As our Sergeant Major said, "going up against tanks and brads with an AK-47, you have to admire their effort!" Over the next 5 days, the Marines and our Task Force killed over 1,000 more insurgents. In that time frame, over 900 more fighters made the decision to spend 30 years in prison rather than die. The Marines are still occupying the city and helping with the rebuilding process---they still meet some sporadic resistance, usually a group of 3-5, shooting from a mosque or faking surrender and then shooting at them.

We were very disturbed to find one house with 5 foreigners with bullets in their head, killed execution style. Marines also came upon a house where an Iraqi soldier in the Iraqi National Guard had been shackled to the wall for 11 days and was left there to die. These insurgents are some sick people and Fallujah proved that more than ever. 2 mosques were not being used for prayer but rather for roadside bomb making. They were literally IED assembly line factories, with hundreds of IEDs complete or being built. They also had several houses with high-tech equipment where they conducted their meetings. In Fallujah, the enemy had a military-type planning system going on. Some of the fighters were wearing body armor and Kevlar's, just like we do. Soldiers took fire from heavy machine guns (.50 cal) and came across the dead bodies of fighters from Chechnya, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Afghanistan, and so on no, this was not just a city of pissed off Iraqis, mad at the Coalition for forcing Saddam out of power. It was a city full of people from all over the Middle East whose sole mission in life was to kill Americans. Problem for them is that they were in the wrong city in November 2004.

Now that its over, there is a lot of things that people back home should know. First of all, every citizen of Fallujah (non-insurgent) is getting $2,500 USD (that's a lot over here) to fix up their house or buy new things that may have been destroyed in the fighting. Insurgents took up positions in residents houses so we were forced to destroy a lot of buildings. There is over $100 million dollars ready to be spent to re-build the city. This may seem like a lot of money, but I can assure you that it is a small price to pay for the amount of evil people no longer alive, contemplating how to kill more Americans. The intelligence value alone is already paying huge dividends. Some of the 900 detainees are telling everything they know about other insurgents. And the enemy never expected such a large or powerful attack and they were so overwhelmed that they left behind all kinds of things, including books with names of other foreign fighters, where their money and weapons come from, etc. I went into the city 3 times, but after a lot of the fighting had been done. It was amazing to see how the American military had brought the worlds most evil city to its knees. I have an awful lot of pictures that I am going to upload to my web site it will blow your mind to see what the insurgents forced us to do to win this fight. And seeing the pictures of what I saw firsthand will make you very happy to be an American and know that our country has this might if evildoers force us to use it. Our mission in Iraq is to help the Iraqi Security Forces become stable enough to keep this country safe and once in a while fight with our full might to give these security forces a fair chance. When we need to go after the enemy with all we've got, the results have been amazing.

In the fight for Fallujah, our military lost over 50 soldiers and Marines including a sergeant major, company commander, and 8 platoon leaders, along with 40 kids, typically between 19 and 23 years old. I cant even tell you how proud I was to be part of this fight and know these soldiers who were going from building to building to take the fight to the enemy. My Task Force lost 2 more soldiers after the rocket attack at Camp Fallujah, 1 of them that I knew pretty well. It was hard on the unit to deal with these losses, to go along with the 16 soldiers from 2-7 who were wounded. But this was a fight we knew would be dangerous..but worth the risk based on the good that would come out of it. Anyone back home who thinks the world is a safe place needs to come here for a day and learn real fast that there are an awful lot of people out there who hate Americans so much that they risk their lives to try to kill us. We cannot live peacefully back at home right now unless we continue to stay on the offensive against our enemies and fight them in their backyards. Remember, radical Arabs started this war and they continue to fight it, proving to America over and over that they need to be fought. I am hopeful that most Americans understand that you have to accept death to defeat evil; all of us soldiers accepted that the day we signed up. There are some things worth fighting and dying for, and making the world and specially America, a safer place, is one of them. For every Mom out there that you read about who turns into a peace protestor when her son is killed in action, there are 99 Moms you don't hear about who are proud and believe in this mission even more. It sure is good to be back to Taji after our second "field trip." We have an officers vs. enlisted football game tomorrow where I am the quarterback, so I am excited about that. We also have a Task Force Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. Despite the fact we have upcoming Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years away from family, friends, and fun all of our soldiers are thankful to be back after this big fight and to have played such an important role in the successful mission.

Bless 'em all, bless 'em all
Bless 'em all, bless 'em all
The long and the short and the tall,
Bless all the sergeants and corporals too
Bless all the privates and above all bless you

I wish I had said this. Wait: I did.

I said it in 2000, and I said it in 2004: If Carville is on board, the democratic candidate wins the presidency. I was giving short shrift to Carville's partner in crime, however, namely one Paul Begala. Courtesy of ABC's The Note, The Sunday Boston Globe reports that Begala, who co-engineered [with James Carville and a host of others] Bill Clinton's successful White House run in 1992, was approached by the Kerry campaign in August to become a senior campaign advisor. After weighing his burgeoning TV career, he called Mary Beth Cahill to say yes, and she never called him back:

So in mid-June, Begala met with campaign manager Cahill at Kerry's campaign headquarters in Washington and said he had changed his mind; he would quit CNN and join Kerry.

The reaction was not what he anticipated. What are you talking about? Cahill asked, according to Begala.

"It seems obvious you don't have a message or strategy-driven campaign," Begala said he replied.

Again, Cahill asked what Begala was talking about. Begala remembers that she looked "like I was going to perform open-heart surgery on her. She said: 'I need to think about this. Give me a couple of days to set that up.' From that day to now, I never heard another word from her. And you know, I was pretty angry. I'm still pretty angry."

Cahill now says she made a mistake in not calling Begala back. You think?

Not to toot my own horn [aw, why not; it's my blog], but I've said for years that getting the horse sense that Carville[or Begala] would have brought to the inner workings of the Kerry campaign would very possibly have been the difference between success and failure. By ignoring the South and placing all your hopes into one traditionally Republican state [Ohio], you are taking a hell of an electoral college gamble. The Democrats lost that gamble in 2000, and they did it again in 2004. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. For shame.

It also points out an "inside the Beltway" mindset I saw in 1985, when I interned for then-Senator Al Gore. I was a third year law student, and was willing to give of whatever skills I had for free [law school credit aside]. Gore's staff, however, was so turf-conscious and fearful of getting upstaged by anybody that they had me doing the xeroxing and signing constituent letters with the auto-pen.

My take is that Cahill responded to Begala's offer with shock and apparent disdain because she was afraid she was going to lose her campaign leadership position with Begala on board. Alternatively, she was afraid he would shake up the campaign that she had been instrumental in developing to that point. So, when Kerry & Co. needed it the most, they spurned assistance from one of the few people on the Democratic side who has ever successfully won a presidential campaign.

And now, Mary Beth Cahill is unemployed.

The New Republic: John Kerry for President. Salient quotes:

The president's war on terrorism, which initially offered a striking contrast to his special interest-driven domestic agenda, has come to resemble it. The common thread is ideological certainty untroubled by empirical evidence, intellectual curiosity, or open debate. The ideology that guides this president's war on terrorism is more appealing than the corporate cronyism that guides his domestic policy. But it has been pursued with the same sectarian, thuggish, and ultimately self-defeating spirit. You cannot lead the world without listening to it. You cannot make the Middle East more democratic while making it more anti-American. You cannot make the United States more secure while using security as a partisan weapon. And you cannot demand accountable government abroad while undermining it at home.

* * * *

On domestic policy, Bush has been Newt Gingrich without the candor. . . . But, rather than explicitly opposing popular government programs, as Gingrich did, Bush has pursued a more duplicitous strategy: He is eviscerating the government's ability to pay for them. His tax cuts. . . will produce what Bush's former Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, has privately called a "fiscal crisis"--a collapse in government revenue just as the baby-boom retirement sends Medicare and Social Security costs skyrocketing. This crisis will sap America's ability to wage the war on terrorism--since government will lack the funds to adequately safeguard homeland security or expand the military. It will create enormous pressure to eviscerate the government protections that guarantee poor and middle-class Americans even the meager economic security they enjoy today. And it will be entirely by design.

* * * *

By contrast, John Kerry has a record of fiscal honesty and responsibility that continues the tradition of Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin. Unlike most Democrats, he supported the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit-reduction plan. Unlike most Republicans, he supported Clinton's 1993 deficit-reduction package. And, unlike President Bush, he supports the "pay as you go" rules that, in the 1990s, helped produce a budget surplus.

* * * *

In the weeks after September 11, Bush presided over a country more united--with more faith in its government--than at any other time in recent memory. He has squandered that unity and trust for the cheapest of reasons. His administration has used the war on terrorism as a bludgeon against congressional Democrats and has implied that its critics are aiding the enemy. And it has repeatedly misled the public--touting supposed evidence of Iraq's nuclear program that American intelligence analysts knew was highly dubious, rebuking General Eric Shinseki for telling the truth about how many troops it would take to occupy Iraq successfully, and firing Lawrence Lindsey for saying how much it would cost.

The result is a country bitterly divided, distrustful of its government, and weaker as a result. The next time an American president tries to use force in the war on terrorism, he will not merely lack the world's trust, he will lack much of the American people's as well. That may be Bush's most damning legacy of all. He has failed the challenge of these momentous times. John Kerry deserves a chance to do better.

A damning indictment of the Bush presidency, and, to my way of thinking, an accurate one.

Glenn says that when he's elected president, he'll nominate Eugene Volokh for the Supreme Court. Hey, what about ME???

I mean, not to rely on influence, long association and knowing where his skeleton-filled closets are, but I do also have to room with him on our dive trips. That oughtta be worth something.

Anybody there?

From the Wall Street Journal bureau chief in Iraq comes this scathing report of conditions inside the country. Some scary quotes:

I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad.

* * * *
One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it's hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can't be put back into a
bottle.

* * * *
I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: "Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?"

Interesting postscript: the bureau chief author of the above is now reported to have left Baghdad for a "long vacation."

Whether the U.S. can succeed in its stated goal to bring stability and democracy is an open question. What is quite clear by now is that the Bush Administration completely failed to comprehend [refused to believe?] that making war would cause chaos, create a clearing house for terrorism, and quite possible lead Iraq into internecine cvil war.

If things had gone well, Bush would have been able to take the credit, and probably the election in a landslide. But things did not go and are not going well, so Bush must take the responsibility.

An outfit called IceRocket has a search engine just for blogs. Check it out.

I just got an email from the Bush campaign, addressed to "Jewish Outreach." The subject was Arafat's "endorsement" of Kerry. Awfully kind of the Bushies to let me know. It does beg the question, however, of why people other than Jewish folks would not be interested in this news. The religious/ethnic stereotyping obviously employed by the Bush campaign is, frankly, reprehensible.

Interestingly, Arafat, technically, has not endorsed Kerry or anybody else:

Arafat deputy and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told WND in an exclusive interview that while "we do not involve ourselves in internal American politics," at the same time "our region has been sliding deeper and deeper into chaos because of certain policies over the past few years, and this needs to change."

While he would not directly endorse Kerry, it was clear Erekat was implying the PA wants a change in White House leadership: "If things continue the way they are, if certain policies toward our region are maintained in the years to come, there is going to be a lot of violence on both sides."

Thus, Arafat has made no direct statement on the matter; an aide is speaking for him. Further, no direct endorsement was made.

Now, this might be splitting hairs, but the Bush trumpeting of an Arafat "endorsement" is just not accurate. Moreover, Kerry has no control over what Arafat or his people do. It would be a mistake to assume that Kerry is pro-palestinean or pro-Arafat simply because a Palstinean fellow made supporting statements about him. That does not compute.

And, while I no more support the Palestinean cause than I do terrorism [maybe the same thing?], it's no surprise that the Palestineans want regime change in the U.S., as Bush has been anathema to them.

Actually, the only good thing I can say about the Bush Administration is that its policy re: Israel has more or less recognized that the Palestineans have not acted and still do not act in good faith. Conversely, my biggest fear about a Kerry presidency is that he would re-elevate the grandaddy of terrorists and further muddle the situation in the Middle East.

Note by the way that I do not use the term "peace process," because I think that there is no peace process without both the warring parties acting in good faith. Given the Palestinean track record, I see no evidence of good faith movement toward peaceful co-existence with Israel. Ever.

JibJab has competition. Check this out for a, ahem, lighter side to this political season.

God help us all? A scathing graphical presentation accusing Katherine Harris, then Florida Secretary of State, Supervisor of Elections and head of the Bush campaign in Florida, of illegally disenfranchising at least 55,100 voters. As the presentation says, did she go to jail? Was she censured? Publicly lambasted? No. She is now a congresswoman from Florida. If the animation is accurate, it's devastating.

The Greg Palast BBC newscast upon which the presentation is based is here. And while the report is from 2001, it does beg the question: will it happen again?

Bad sign for Bush -- Dwight Eisenhower's son is a Kerry supporter. Pertinent quote:

The fact is that today’s “Republican” Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word “Republican” has always been synonymous with the word “responsibility,” which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today’s whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion.
****
Sen. Kerry, in whom I am willing to place my trust, has demonstrated that he is courageous, sober, competent, and concerned with fighting the dangers associated with the widening socio-economic gap in this country. I will vote for him enthusiastically.

I celebrate, along with other Americans, the diversity of opinion in this country. But let it be based on careful thought. I urge everyone, Republicans and Democrats alike, to avoid voting for a ticket merely because it carries the label of the party of one’s parents or of our own ingrained habits.

The implication here is that prominent old line Republicans are deserting the Republican party as having moved too far to the right, too far in favor of the wealthy to the exclusion of everyone else. I agree.

On my way to pick up my car from the shop today, I asked the kid who was driving me whether he was going to vote. He said, "Yes." I said, "Well, you should vote for Kerry, unless, of course, you make over $200,000 per year. In that case, Bush is your man." Sadly, I believe that exactly to be the case.