July 5: "G8 Leaders Set Deadline for Iran Response" (NYT).

This from the end of the piece strikes me as kind of comical, given that no one could argue that the US hasn't been "deeply involved" in the Iraqi political process:

No sooner was that compromise reached and Ms. Rice and [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov were at it again, this time over Mr. Lavrov's proposal that the statement include something about the need for the international community to be more involved in the Iraqi political process. Ms. Rice immediately took exception to that.

"To say the international community is to be more involved in the political process seems to me rather odd, given that they have a democratic elective process," she said.

"I did not suggest this," Mr. Lavrov replied. "What I did say was not involvement in the political process but the involvement of the international community in support of the political process."

"What does that mean?" Ms. Rice said.

There was a long pause. Then, from Mr. Lavrov: "I think you understand."

Ms. Rice: "No, I don't."

More from the Post on the squabbling, which includes Lavrov's reference to Weldon/Hoekstra/Santorum's recent claims about WMD in Iraq:

The two continued to squabble when Lavrov threw out a new concept -- that the new Iraqi government had to answer questions about former president Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction because last week Republican lawmakers in the United States had said there was evidence of chemical munitions.

"I think it's serious," he said. "While we want to support this government, we also believe that this government has something to do to finalize the leftovers of the past, which is basically nonproliferation concerns."

This line of conversation riled Rice, but once again other ministers suggested a compromise that mentioned the idea without endorsing it.

The Russian government anyhow seems to be taking Hoekstra/Santorum/Weldon's Iraq WMD concerns seriously. The Bush administration, not so much. What's wrong with this picture?

(more on the latter, from a House Armed Services committee hearing yesterday):

At the Armed Services Committee, [DIA director] Maples also asserted that the rockets and artillery rounds that had been found were produced in the 1980s and could not be used as intended. [...]

But despite statements of concern by Republicans about the risk of terrorists releasing the chemical in the United States, defense officials said the munitions pose as much a threat to people who try to handle them as potential victims. [...]

Republican lawmakers, some facing tough election battles amid growing anti-war sentiment, called the discovery of the weapons significant.

Republican Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania suggested the munitions were in fact the weapons of mass destruction that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein lied about, leading the United States to war.

"For those who claim that these weapons are not the weapons of mass destruction that the United States went to war over, I would refer them to 17 United Nations Security Council resolutions that Saddam Hussein violated," Weldon said. "It didn't say pre-'91 chemical weapons. It didn't say post-'91 chemical weapons. It said chemical weapons."

WP:

The Supreme Court today delivered a stunning rebuke to the Bush administration over its plans to try Guantanamo detainees before military commissions, ruling that the commissions violate U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of war prisoners.

In a 5-3 decision, the court said the trials were not authorized by any act of Congress and that their structure and procedures violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949. [...]

The ruling, which overturned a federal appeals court decision in which Roberts had participated, represented a defeat for President Bush, who had ordered trials before special military tribunals for detainees at the Guantanamo Bay naval base. About 450 detainees captured in the war on terrorism are currently held at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. Trying them before military commissions would place them under greater restrictions and afford them fewer rights than they would get in federal courts or regular military courts.

Bush said he would consult with Congress to seek "a way forward" after the ruling, which reversed the appeals court decision on statutory grounds, avoiding major constitutional issues.

Headed for court martials through the Uniform Code of Military Justice?

Lots of muck.

AEI's Norm Ornstein:

...In all my years of watching Congress, I have never seen anything quite like what we have now. It may be a cliché, and it may be a partisan attack term, but it is also true: There is a culture of corruption across Capitol Hill. ...

And he goes on to cite several other recent examples.

Check out Paul Kiel and the Philly Inquirer on Cong. Weldon's plan to hunt for WMD in Iraq. With Able Danger, his dalliance with Ghorbanifar's aide "Ali," his flirtation with Milosevic-era businessman Bogoljub Karic and insistence he could end that war on his own, his past praise of Uzbekistan's Karimov, Weldon has demonstrated quite a knack for personal foreign policy crusades.

Update: The Inky piece is worth reading in full. Here's an excerpt:

[Dave] Gaubatz, who lives in Dallas, is a former Air Force special investigator who served as a civilian employee in Iraq for a number of months in 2003.

While in Iraq, he acquired what he considered reliable information on the existence of WMD caches in four locations - not old stuff dating from the pre-Gulf War days, but recently produced gas and chemical weapons.

Gaubatz said he first contacted Weldon and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R., Mich.), head of the House Intelligence Committee, to share his info and get them to prod the Defense Department and intelligence agencies to do the WMD searches in the locales.

Instead, Gaubatz said, Weldon latched onto the idea as a "personal political venture" and discussed a Hoekstra-Weldon trip to Iraq, under the guise of visiting the troops, that would detour to Nasiriyah.

Once there, Gaubatz said, the congressmen planned to persuade the U.S. military commander to lend them the equipment and men to go digging by the Euphrates for the cache Gaubatz believed to be there.

He said that Weldon made it clear he didn't want word leaked to the Pentagon, to intelligence officials, or to Democratic congressmen.

As Gaubatz told me: "They even worked out how it would go. If there was nothing there, nothing would be said. If the site had been [scavenged], nothing would be said. But, if it was still there, they would bring the press corps out."

Gaubatz said the tenor of comments made at a May 4 meeting upset him.

"It was treated as an election issue that would get votes," he said. "I've never been involved in politics, so it was a very big eye-opener to me."

Plus, Gaubatz had safety concerns.

"To me, it was a big safety issue for them [Weldon and Hoekstra] to be going to an isolated area of Iraq. They are a target, and the people going out with them would be a target."

After the meeting, he said, he called a reporter at the Washington Times and alerted her of the plan. In turn, he said, she called Weldon's office to get confirmation. That inquiry, Gaubatz said, scuttled the project.

I found Gaubatz to be sincere and credible. You can check out some of the details at www.davegaubatz.com.

Update: Just had a really interesting interview with Dave Gaubatz. According to him, Weldon and his chief of staff Russ Caso are now apparently running a slime campaign against him all over town.

According to Gaubatz, Weldon told him that their planned Memorial Day trip to dig for WMD in Iraq would have to be kept secret from the DoD, DIA, CIA and one other agency. Weldon had Gaubatz Fedex 15 pages on locations of the alleged weapons sites to Weldon's staffer's home, so that it wouldn't go through congressional channels. "The Fedex receipt that is attached is the key to everything in regards to Weldon conducting the WMD issue behind doors for his own political reasons," Gaubatz sends in a note with the receipts. Gaubatz said that Weldon had Gaubatz check with the army base in Nasiriya to make sure they would have the digging equipment they would need, so that when they arrived there after flying commercially to Kuwait, without having informed anyone in the US government what they were going to do, they could commandeer the equipment and get to work. Meantime, after Gaubatz decided not to participate in the trip, after a conference call May 4th, because he feared Weldon was trying to turn this into a political stunt, Weldon's staff called Gaubatz and asked him to take down his website, something he has refused to do. I've been trying to get Weldon's side on this, but his office hasn't returned calls.

Chloe and Rush?

Worth reading from the Counterterrorism Blog's Victor Comras: "Reports of US Monitoring of SWIFT Transactions Are Not New: The Practice Has Been Known By Terrorism Financing Experts For Some Time":

Reports on US monitoring of SWIFT transactions have been out there for some time. The information was fairly well known by terrorism financing experts back in 2002. The UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Group , on which I served as the terrorism financing expert, learned of the practice during the course of our monitoring inquiries. The information was incorporated in our report to the UN Security Council in December 2002. That report is still available on the UN Website. Paragraph 31 of the report states:

“The settlement of international transactions is usually handled through correspondent banking relationships or large-value message and payment systems, such as the SWIFT, Fedwire or CHIPS systems in the United States of America. Such international clearance centres are critical to processing international banking transactions and are rich with payment information. The United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions. The Group recommends the adoption of similar mechanisms by other countries.”

More from the Post.

Graham Allison: "How Good is US Intelligence on Iran?"

... The current approach to Iran is predicated on the largely unexamined assumption that its overt enrichment program at Isfahan and Natanz is the problem and that a deal to freeze or dismantle the centrifuge facility constitutes a solution. The strategy doesn't address what US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld calls "known unknowns" - gaps in knowledge that have been recognized but not filled. [...]

Four huge "known unknowns" lie at the heart of judgments about the threat posed by Iran: First, is success in Iran's overt effort a necessary condition for success in its covert programs? Bush and his European colleagues operate on the assumption that it is. Otherwise their operational objective - a moratorium on research activities at Isfahan and Natanz - would be beside the point. ...

Spencer Ackerman: "Hard of Hearing."

Just Out: "Three Days in Rome."

(I really like the accompanying illustration, by artist Steve Brodner.)

A pretty funny TNR cookbook review by Saveur's Kelly Alexander about conservative cuisine and -- who knew? -- the conservative food movement. Long story short, it's studiously ordinary:

...Cheney's recipe [chicken florentine] is an outstanding example of how conservatives are winning the war on flavor by appropriating traditional middle-class American food and making it their own. The result is that lefties today are consistently portrayed as folks who are out of touch with the tastes of the electorate--that they are members of what our president once so eloquently called the "brie and cheese" crowd. "There is the idea that, somehow, you think you are smarter and better than somebody if your taste buds are at all cultivated," says the Boston-based Democratic political consultant Michael Goldman.

What's so interesting about this conservative food movement, though, is that it's completely counterintuitive--you've got guys with big means carrying on about beans, literally. Outstanding examples of this abound in The Great American Sampler Cookbook. For instance, we have Tom DeLay's "Big Bend Bean Dip," which includes nothing more than pinto beans, an onion, some fat (bacon drippings or butter, it's up to the cook), cheddar cheese, and a few slices of canned jalapeño peppers. Nothing against bean dip, but is this blue-collar fare what DeLay really subsists on? Not bloody likely if restaurant records from Signatures (lobbyist Jack Abramoff's once-happening luxurious D.C. commissary) are to be believed. [...]

The point here is not that conservatives don't like foreign food or that they honestly eschew expensive food. It's that they've mastered the art of faux populism--the vast majority of them probably like their sushi as much as any liberal. They've just figured out how to appear as if they don't.

Cheney's Cheney. The New Yorker's Jane Mayer profiles Cheney's chief of staff David Addington in the current issue (subscription only); they've made an interview with her about the piece available here:

...[Q]: Yet you write that some people—including some conservative Republicans—question whether Addington really respects the Constitution.

[A]: Some constitutional scholars have questioned whether Addington, in his eagerness to expand the powers of the Presidency, which he and Cheney see as having been unduly diminished since Watergate, gives enough weight to the legislative and judicial branches of the federal government. Some have suggested that he has aggrandized the powers of the President in such a way that the executive branch ignores the system of checks and balances set up by the Founding Fathers, so that its actions are unchecked and unaccountable. Bruce Fein, a Republican legal activist, told me that he regards Addington as an adequate lawyer but an inadequate student of American history, because he believes that Addington has failed to understand that the Founders designed the U.S. government specifically to insure that the executive would not have unlimited power. Fein suggests that the Founders, unlike Addington, understood the perils of concentrated power. They had seen in George III, among others, what tyranny meant. [...]

[Q]: David Addington doesn’t speak to reporters, and he refused your interview requests. After speaking to many people about Addington, what would you like to ask him now?

[A]: I’d like to ask him whether, in his view, there is anything that the President cannot legally do in the service of national security. Bruce Fein, the Republican legal activist, suggests that, in Addington’s view, the President could kill someone in a public park if he deemed the person to be an enemy combatant. I’d like to hear Addington’s thinking about why such an extreme view might be justified, and also why it is that, according to colleagues, he sees no political downside to these extreme views. For instance, he has repeatedly argued that there have been no political costs associated with Guantánamo Bay. Yet even President Bush has acknowledged that the Defense Department’s camps there have hurt the image of the U.S. abroad. It would be interesting to hear why Addington doesn’t agree with the President on this.

Nicholas Thompson: "Could Iraq be Vietnam in reverse?"

... Consider the respective arcs of the two conflicts. In Vietnam, the United States entered a divided country with a simmering civil war and left behind a nasty tyranny. In Iraq, the US has unseated a nasty tyranny but may leave behind a simmering civil war that could lead to a divided country. In Vietnam, fearing a nuclear clash with the Soviet Union or a confrontation with China, the US slid in slowly: first sending technical advisers, then undertaking search and destroy missions, and ultimately engaging in a full-throttle war. In Iraq, the US began full throttle, switched to search and destroy, and is now seriously debating whether to begin sliding out. In Vietnam, America was fighting to uproot communism. Now, it's fighting to plant democracy.

By this logic, the situation in Iraq today should be compared to the winter of 1966, when the US was about a year into major troop deployments in Vietnam. In 1966, America had a bit more than 150,000 troops engaged; now the US has just under that number. In both cases, about 2,500 soldiers had already died in action. This week, the Senate has held its first major hearings on the war since serious fighting began. The same thing happened regarding Vietnam in February of 1966. And it is these 1966 hearings-in particular the testimony of George F. Kennan, the framer of America's Cold War ``containment" policy-which offer vital insight into the current situation in Mesopotamia.

In 1964, after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Arkansas Senator and Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee William Fulbright voted in favor of escalating the war in Vietnam. By 1966, however, he had begun to change his mind. He convened a hearing before his committee to debate the issue, calling Kennan, among others.

Kennan was likely chosen because of a recent article he'd written for The Washington Post, criticizing both the war and war protesters who seemed to prefer the Viet Cong flag to America's. What he said that day on the Senate floor was even more controversial. Fred Friendly, the president of CBS, resigned when his network refused to broadcast it live. ...

Peace With Honor. What do you think? Mulling this, Rove would seem to have a really brilliant political plan that allows the administration to have its cake and eat it too. "Stay the course" rhetoric plus US troop drawdowns, vs. Democrats' "change the course" rhetoric and some drawdowns. Which is more appealing?

Warren Buffett plans to give $40 billion to benefit the Gates foundation, family planning philanthropic work, pro-environment charities, etc. Fortune says it's the largest philanthropic gift in history.

Just listening to Bill Kristol on Fox News saying AG Gonzales should consider prosecuting the NYT for running the SWIFT network monitoring story. But - didn't Mr. Kristol's magazine publish classified information just a few years ago leaked to it during the height of the Iraq war? I believe it did. As Mr. Kristol's magazine brags below, it published excerpts from a top secret intelligence document:

OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee....

So does Mr. Kristol as Keller's editorial counterpart deserve to be prosecuted as well by Mr. Gonzales? Why does he think he has the authority to make that decision to publish top secret intelligence information in his magazine, while, as he is saying now on Fox, the NYT's Bill Keller does not? Does Kristol think it should be left to his editorial discretion? Does he think that what he published served a higher cause: the public's right to know? Or did it serve another cause he thought warranted his taking it upon himself the authority to knowingly publish top secret classified information?

I'd love to hear Keller, Kristol and Gonzales debate this point. Kristol's actions in knowingly publishing classified information in the midst of a war speak for themselves, and his casual suggestion that the NYT should be prosecuted for doing the same does not seem consistent with his own practices.

More here.

Interesting new Jerry Kammer piece on appropriatons committe chairman Jerry Lewis, his aide turned lobbyist Letitia White, congressman turned lobbyist Bill Lowery, and several defense contractor clients, including San Diego based Orincon, a White client to which Lowery was named a member of the board, and in which he received a percent of the proceeds when it was sold to Lockheed Martin in 2003:

...Orincon grew slowly after it was founded three decades ago by former UCSD professor Daniel Alspach. But in the late 1990s, after it signed on with Lowery's firm, the privately held company's growth curve turned sharply upward.

Early each year, as the defense appropriations subcommittee was assembling the annual Pentagon spending bill, Alspach and Lowery would visit Lewis' office, meeting with Letitia White and sometimes with Lewis himself, according to records examined by Copley News Service. [...]

Orincon paid $720,000 for the firm's services between 1998 and 2003. Lowery was given a seat on Orincon's board of directors.

Alspach and his Orincon colleagues also invested heavily in political contributions to Lewis – at least $102,000 between 1998 and 2003 – and provided first-class hospitality for the congressman and his staff.

In April 1999, White, Lewis and Lowery traveled at Orincon's expense to San Diego to visit the company's headquarters. They stayed two nights at La Valencia, one of La Jolla's most prestigious resort hotels. Lewis' eighth-floor, oceanfront suite cost $700 a night. White reported that lodging for her and her husband cost a total of $1,000.

Orincon's sales, heavily dependent on federal contracts, zoomed from $10 million in the mid-1990s to $52 million in 2003, the year Lockheed bought the company.

Terms of the sale were never announced. But Lowery received part of the proceeds as owner of several thousand shares of Orincon's closely held stock. When Alspach went on to start a venture capital company, Homeland Venture Partners, he named Lowery to its advisory board.

More here.

WP: Curveball.

Just Out: an Iran-focused issue in Sunday's Washington Post Outlook, featuring Karl Vick, Richard Perle, Abbas Milani and Michael McFaul, and a small "Iran on the Potomac: who's who" by yours truly.

Open Democracy: "The appointment of the notoriously repressive judge Saeed Mortazavi to the United Nations's new Human Rights Council is an international scandal":

Mortazavi was the presiding judge of the infamous Court 1410 and hailed as the "butcher of the press" for his vicious rulings against journalists and freethinkers. He is credited with the closure of more than 100 publications and the harassment and imprisonment of many writers, activists, lawyers and bloggers in recent years. Shirin Ebadi, the lawyer and Nobel laureate, has even accused Mortazavi of being present in 2003 when Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was tortured and killed.

Last Monday, he apparently served as Iran's witness to the inauguration of the new UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. As I understand from Iranian sources, Montazeri recently played a role in urging friends and family of internationally renowned philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo not to make a big international fuss about Jahanbegloo's May arrest, suggesting if it was handled quietly he would be quickly released. But in jail he remains.

Shadow oversight. Special hearing on pre-Iraq war intelligence Monday, June 26, 1:30 PM in Room 192 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Among those slated to testify, "Lawrence Wilkerson, Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, 2001-2005; Paul Pillar, CIA official responsible for coordinating intelligence on Iraq, 2000-2005; Carl Ford, Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, 2001-2003; Wayne White, State Department principal Iraq analyst, 2003-2005; Rod Barton, Senior Advisor to the Iraq Survey Group, 2003-2004; Michael Smith, reporter for the Sunday Times of London, and the first to report the existence of the so-called 'Downing Street Memo'; and Joseph Cirincione, co-author of WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications." Senators to attend, Harry Reid (D-NV), Dorgan, and Mark Dayton (D-MN).

Lance Armstrong may have a future in politics. Update: Some readers weigh in in defense of Lance.

SWIFT tracking. What's amazing is how long this has stayed secret, given the amount of people who knew about it, including the auditors at Booz Allen Hamilton:

U.S. officials, some of whom expressed surprise the program had not previously been revealed by critics, acknowledged it would be controversial in the financial community. "It is certainly not going to sit well in the world marketplace," said a former counterterrorism official. "It could very likely undermine the integrity of SWIFT."

Bush administration officials asked the Times not to publish information about the program, contending that disclosure could damage its effectiveness and that sufficient safeguards are in place to protect the public. [...]

Under the program, Treasury issues a new [administrative] subpoena once a month and SWIFT turns over huge amounts of electronic financial data, according to Stuart Levey, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. The administrative subpoenas are issued under authority granted in the 1977 International Emergency Powers Act.

The SWIFT information is added to a massive database that officials have been constructing since shortly after Sept. 11. Levey noted that SWIFT did not have the ability to search its own records. "We can because we built the capability to do that," he said.

Treasury shares the data with the CIA, the FBI and analysts from other agencies, who can run queries on specific individuals and accounts believed to have terrorist connections, Levey said Thursday in an interview with the Times.

In fact, the database is housed at the CIA, and overseen by Treasury. More from the NYT: "While the banking program is a closely held secret, administration officials have held classified briefings for some members of Congress and the Sept. 11 commission, the officials said. More lawmakers were briefed in recent weeks, after the administration learned The Times was making inquiries for this article."

And Swift doesn't sound very happy with the arrangement:

Despite the controls, Swift executives became increasingly worried about their secret involvement with the American government, the officials said. By 2003, the cooperative's officials were discussing pulling out because of their concerns about legal and financial risks if the program were revealed, one government official said.

"How long can this go on?" a Swift executive asked, according to the official.

Even some American officials began to question the open-ended arrangement. "I thought there was a limited shelf life and that this was going to go away," the former senior official said.

Via Ha'aretz, more drawn from Ron Suskind's new book about how a related terror finance tracking program works on the ground. What's interesting? Terror financiers figured out their Western Union transactions were being monitored over time from experience - and stopped using it -- not because of press revelations.

Surrogates. Casey on Iran in Iraq. WP's Thomas Ricks:

Iranian support for extremists inside Iraq has shown a "noticeable increase" this year, with Tehran's special forces providing weapons and bomb training to anti-U.S. groups, the top U.S. commander in Iraq said yesterday.

Other U.S. officials have complained about Iranian meddling in Iraq, but the criticism of Tehran by Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. was the most direct and explicit so far. [...]

"We are quite confident that the Iranians, through their covert special operations forces, are providing weapons, IED technology and training to Shia extremist groups in Iraq, the training being conducted in Iran and in some cases probably in Lebanon through their surrogates," Casey said... The Iranians are "using surrogates to conduct terrorist operations in Iraq, both against us and against the Iraqi people."

Beyond the substance of the claims, what do you think is the rationale for making this statement now? As opposed to two months ago, or six months ago? It's the top news on the BBC. And if it's own sort of diplomatic message, what does it mean that it was delivered by Casey, the top US military commander in Iraq?

Update: Why now? A colleague and friend writes, "... I can think of only a couple of explanations for the timing, both related. The first is that Casey is coming under pressure from the WH to help prepare the propaganda battlefield for an air attack against Iran. The second is that the Iranians have ordered the militias under their influence in Iraq to start engaging the US as a warning of what will come if we do bomb Iran."

In this regard, Casey's mention of Lebanon interesting too. Iran surrogates, Lebanon. Is this a message to Hezbollah?

And worth reading this Gareth Porter analysis too.

North Korea, Good cop, bad cop. Former special US envoy to North Korea Charles Jack Pritchard in the WP, "No, Don't Blow it Up."

More response to the Perry/Carter oped from Chris Nelson's Thursday night report:

Since Secretary Perry had, until now, been the favored candidate of Korea policy critics to be a Special Envoy in any future direct negotiations, the Op Ed in the Washington Post, co-authored (and, most likely, drafted by) Clinton DOD non-proliferation official Ashton Carter, sparked a vigorous, still-continuing e-mail “conversation” among Korea policy elites.

Because of Perry’s reputation, many Loyal Readers felt compelled to argue that however irresponsible his logic, the fact that it was Perry advocating a risky act of war “definitely has gotten the attention of both Beijing and Pyongyang”. Some even conjectured that surely there was method in the madness, and that Perry might even have secretly orchestrated this with Sec. State Condi Rice. [...]

Experts who have followed Perry and Carter more closely said that in fact, today’s recommendation is not as unexpected as it might seem, since Carter had advocated direct military action back during the 1993-94 crisis which led to the Agreed Framework, and Perry has frequently advocated military measures as non-proliferation solutions.

But frankly, most respondents were contemptuous of what they saw as a misguided, perhaps cynical attempt by Perry and Carter to “audition” for the next Administration, and to “prove that Democrats are just as tough on defense as Republicans.”

A more benign interpretation of this, from a former diplomat: “I presume that another motive is political/psychological, to grab the attention of the North Koreans, Chinese and others by making plain that there is broad bi-partisan concern in the US regarding NK intentions and capabilities, and that the Administration would have the support of respected Democrats if it judged that the US national interest was best served by a preemptive strike.”

We note the very harsh judgments against Perry/Carter because they were nearly universal, precisely because the internal logic of their piece is so incredibly flawed. Obviously, no one disputes their concerns..that’s why this “crisis” exists. [...]

But Perry/Carter flat out predict that an act of war by the US in this situation would produce no serious N. Korean retaliation...something most of our respondents severely dispute. So their discussion of a war “lasting several weeks” on the Peninsula struck respondents as irresponsibly contradictory...”either N. Korea is deterrable, or it isn’t. They can’t have it both ways, to support their argument.”

One arms control expert goes to far as to warn, “my bet is, the N. Koreans would respond to an attack on Musudan-ri [the missile site] by launching Nodong MRBM’s at US targets in Japan, and possibly Japanese cities as well. Would Carter and Perry advocate that we absorb this retaliation, or should we try to pre-empt that, too? At this point, their scenario threatens to spin out of control.” [...]

That comment explains what we have noted in many previous Reports...the underlying Chinese reason for displeasure with Kim Jong-il. ...

Phase II.0. Go read Kevin Drum, Greg Sargent, and Byron York. This quote about the Senate Intel committee from the York piece is incredible: “'This is an intensely political committee,' says one Senate Republican. 'The whole track record of the committee is political.'” The committee that was designed to be the least politicized has become among the most.

More on North Korea in the update below.

Funny. Harold Meyerson notes that the Post broke down the
Senate vote count yesterday on raising the minimum wage (it failed), by political party, state, region, boomer status and -- astrological sign. "For anyone with a double major in political science and astrology," Meyerson writes, "this is pure gold."

WP: Clinton Pentagon officials call for strike on North Korea ballistic missile facility if Pyongyang "persists in its launch preparations":

Former defense secretary William J. Perry has called on President Bush to launch a preemptive strike against the long-range ballistic missile that U.S. intelligence analysts say North Korea is preparing to launch.

In an opinion article that appears in today's Washington Post, Perry and former assistant defense secretary Ashton B. Carter argue that if North Korea continues launch preparations, Bush should immediately declare that the United States will destroy the missile before it can be fired.

Perry and Carter suggest using a cruise missile launched from a submarine and carrying a high-explosive warhead. "The effect on the Taepodong would be devastating," they write, using the name of the Korean missile. "The multi-story, thin-skinned missile filled with high-energy fuel is itself explosive -- the U.S. airstrike would puncture the missile and probably cause it to explode. The carefully engineered test bed for North Korea's nascent nuclear missile force would be destroyed."

As President Bill Clinton's defense secretary, Perry oversaw preparation for airstrikes on North Korean nuclear facilities in 1994, an attack that was never carried out. He has remained deeply involved in Korean policy issues and is widely respected in national-security circles, especially among senior military officers. He has been a critic of the Bush administration's approach to North Korea.

"We believe diplomacy might have precluded the current situation," Perry and Carter said. "But diplomacy has failed, and we cannot sit by and let this deadly threat mature."

Here's the Bill Perry/Ash Carter oped:

...The United States should emphasize that the strike, if mounted, would not be an attack on the entire country, or even its military, but only on the missile that North Korea pledged not to launch -- one designed to carry nuclear weapons. We should sharply warn North Korea against further escalation.

North Korea could respond to U.S. resolve by taking the drastic step of threatening all-out war on the Korean Peninsula. But it is unlikely to act on that threat. Why attack South Korea, which has been working to improve North-South relations (sometimes at odds with the United States) and which was openly opposing the U.S. action? An invasion of South Korea would bring about the certain end of Kim Jong Il's regime within a few bloody weeks of war, as surely he knows. Though war is unlikely, it would be prudent for the United States to enhance deterrence by introducing U.S. air and naval forces into the region at the same time it made its threat to strike the Taepodong. If North Korea opted for such a suicidal course, these extra forces would make its defeat swifter and less costly in lives -- American, South Korean and North Korean.

This is a hard measure for President Bush to take. It undoubtedly carries risk. But the risk of continuing inaction in the face of North Korea's race to threaten this country would be greater. ...

(I studied with Carter in the late 1990s when he was working the North Korea problem as a consultant with Perry to the Clinton administration, and informed us how close we had come to war in 1994. ... As back then, one wonders if we are far closer to a military option with Korea now than might be indicated by the relative lack of press chatter.)

Update. Or is this just more Kabuki? From a colleague knowledgeable about the issue: "Everyone is trying to depict North Korea as so unpredictable and crazy. It’s just the opposite: They’re totally predictable. All this is just another bluff to get more aid and to strengthen their bargaining position. South Korea already came out today and said they didn’t think Pyongyang was going to launch. It’s just another act in the North Korean kabuki." Bill Arkin and Noah Shachtman think the crisis is overblown too.

I asked Asia expert Chris Nelson what he thinks. He writes, "The only plausible explanation I have seen so far is that Perry thinks this will get the Norks' attention that everyone is seriously pissed of, so they better back down."

So is the Perry/Carter oped a diplomatic tactic in its own right? From two Korea experts Pyongyang is familiar with as deeply serious and who have urged Washington towards diplomacy 'til now?

"That's not to say folks agree with [Perry's] analysis," Nelson adds. "They think Perry has flipped out."

Blow the House Down. Interesting interview with former CIA officer turned spy novelist Bob Baer, of Syriana-inspiration fame. (Link fixed).

Note from Jamal Ware, spokesman to House intel committee chairman Peter Hoekstra: "U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, will hold a press conference to release the unclassified summary of an Army report on chemical weapons found in Iraq since May 2004. The press conference is scheduled for 5:15 p.m., today, in the Senate Radio-TV Gallery, S-325."

Update: Here's what they said. And here's what they didn't:

...The lawmakers pointed to an unclassified summary from a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center regarding 500 chemical munitions shells that had been buried near the Iranian border, and then long forgotten, by Iraqi troops during their eight-year war with Iran, which ended in 1988.

In other words, the leftovers from back in the 80s in the era that saw even Rumsfeld personally meeting with Saddam to offer Iraq some intelligence assistance in its war with Iran. It's hard not to believe that Santorum and Hoekstra were put up to this as surrogates of the White House, which gets all of the desired effect on the eastern side of the buzz machine, without too many fingerprints.

Update II: And don't forget, by the way, who has a big role in the Army National Ground Intelligence Center, down in Charlottesville, Virginia. That would be MZM, until recently chaired by one imprisoned-for-bribery Mitchell J. Wade. And as Walter Pincus reported, MZM systematically hired relatives of top NGIC officials, and then the NGIC officials themselves, as they started to seek and win ever larger contracts to provide database intel services to the Army center.

This from Barton Gellman's review of Suskind's book is also stunning:

Suskind titles one chapter "Zawahiri's Head," a reference to Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second in command, whom Suskind cheekily dubs "bin Laden's Cheney, the older man who made sure that ideas were carried to action." At least four times in 2001-02, reports reached Washington that Zawahiri had died. One set of Afghan tribal chiefs said they could prove it. In June, they delivered a mud-caked head, and an intelligence officer flew it in a metal box to Dulles airport for DNA analysis. Coleman, the FBI analyst, held the jawless skull "as Hamlet did with Yorick's." It felt, he tells Suskind, "like a boccie ball." Bush, who was tracking the transaction, reportedly told a briefer -- "half in jest," Suskind writes -- that "if it turns out to be Zawahiri's head, I hope you'll bring it here." It turned out to be someone else's.

Reviled for failure to develop human spies inside al-Qaeda, the CIA in fact has done so at least twice, Suskind reports. One source warned in detail of a planned 2003 cyanide gas attack on New York subways -- then said Zawahiri himself had inexplicably called it off. The other informant was a "walk-in" who led the CIA directly to the most significant al-Qaeda operative captured to date -- Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the 9/11 plot's mastermind, known to "the invisibles" as KSM. Suskind reports that the al-Qaeda turncoat who turned KSM in collected the $25 million U.S. reward for information leading to his capture and is now living under a new name in this country.

Says a knowledgeable observer: [Former CIA executive director] "Dusty [Foggo] is singing like a bird." More here, including on the CIA contract Foggo's friend was in negotiations to receive in early 2005.

Playwright Arthur Miller's FBI file. It's reassuring that history provides no examples of government abuse and excess in domestic surveillance.

WP: Publisher Merrill death a suicide. "Merrill was assistant secretary general to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the early 1990s and president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States from 2002 until last year. He frequently took time away from his business to pursue diplomatic and intelligence assignments for the government. ... His death recalled two other high-profile incidents involving prominent Washington area residents. In 1996, former CIA director William E. Colby died from drowning and exposure after falling from a canoe off Charles County. ... In 1978, another former high-level CIA employee, John A. Paisley, disappeared while sailing across the Chesapeake Bay. His body was found a week later near Solomons Island with a fatal gunshot wound in an apparent suicide." What were Merrill's recent intel assignments for the administration? (Anyone read the book about Robert Maxwell? Hard not to be vaguely reminded of it).

Rain Delay. Chris Nelson on North Korea:

With no test so far, the N. Korean missile test story just won’t go away, and the interesting consensus now developing is that “this time, Kim Jong-il seems to have outsmarted himself”. That’s because it now seems certain that the whole controversy has put Chinese and S. Korean support for Pyongyang in a very difficult position, almost regardless of what finally happens...and the whole thing is adding up to a big boost for missile defense/hard liners in both Japan and the US.

One wag went so far as to quip, “If you ask me, KJI has gone on Cheney’s payroll!” At a minimum, private US analysts agree, any missile firing would have to be interpreted as a firm declaration by N. Korea that it has no intention of returning to the 6 Party Talks process, much less of seeking serious negotiations with the Bush Administration.

This conclusion has, in reality, been increasingly the consensus of both pro and anti engagement forces for some time now, it should be noted. That it is also the preferred option of Administration hardliners has been debated for years, as we have been reporting.

As for the missile itself, depending on which particular intelligence leak you wish to believe, it sounds like weather is the determining factor in “no launch so far”; earlier forecasts had it bad for the rest of the week. Whether the nerves of decision-makers in Seoul, Washington, Tokyo and Beijing could hold up that long is becoming an interesting question.

But we gather that the latest forecast is for sunshine (literally, not a policy) over N. Korea when dawn breaks shortly...so stay tuned. ...

"What's your bet on the Korean missile," he concludes his report. "Will we wake up to news of a launch?"

I don't have time to do it justice at the moment, but check out the really fantastic profile by the Washington Monthly's Soyoung Ho of the China uber-hawk with Rumsfeld's ear. Among other things, he's a BCCI alum:

...The meltdown of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International in 1991 should probably have ended Pillsbury's career. According to a report released by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1992, he had developed close ties to BCCI frontman Mohammed Hammoud, a Lebanese Shi'ite millionaire, meeting with him "ten to twenty times" in cities around the world and accepting money from him. The report explained:

According to Pillsbury, Hammoud paid him an advance to coauthor a scholarly text about the Shi'ites... However, Pillsbury refused to disclose the amount he had been paid by Hammoud, and when the payment was made. Pillsbury argued that these facts were irrelevant since he ultimately returned the money, although he refused to specify when that occurred. Pillsbury stated that his expenses had never been paid by either Hammoud or BCCI. However, these statements are contradicted by notes taken by BCCI's lawyer ...

The report also found that Pillsbury, when BCCI began to totter, had written to the public relations firm of Hill and Knowlton "offering to be of assistance to BCCI in its public relations efforts."

By the late 1990s, though, BCCI was a dim memory, and Pillsbury a changed man--at least as far as China was concerned. A Sinophile no more...

And back in business.

Jerusalem Post: Meet the ex prime ministers club. Recently convened by Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, its mission, to discuss the Iranian nuclear issue (and keep potential Olmert political critics inside rather than outside on this issue, for now at least):

The source said that beyond Olmert's desire to tap into the experience of the former prime ministers, there was also a political component to the issue: These meetings would be a way for Olmert to build a national consensus on how to deal with Iran and to neutralize any possible future criticism of the government's Iran policy by Netanyahu.

Peres, meanwhile, met over the weekend with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as with leaders from both Azerbaijan and Tajikistan, at a security conference in Kazakhstan.

One of the focuses of the talks was Iran, and Peres, according to sources in his office, was expected to brief Olmert, Barak and Netanyahu on the Azerbaijani and Tajik take on Ahmadinejad. [...]

Netanyahu intends to report to the prime minister on his meetings over the weekend at the American Enterprise Institute conference in Boulder, Colorado. Netanyahu spoke at great length on the Iranian issue with US Vice President Dick Cheney.

(Thx to reader S).

Michiko Kakutani reviews Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine:

... "The One Percent Doctrine" amplifies an emerging portrait of the administration (depicted in a flurry of recent books by authors as disparate as the Reagan administration economist Bruce Bartlett and the former Coalition Provisional Authority adviser Larry Diamond) as one eager to circumvent traditional processes of policy development and policy review, and determined to use experts (whether in the C.I.A., the Treasury Department or the military) not to help formulate policy, but simply to sell predetermined initiatives to the American public.

Mr. Suskind writes that the war on terror gave the president and vice president "vast, creative prerogatives": "to do what they want, when they want to, for whatever reason they decide" and to "create whatever reality was convenient." The potent wartime authority granted the White House in the wake of 9/11, he says, dovetailed with the administration's pre-9/11 desire to amp up executive power (diminished, Mr. Cheney and others believed, by Watergate) and to impose "message discipline" on government staffers.

"The public, and Congress, acquiesced," Mr. Suskind notes, "with little real resistance, to a 'need to know' status — told only what they needed to know, with that determination made exclusively, and narrowly, by the White House." ...

Further down:

During a November 2001 session with the president, Mr. Suskind recounts, a C.I.A. briefer realized that the Pentagon had not told Mr. Bush of the C.I.A.'s urgent concern that Osama bin Laden might escape from the Tora Bora area of Afghanistan (as he indeed later did) if United States reinforcements were not promptly sent in. And several months later, he says, attendees at a meeting between Mr. Bush and the Saudis discovered after the fact that an important packet laying out the Saudis' views about the Israeli-Palestinian situation had been diverted to the vice president's office and never reached the president.

Keeping information away from the president, Mr. Suskind argues, was a calculated White House strategy that gave Mr. Bush "plausible deniability" from Mr. Cheney's point of view, and that perfectly meshed with the commander in chief's own impatience with policy details. Suggesting that Mr. Bush deliberately did not read the full National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was delivered to the White House in the fall of 2002, Mr. Suskind writes: "Keeping certain knowledge from Bush — much of it shrouded, as well, by classification — meant that the president, whose each word circles the globe, could advance various strategies by saying whatever was needed. He could essentially be 'deniable' about his own statements."

More illuminating from the WaPo/Barton Gellman review via Kevin Drum:

Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."

More from Flynt Leverett on the petropolitics of US Iran nuclear diplomacy, in an oped in today's NYT:

... Together, Russia and Iran control almost half of the world's proven reserves of natural gas. If they coordinated their production and marketing decisions, these two countries could be twice as dominant in international gas markets as Saudi Arabia is in the global oil market.

And as China looks to deepen its own involvement in Iran, there would be opportunities for Chinese-Russian cooperation in developing Iranian resources, and collaborating against what both Beijing and Moscow see as excessive United States unilateralism in world affairs. By working together, Russia and China would further establish themselves as rising players in the Persian Gulf, where America has grown used to something like hegemonic status.

Against this backdrop, the Bush administration's approach to nuclear diplomacy with Iran is strategically shallow. The decision to encourage direct talks with Tehran generated many headlines but was really only a limited tactical adjustment to forestall an embarrassing collapse in coordination with America's key international partners.

By continuing to reject a grand bargain with Tehran, the Bush administration has done nothing to increase the chances that Iran will accept meaningful long-term restraints on its nuclear activities. It has also done nothing to ensure that the United States wins the longer-term struggle for Iran. ...

More here.

Worth reading: Dan Froomkin on the real subject of Suskind's new book -- Cheney, and how Cheney has framed national security thinking in the Bush White House.

Chris Nelson on North Korea:

....IF Kim Jong-il decides that the publicity so far isn’t enough, and he really needs to go through with exploding something, then highly informed Adminstration sources say the US plans a retaliatory scheme along the lines of the international bank sanctions already in place for counterfeiting et al.

“There is a quite well planned out and a very detailed response [ready] if they do this”, says a source. “This will go way past the [Macau bank]. There are other places we can grab ‘em and squeeze ‘em, but not many places they can put their money.”

Japanese officials spent the weekend, starting Friday, threatening various sorts of retaliation, from cutting off direct ferry links, and the remaining personal financial links from Koreans in Japan, all the way up to a complaint to the United Nations.

S. Korean officials had spent the past couple of weeks, since the rumors began, sounding both tougher and more upset at N. Korean behavior than has been their norm. But as the weekend progressed, there began to be news stories indicating doubts that US-supplied intelligence was 100% reliable...that is, that perhaps what is on or close to the launch pad is NOT actually a Taepodong-2 ICBM, but perhaps even just another Nodong.

That’s worth noting, as some non-government but expert US sources, themselves up to speed on the available classified intel, have been warning for more than a week that we should not jump to conclusions about what the DPRK is prepared to launch, and specifically hinting (can one hint specifically? Oh well...) that the rocket may turn out to be less than a Taepodong-2, when all the smoke clears.

Today, there were hints from S. Korea officials they may be starting to doubt the key parts of the story, at least as it has been spun by US “official sources”, specifically challenging “intel” that fueling has been completed. And one Korean “source who asked not to be named” in a Korea Times story went to far as to charge ulterior motive in all the US-based leaks, “Frankly speaking, aren’t the United States and Japan in a position that could enjoy the current situation?”

This anonymous source the specified how a DPRK missile shoot helps boost US and Japanese supporters of national missile defense, but said for S. Korea, the situation is vastly more complicated, since, the Korea Times paraphrased, “the South Korean government, placed in a different position as a ‘directly concerned party’, is forced to deal with the problem not only as a mere military and security issue but also a political and diplomatic one.”

Interesting choice of words, “mere military and security issue”...

US experts not in the Administration also argue that as spectacular as a full ICBM test might be, if it comes AND is judged successful, there is still no hint of intelligence that the DPRK has miniaturized a nuclear war head for a missile.

Check out this short blog excerpt of a new In the National Interest article by Flynt Leverett and Pierre Noel about petropolitics, which they argue is emerging as one of the preeminent constraints on US global leadership. Take the case of Iran. "... The implications of the new petropolitics and an emerging axis of oil for America’s international influence are illustrated by the way these forces are frustrating U.s. objectives on the Iranian nuclear issue. The policies of key players on this issue are conditioned far more by calculations about the economics and geopolitics of energy than was the case during the run-up to the Iraq War. As the Western powers consider what sort of action against Iran they might collectively support, it is clear that their options in the security Council are severely limited by Russian and Chinese resistance to the imposition of sanctions or other strongly punitive measures. ..." The low-brow interpretation of this, if I get it? Ultimately, an oil embargo is almost inconceivable. Full article, subscription only, is here.

Like some well known American brands, the venerable American Prospect is apparently the object of favorable placement advertising in the movies.

MSNBC breaking news: "U.S. official: N. Korea has finished fueling long-range missile set for test."

Nice sketch of the triangular arrangement between Appropriations committee chairman Jerry Lewis, former San Diego rep Bill Lowery and 19 California towns and institutions that hired Lowery's firm to help get earmarks; raising the question, was it a shakedown? and did Lewis get anything except campaign donations from the arrangement? More from me on this issue (sub. only).

And in other corruption investigation related news, Paul Kiel explains how DHS found a letter from Cunningham recommending for a contract a limo company owned by an ex-con it had previously claimed it didn't have.

WP: Veteran operations officer Steve Kappes takes up the CIA deputy director position as early as today. Among his achievements, persuading Libya's Moammar Qaddafi to abandon his WMD programs. And among his antagonists, House intel committee chairman Peter Hoekstra and Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA):

Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), a ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, is one of Kappes's most vocal critics. Weldon criticizes what he calls Kappes's failure to pursue the congressman's view that a colleague of Manucher Ghorbanifar, one of the instigators of the Iran-contra affair, had important information on Iran's nuclear program.

A source that Jeet Heer and I helped clarify.

Newsday: Speculation about a pardon for Libby heats up. If you heard the Fox News Sunday panel, this was striking. Along with Brit Hume and Bill Kristol positively giggling throughout, with joy.

This really must be read (.pdf). It appears to have been signed off on by Amb. Khalilzad.

The Post's Charles Babcock reports on Project M, and the small defense contractor that provided the technology for it that got millions of dollars in earmarks for a project the Navy never wanted. Tying it together with a brief mention from his piece from yesterday, (but not explicit in today's piece), the technology involved -- magnetic levitation -- is one flacked by the stepdaughter of Appropriations committee chairman Jerry Lewis, who was a champion for Project M, along with California congressman Duncan Hunter and Virginia representative Jim Moran. "[Lewis' stepdaughter] also has worked part time for General Atomics, a Southern California defense contractor, including on the magnetic levitation issue where she met Alcalde, he said."

Frank Rich on Karl Rove beating the Dems:

... After the good news arrived about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, administration officials at first downplayed any prospect of a new "Mission Accomplished" to hype the victory. But that restraint didn't last a week. In sync with Barbra Streisand, who this month announced a new concert tour to cap her 1994 farewell tour, the White House gave in to its nature and revved up its own encore.

Given our government's preference for spectacle over substance, "Baghdad Surprise 2" was more meticulously planned than security for post-liberation Baghdad. The script was a montage of the administration's greatest hits.

As with the prototype of Thanksgiving 2003, there was a breathless blow-by-blow of how President Bush faked out his own cabinet, donned a baseball cap and slipped into his waiting plane. In cautious remembrance of "Top Gun," White House photos were disseminated of the fearless leader hovering in the cockpit. Once on the ground, Mr. Bush made much of looking into the eyes of Nuri al-Maliki, our third post-Saddam Iraqi leader, and finding him as worthy as he did Vladimir Putin after a similarly theatrical ocular X-ray. This bit of presidential shtick is now as polished as Johnny Carson's old burlesque psychic, Carnac the Magnificent.

Worth reading, including this:

What's most impressive about Mr. Rove, however, is not his ruthlessness, it's his unshakable faith in the power of a story. The story he's stuck with, Iraq, is a loser, but he knows it won't lose at the polls if there's no story to counter it. And so he tells it over and over, confident that the Democrats won't tell their own. And they don't — whether about Iraq or much else. The question for the Democrats is less whether they tilt left, right or center, than whether they can find a stirring narrative that defines their views, not just the Republicans'.

What's needed, wrote Michael Tomasky in an influential American Prospect essay last fall, is a "big-picture case based on core principles." As he argued, Washington's continued and inhumane failure to ameliorate the devastation of Katrina could not be a more pregnant opportunity for the Democrats to set forth a comprehensive alternative to the party in power. Another opportunity, of course, is the oil dependence that holds America hostage to the worst governments in the Middle East.

Instead the Democrats float Band-Aid nostrums and bumper-sticker marketing strategies like "Together, America Can Do Better." As the linguist Geoffrey Nunberg pointed out, "The very ungrammaticality of the Democrats' slogan reminds you that this is a party with a chronic problem of telling a coherent story about itself, right down to an inability to get its adverbs and subjects to agree." On Wednesday Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were to announce their party's "New Direction" agenda — actually, an inoffensive checklist of old directions (raise the minimum wage, cut student loan costs, etc.) — that didn't even mention Iraq. Symbolically enough, they had to abruptly reschedule the public unveiling to attend Mr. Bush's briefing on his triumphant trip to Baghdad. ...

Journalist Carol Williams writes on getting kicked out of Gitmo, and how much the US government wishes it could impose a total news blackout there:

... Those of us cleared to cover the prison and war-crimes tribunal learned long ago that there will be a hard-fought battle for every factlet. When unexpected news breaks, like the suicides, the Pentagon's knee-jerk reflex to thwart coverage reminds me of how Communist officials used to organize Cold War-era propaganda trips for Moscow correspondents but then pull the plug when embarrassing realities intruded. [...]

What little we learn often comes to light by accident, through casual slips-of-the-lips by military doctors, lawyers and jailers innocently oblivious of their superiors' preference for spin. A battery of questions to the prison hospital commander — who for security reasons can't be identified — elicited that prisoners are force-fed through a nasal-gastric tube if they refuse to eat for three days and that 1,000 pills a day are dispensed to treat detainee ailments, anxiety and depression. [...]

Court appearances by the 10 men charged with war crimes have offered us our first meaningful independent view of detainees in the prison's 4 1/2 years. Some seem to be committed holy warriors whose detention has only fueled their hatred of Americans. Others contend that they are innocent of any attack on U.S. forces, just unfortunates swept up in the post-9/11 fervor.

Meanwhile, 450 others have been held for years without charges or legal recourse. Their indefinite detention to keep them off the global terrorism battlefields feels like a Muslim version of the World War II Japanese American internment.

It is the opportunity to shed light into the dark corners of the antiterrorism campaign that inspires us to surmount the obstacles and obfuscations. And it is the thwarting of that mission with moves like our expulsion that make us all the more determined to question, probe and illuminate the actions of our government being waged in the country's name.

Go read.

WP: Swooning over Barack Obama. He is the most requested Dem in the party hierarchy -- bar none -- for congressional fundraising appearances:

He has yet to carve out a distinctive profile on the policy and ideological debates that are central to how Democrats will position themselves in a post-Bush era. [...]

Instead, it is almost entirely Obama's biography, along with his gift for engaging people in large audiences and one-on-one encounters, that is driving interest. [...]

Every story ends the same, however. He overcame the odds, he tells the listeners, and so can they.

It is a homily that has left some fellow politicians swooning. "I haven't seen a phenomenon like this, where someone comes in so new and is so dazzling," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a 25-year veteran of Congress. Schumer, who heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said Obama "is more requested than anybody else" in the party's hierarchy for fundraising and campaign appearances on behalf of congressional candidates. "Everyone wants him. He's lightning."

A question of timing when he will run for prez; he is demurring for now for 2008. And more on all that advice for Dems: symptom or the cure?

WP: "Snapshots from the office," US embassy Baghdad (.pdf). More from Editor & Publisher.

NYT:

Democrats asserted that Republicans had carried the politicization of foreign policy debates to new heights. They were particularly outraged that the Pentagon had distributed an "Iraq Floor Debate Prep Book" to some lawmakers with talking points defending administration policy. Some Democratic leaders also received the report, apparently in error; a Pentagon official sent a second e-mail message a few hours later, trying to recall it.

Fakes? Marc Lynch, a.k.a. Abu Aardvark, on the Zarqawi docs "treasure trove":

... Let's just say that were I a strategist for a military which had just killed an insurgency leader such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and seized a bunch of documents full of actionable intelligence, I might not choose to, you know, release them to the media. On the other hand, had I just killed an insurgency leader such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and I wanted to follow up on that operational success by sowing confusion and disarray among his followers (and maybe even scoring some points with the domestic public opinion which my Secretary of Defense has identified as a principle theater of conflict), I might very well release a bunch of "documents" showing that the recently deceased was highly pessimistic about his prospects and that his movement was on the run. (I might also announce that said movement had just declared some random character as its new leader, just to sow more confusion.)

Oh, enough delicacy. These documents seem like a fairly obvious bit of strategic communication, psy-ops, whatever you want to call it. ...

(Via Kevin Drum).

And absolutely worth jumping over to the Counterterrorism Blog's Evan Kohlmann, who suggests the Pentagon is either -- confused -- or may in fact be misleading everybody about Zarqawi's successor:

When Al-Qaida subsequently announced that Zarqawi's actual successor would actually be another unknown named Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, the Pentagon revised their earlier statement and Major General William Caldwell explained to a press conference, "We think that Abu Ayyub al-Masri is in fact, probably, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir. They are probably one and the same."

Unfortunately, this conclusion has been called into serious doubt by a host of fairly credible sources. Many in the jihadist community that support Al-Qaida are openly scoffing at Major General Caldwell's latest press conference...

It is certainly possible that these press conferences are a deliberate ploy by the U.S. military to flush out Al-Qaida and force them to better identify their replacement leadership in the wake of Zarqawi's demise. But unless this is the specific and narrow purpose, the Pentagon should be especially careful that it does not engage in misleading speculation in the media--or it endangers losing significant credibility. With all due respect for the difficult task they have been handed, the military has already committed serious public relations blunders in reporting on progress made in fighting Zarqawi's movement, such as their past insistence on assigning meaningless numeric values to captured or killed Al-Qaida operatives. Let's hope this isn't yet another one...

It's not clear what exactly is going on here. But if it's true that the disinformation is deliberate, that is quite troubling. In another age, such deliberate disinformation going straight into the American papers from the DoD might have been considered against the law, but there doesn't seem any authority left in this country which considers it its responsibility to check such things.

New Jersey vs. the US, re: NSA surveillance.

Roll Call: Copeland Lowery splits. More from the Post.

This San Diego Union-Trib piece on Shirlington Limo's sweetheart deal with the Department of Homeland Security has some interesting details: among them, that the grand jury investigating Shirlington's deals with the government is in fact the San Diego grand jury convened to hear evidence concerning alleged Duke Cunningham co-conspirator Brent Wilkes. And why would the Wilkes grand jury be interested in Shirlington? A friend says that despite the fact that Cunningham has admitted to accepting $600,000 in bribes from Wilkes, the US attorney's office may have a problem: many of Wilkes' alleged bribes fall outside of the five year statute of limitations for bribery. The Shirlington deal would appear to have occurred within the past five years.

Also worth pointing out that Shirlington founder and CEO Chris Baker, "an ex felon with a troubled financial record" as the SDUT puts it, with a "62-page rap sheet," has some very high-powered and presumably expensive attorneys representing him, including former Philip Morris attorney (and former journalist) Michael York.

From the American Foreign Policy Council's Ilan Berman:

The recent protests in Iran's ethnically-Azeri north over the government's publication of an offensive cartoon may be turning into something more. In what could be an early stirring toward self-determination, Azeri activists have formed a makeshift opposition militia to lobby for local rights. The group, which calls itself the South Azerbaijan National Freedom Army and is comprised of former soldiers in the Iranian military, reportedly is dedicated to the "restoration" of Azeri rights in Iran. Among other things, the group is seeking more autonomy for ethnic media, greater education rights, and increased political recognition from Tehran. (today.az, June 2, 2006)

More about what seems a very dangerous push to destabilize Iran along ethnic lines, here.

For die-hard Niger uranium sleuths, the Left Coaster's eRiposte has a pretty interesting post.

How did Shirlington Limo company get a $21 million contract with the Department of Homeland Security? Here's a start. And some more. A grand jury is now investigating too. More from the Post.

From WP's Dana Priest national security chat today:

Durango, Colo.: Dana -

Do you give any credence to ABC piece that NSA has targeted cell phone records of journalists, seeking calling patterns that might implicate their confidential sources in government - the bad so-called "leakers" (as opposed to the useful ones in and around Cheney's office)

Given the administration's ire over secret programs you and The Post have revealed, is Post management concerned about this possibility?

Dana Priest: I, and the Post management, are greatly concerned in general about the government's efforts to make our reporting on vital national security issues more difficult. I'm not convinced my phones are being monitored, though, but would solicit anyone out there with any specific information on the subject. 202-334-4490 if you dare! or the good old-fashion mail will do.

President Bush helps out reporters with book sales.

This from Sen.Biden's office today is interesting:

U.S. Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D-DE) led the successful effort to defeat an amendment today to the Department of Defense Authorization bill introduced by Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) that could have undermined President Bush’s effort to negotiate an end to Iran’s dangerous nuclear program. Instead, the Senate passed a Biden amendment supporting the Administration’s diplomatic initiative by a vote of 99-0. [...]

The Santorum amendment would have limited the President’s flexibility in those crucial negotiations and caused a rift with our allies at the very time we need their support. ...”

Here are some details of what Sen. Santorum had proposed in an amendment to the 1997 National Defense Authorization Act on Monday:

Senator Santorum’s amendment enhances the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act and codifies sanctions, controls and regulations in place against Iran. Additionally, the amendment authorizes the imposition of mandatory sanctions on entities that aid Iran in acquiring or developing weapons of mass destruction.

In keeping with Senator Santorum’s belief that the United States should be doing more to promote democracy in Iran, the amendment incorporates provisions from S. 333, the Iran Freedom and Support Act, also introduced by Senator Santorum. S. 333 authorizes financial and political assistance to pro-democracy forces inside and outside Iran. Specifically, the amendment authorizes $100 million for pro-democracy efforts in Iran.

Zarqawi's successor's real identity. Muhajer is the nom de guerre for Egyptian al-Masri. AP:

The U.S. military said Thursday the man claiming to be the new al-Qaida in Iraq leader is Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian with ties to Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said al-Masri apparently is the same person that al-Qaida in Iraq identified in a Web posting last week as its new leader _ Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, a nom de guerre. Al-Muhajer claimed to have succeeded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi...

The Afghanistan-trained explosives expert is a key figure in the al-Qaida in Iraq network with responsibility for facilitating the movement of foreign fighters from Syria into Baghdad, Caldwell said.

He has been a terrorist since 1982, "beginning with his involvement in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was led by al-Zawahri," Caldwell said. [...]

He said, however, that al-Masri's ability to exert leadership over al-Qaida cells remained unclear and there were other "al-Qaida senior leadership members and Sunni terrorists" who might try to take over the operations.

Caldwell singled out Abu Abdul-Rahman al-Iraqi, who in the past had been identified as al-Qaida in Iraq's deputy leader in statements by the group, and Abdullah bin Rashid al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Mujahedeen Shura Council _ five allied groups in the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency.

More from ABC's Alexis Debat:

European intelligence sources tell ABC News that Masri was put in charge of Zarqawi's international network in 2004. He reportedly sent "envoys" throughout the Middle East and to North Africa and Europe.

He is believed to have played a role in the recent bombings on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

ABC's the Blotter, Did AQ out the real would-have-been 20th hijacker? And the super secret US military terrorist hunting team in Iraq, Task Force 145, formerly known as Task Force 121, formerly known as Task Force 626, formerly known as Task Force 20, has changed its name again, ABC reports. They won't tell what its new name is, but I bet we can figure out the pattern.

The Pentagon kicks reporters out of Gitmo:

The reporters, with the approval of the base commander, covered the aftermath of the suicides, and interviewed attorneys who ripped the legal horrors for the inmates, few of whom have been formally charged with any crime. A lawyer who had tried to represent one of the dead men was accusing the U.S. government "of thwarting his efforts with bureaucratic maneuvers" and lamented that justice can never be done for his client now that he is dead.

Only after stories started appearing were the reporters ordered to leave, on a hastily arranged military flight to Miami, over the protests of their editors.

The kick out orders apparently came directly from Rumsfeld's office. "The Pentagon spokesman told E&P that Rumsfeld's office was overruling any of the permissions from military at the base." More, via Romenesko: "Charlotte Observer editor Rick Thames: 'The Pentagon appears to have panicked when it discovered it couldn't manipulate a first-class reporter, so it shoved him and all other press out.'"

The Post's Shailagh Murray reports on ten-term Pennsylvania Republican Curt Weldon's first time competitive race:

Weldon riveted the Kiwanis Club audience with tales of his run-ins with the Bush administration, including a 2003 fight with then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice over a congressional delegation to North Korea. Rice opposed the idea, but Weldon complained to Bush and took his trip.

The stories impressed Charles Cutshall, a Republican who had liked Sestak when the Democrat had addressed the club. "He has such diverse responsibility," Cutshall said of Weldon. [...]

The congressman said he treks to global hot spots because his "overriding priority" in Congress is to "avoid war." But he supported the Iraq invasion, and his continued defense of the conflict makes local Republican officials nervous. "Some people are concerned he's too close to Bush," said Haverford Town Commissioner Fred Moran.

I've been hearing something really interesting from a variety of sources the past few days, including Iranians opposed to the Tehran regime. That the Arabic language and Iranian press have both suggested that Iran might have provided intelligence useful to the locating of Zarqawi. The Iranian foreign ministry has praised his killing, according to wire reports, but denied supplying any such intelligence useful in locating him directly to the US:

"It is natural that we, like the Iraqi people, are happy from this occurrence," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.

"This doesn't mean that we cooperated with the US in getting him. We had no exchange of intelligence with the US at all (on this)," Asefi said.

That doesn't seem to totally preclude providing intelligence useful to locating Zarqawi to say the Iraqi government or elements of the Iraqi government.

Update: A trusted colleague who got further along in reporting this Wednesday says US sources say -- no, no and no.

Remember the Turkish Kurdish separatists, the PKK? Well, Slate introduces us to the Iranian Kurdish rebels now using Iraqi Kurdistan as their operational base. Their goal? Apparently, to win Iranian Kurds autonomy from the Tehran regime:

PJAK has watched how Kurds in Iraq have won their autonomy, and its strategy is to duplicate those efforts in Iran. After the first U.S. war against Saddam Hussein, Iraq's Kurds seized the moment to massacre local Baathists and create a de facto independent Kurdish state. They then waited for a decade to act as a proxy for the United States in executing a coup de grâce against Saddam.

The Iranian Kurds in Qandil are eager to do the same against Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs in Tehran—first by working with other Sunni minorities to destabilize the central government's hold on Kurdish areas, then by waiting for Washington to come in and help it make Kurdish autonomy official.

Whether they are finding any marriage of convenience with any other elements also seeking to destabilize the Tehran regime is the subject of speculation among various Iranian exiles.

Sadly, William Hundley, the recently retained lawyer for Kyle Dusty Foggo, who recently resigned as executive director of the CIA under scrutiny in the Duke Cunningham corruption case, has died, the NYT reports.

This fascinates, dateline Topeka, Kansas, GOP pols are registering and running as Dems, as social conservatives claim the state GOP: "Mark Parkinson got his start in Republican politics at age 19, as a precinct committeeman. He served six years as a Republican state legislator, eventually becoming state Republican chairman. But two weeks ago, Parkinson announced he was running for lieutenant governor — as a Democrat. He said he no longer felt welcome in the increasingly conservative Kansas Republican Party. Parkinson became the third Republican politician in the last nine months to startle this red state by switching to the minority party. [...] Political observers say the fracture within the Kansas GOP may foreshadow the future for the national party. The division between moderates and social conservatives is expected to define the contest for the party's 2008 presidential nomination."

Bush in Iraq. Hell of a news day indeed. Johanna Neuman adds, "Security was so extraordinary that reporters selected for the trip were informed of the president's travel plans 24 hours before departure at a variety of Washington area restaurants, homes and cafes. They were asked to tell no one about the travel, including spouses and employers."

Karl Rove off the hook. Rove's lawyer Robert Luskin says he has been formally advised that Fitzgerald does not plan to seek charges against him. NYT: "A series of meetings between Mr. Luskin and Mr. Fitzgerald and his team proved pivotal in dissuading the prosecutor from bringing charges. On one occasion Mr. Luskin himself became a witness in the case, giving sworn testimony that was beneficial to Mr. Rove."

NYT:

President Bush gathered top aides at Camp David here on Monday to calibrate the best way forward in Iraq during what the administration described as a critical juncture, following the death last week of the most-wanted terrorist in Iraq and the final formation of a unity government there.

The meeting was as much a media event as it was a high-level strategy session, devised to send a message that this is "an important break point for the Iraqi people and for our mission in Iraq from the standpoint of the American people," in the words of the White House counselor, Dan Bartlett.

It came as Republicans began a new effort to use last week's events to turn the war to their political advantage after months of anxiety, and to sharpen attacks against Democrats. On Monday night, the president's top political strategist, Karl Rove, told supporters in New Hampshire that if the Democrats had their way, Iraq would fall to terrorists and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would not have been killed.

"When it gets tough, and when it gets difficult, they fall back on that party's old pattern of cutting and running," Mr. Rove said at a state Republican Party gathering in Manchester. [...]

On Capitol Hill, leading Republicans in the House were preparing for a week of legislative maneuvers meant to portray them as better equipped to fight terrorism and Democrats as blanching in the face of a tough enemy. Leaders in the House and the Senate have scheduled several debates and votes intended to shore up public support for the war, culminating Thursday with a House vote on a resolution declaring Iraq a central part of "the global war on terror" and criticizing any move to set "an arbitrary date" for the withdrawal of American forces. In a statement, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House majority leader, said the debate and vote would show Americans that "there are clear differences between Republicans and Democrats on how best to confront the global war on terror."

The resolution and debate seemed intended to force Democrats to take a stand on setting a date for the withdrawal of American troops, a divisive issue. Taken together, the steps underscored how Republicans are pouncing on the first positive developments in months in Iraq to reverse a steep slide in support for the war. [...]

Democrats countered Monday that the Republicans were playing partisan politics with the war.

More from Ron Hutcheson about the team that came to consult with White House advisors at Camp David yesterday, including writer Robert Kaplan, Johns Hopkin's Elliot Cohen, AEI's Frederick Kagan and Michael Vickers:

"It may be that the fastest way to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis and draw down American forces is not a steady decline of troop numbers. Instead, the fastest possible `exit strategy' may require one last surge effort," military historian Frederick Kagan, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote last year.

After he left the Camp David briefing Monday, Kagan declined to comment on what was said there beyond, "It was a good discussion."

Perhaps the majority party can't run on the war, but Karl Rove intends, it seems, to aim to make it less of a political liability, and dare Democrats to run against it and for immediate drawdowns.

Eric Umansky argues the Army needs an independent prosecutor.

Daniel Ellsberg, Iraq's Pentagon Papers, makes for an interesting read.

Job Security in Iraq. Spencer Ackerman reports on one Iraqi official who has managed to hold onto his job - running Iraq's secret police -- through multiple post-Saddam regimes:

... This weekend, Reuters reports, Shahwani clashed with Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki over what to do with Iraq's militias-slash-death squads, most of whom are loyal to the Shia political parties that elevated Maliki to his job. Unsurprisingly, Maliki--despite telling the United States everything we want to hear about sectarianism--wants to fold the militias into the security forces, thereby reinforcing their quasi-official position as tools of Shia influence. Shahwani says this is a really bad idea, and Maliki should instead pension militiamen off. But the real question isn't who's right. (Shahwani is, even though his suggestion won't end militia activity in Iraq, either.) It's: "Who the hell is Muhammed Shahwani?"

Glad you asked. Shahwani is the head of an Iraqi intelligence structure (or, if you prefer, secret police) which is independent of the interior or defense ministries. And funny thing about that: He took his job under the Iyad Allawi interim administration, meaning he's kept his job despite two changes of government. Why might that be? Well, when last anyone checked in--anyone being the intrepid Hannah Allam and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder--it was because the CIA refused to turn over Shahwani's intelligence bureau to Iraq's elected Shia officials. According to Allam and Strobel, CIA paid Shahwani's salary and kept funding his agency, largely out of the fear that it didn't want to turn over intelligence assets to a government with ties to Iran. I have absolutely no information that Shahwani is still on CIA's payroll. But after a year and yet another change of government following Knight Ridder's story, Shahwani--unique among Iraqi officials--is still in place. Hmm. ...

Al Kamen: 'Project for the New American Century' to close shop, mission more or less accomplished (second item).

A lawyer reader writes, "I'm struck by the fact that Jeff Shockey's lawyers insisted on anonymity to discuss his $1.9 million buyout. Presumably that means he is no longer being represented by William Oldaker and William Farah, who represented him before the House Ethics Committee, because it would make no sense for them to release the letter they prepared and then insist on anonymity."

Sebastian Mallaby, "At the UN, Bluster Backfires."

There was a strange moment in the Balkans around the year 2000, when the tiny, gorgeous republic of Montenegro was officially part of rump Yugoslavia, but unlike its then sister-republic, the much larger, then Milosevic-controlled Serbia, where foreigners required difficult to obtain visas, you could just slip into Montenegro quietly, visa free. I made several trips there then, when I wasn't always sure I could get a visa for Belgrade. On one of them, I was staying at the central Soviet-style capital city hotel, where I met a young British diplomat, who basically ran the de facto British consulate in Montenegro on the fly from the hotel's courtyard restaurant. Compared to his American counterparts, this British diplomat, Rory Stewart, who was probably not yet 30, had extraordinary discretion from the Foreign Office, to basically stay in Serbia-Montenegro as long as he was able and push the envelope as much as he could. In any case, after seeing this diplomat over a few trips (Montenegro only has 600,000 people, and there are about two hotels in Podgorica, so you saw everybody every time you went), he announced that he was going to walk around half the world, and write a book about it. And today, by God, his book is reviewed on the cover of the New York Times book review, where it was declared a masterpiece.

This book, The Places in Between, is about walking across Afghanistan; his next out, The Prince of the Marshes, due in August, is apparently about walking across Iraq.

Update: This excerpt from his Iraq book, sent by a reader, is terrific:

I had resigned from the Foreign Office, but when the invasion of Iraq began in March 2003, I sent in my CV. No one replied. So in August I took a taxi from Jordan to Baghdad to ask for a job from the director of operations. A month later, the Foreign Office asked me to be the deputy governorate coordinator of Maysan, which lies in the marshes just north of the Garden of Eden. (Or, at least, of the dead date palm and visitors' car park that Iraqis claim marks the site of Paradise.) The governor of Maysan, who was a cousin of Saddam, had run away. Until another coalition officer arrived or an Iraqi governor was appointed, I was to be his replacement, exercising, as a representative of the US administrator in Baghdad, all executive, legislative and judicial authority in the province.

I thought there was a real limit to what I, as a foreigner, would be able to achieve, and that Iraqi society would remain for some time chaotic, corrupt and confusing. But I didn't think it would be too difficult to outperform Saddam...

Riveting, disturbing piece by the Post's Robert Kaiser about the "government trying to hide its activities from the public, and a press trying to find out what is being hidden." Reading it this morning, I was mentally underlining so many passages, among them, "Washington is more sharply divided along ideological lines than at any time since I came to work at The Post in 1963." (No duh, you may be thinking; but think about that, what a unique and troubling moment we're in, where the polarization -- genuine and manufactured -- between right and left and between factions within each camp is at such an extraordinary level, that even reporting about national security issues is spun by some factions as an ideological act; not without its historical precedents, but according to Kaiser, more pronounced now than at any point in the past almost half century). And, "Thanks to resourceful reporters, we have learned a great deal about the war that the administration apparently never intended to reveal" (go read for the list). And this:

Secrecy and security are not the same. On this point, Exhibit A for journalists here at The Post is the 1971 Pentagon Papers case. The Pentagon Papers were a top-secret history of the Vietnam War written inside the Pentagon and leaked to the New York Times and then The Post. Top-secret means a document is so sensitive that its revelation could cause "exceptionally grave damage to the national security." The Nixon administration was in power, and it went to court to block publication on grounds that revealing this history would endanger the nation. A court in New York enjoined the two papers from publishing the information for several days.

But the Supreme Court decided, 6 to 3, that the government had failed to make a case that overrode the constitutional bias in favor of publication. The man who argued the case was Solicitor General Erwin N. Griswold. Eighteen years later, Griswold wrote a confession for the op-ed page of this newspaper: "I have never seen any trace of a threat to the national security from the publication [of the Papers]. Indeed, I have never seen it even suggested that there was such an actual threat."

And then he gets into just how a great reporter like Dana Priest actually goes about constructing her Pulitzer prize winning story on secret prisons, not by typing up the revelations of a single Deep Throat, but one Lego block at a time, over months, building on what is arguably mostly not secret information, drawn from conversations with people sitting in different positions around the world, none of whom have more than a sliver of the complete picture.

The WaPo's Dan Balz:

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said here Saturday that he will seek greater transparency from the Bush administration about possible threats posed by Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. He said he wants to prevent possible misuse of intelligence as the administration deals with the crisis.

Speaking before a partisan audience of Internet bloggers and Democratic activists, Reid said he plans to introduce legislation next week that would require a new national intelligence estimate for Iran, along with an unclassified summary that could form the basis for a public debate about possible action if Tehran continues to seek nuclear weapons.

He also said he will require Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte to demonstrate that he has in place a process to review public statements by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other officials with regard to Iran.

Ron Brownstein also notes that Reid chose to announce his proposed Iran intelligence legislation at the Kos convention. More from Pacific View's Natasha Celine who was there for the speech. Also worth reading: Chris Cilizza on why Kossacks love conservative Mormon Reid.

This WP/Karen DeYoung piece on the US rethinking its approach to Somalia after the last few weeks' dramatic developments there suggests a really interesting case study of policy failure, driven apparently by counterterrorism officials at the CIA and DoD advocating a one-dimensional approach (US backing for Somali warlord-led militias fighting Islamists who seized Mogadishu last week). She writes:

The formation of a "Somalia Contact Group" was announced yesterday by the State Department, which had long expressed concern inside the administration that a policy largely restricted to counter-terrorism priorities might prove counterproductive. [...]

The decision to launch a multinational diplomatic initiative reflects a lack of immediately viable options in Somalia short of overt military engagement, and it appears to indicate a further resurgence of the State Department's voice in foreign policymaking under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. [...]

Although those in the Defense Department and the CIA favoring aid to the warlords prevailed, other administration officials argued that putting all U.S. support behind the warlords was unwise.

NYT: Shockey payment disclosures comes at an "awkward" time. Indeed.

AP: "Iran will make a counteroffer in response to a Western incentive package aimed at persuading Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, the Iranian foreign minister said Saturday." NYT: Iran has three weeks to respond.

Ha'aretz has ongoing coverage of the awful news from the Mideast.

WP: Gingrich probably throwing his hat in for 2008.

Reuel Marc Gerecht: Zarqawi is dead. Now for the bad news. Also, Nir Rosen: Civil war continues.

Worth reading: Michael Signer on the conference that put the UN's number two in Amb. Bolton's cross hairs, and on Holbrooke's ominous comments.

Intel from Al Qaeda suspect brought into Jordanian custody decisive to Zarqawi killing. See this from ABC:

An Iraqi customs agent secretly working with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror cell spilled the beans on the group after he was arrested, Jordanian officials tell ABC News.

Ziad Khalaf Raja al-Karbouly was arrested by Jordanian intelligence forces last spring.

Officials say Karbouly confessed to his role in the terror cell and provided crucial information on the names of Zarqawi commanders and locations of their safe houses. ...

(Recently met this reporter; he told me he had gotten the closest to bin Laden's large entourage -- moving in what sounds like an almost Bedouin caravan of Arabs in Pakistan's northwest frontier province -- of any other westerner in the past year. Reading a bit more about his background, I believe him.)

More from Jay Solomon on Jordan's role.

Harper's: More allegations about connections between defense contractor Trident Systems Inc. and Letitia White, former aide to Appropriations committee chairman Jerry Lewis turned lobbyist. Among them, that she got directly compensated by Trident for lobbying work which she did on behalf of the company:

Both [Letitia] White and [Trident founder and president] Karangelen have said that they each put up $500,000 when purchasing the million-dollar house, but some of the Trident officials have said that Karangelen actually put up the entire amount, along with additional monies for furnishings. Some of them have further alleged that White was rewarded financially by Trident for her work on behalf of the company with compensation related to the amount of money she brought into the company.

Patrick Dorton, a spokesman for White, vehemently told me that she and Karangelen have put equal amounts of money into the house and that “the purchase was not related in any way to work for Trident.” Dorton did not deny that White was compensated by Trident but said any money she received “was for work done after she left the Hill.” He declined to comment on the nature or amount of the compensation.

Go read.

Update I: A lawyer says the law on this is clear and unambiguous: one's compensation as a lobbyist cannot be tied in any way to the amount of money your client is awarded from the government. "The client can't use federal money to pay their lobbyists." There's also a prohibition on charging contingent fees for obtaining federal funds -- for us civilians, anything that sounds like a commission. (He's citing from the ABA's federal lobbying manual, federal law governing lawyers and lobbyists, 3rd edition.)

Update II: Via TPM, the AP reports that 2005 financial disclosure forms released today indicate that Lewis aide, Jeff Schockey, deputy staff director to the House appropriations committee, took $1.9 million in severance compensation from his old lobby firm last year -- while he was working at the Appropriations committee.

A lawyer source says that it is his understanding that the House ethics committee told Shockey that no one from his old firm can lobby Shockey directly. The agreement doesn't impose any restrictions on anyone from his old lobbying firm meeting with any people working under Shockey's supervision -- which this source says, obviously, is a pretty big loophole.

Whatever the House ethics committee determination, the lawyer says, the FBI may see it differently, if it sees it as part of a larger system of compensating Mr. Shockey (or his wife) in exchange for his help in obtaining earmarks.

POGO Part II, "Duncan Hunter's Brand of Congressional Oversight." The shorter version: Hunter (R-CA), chairman of the House armed services committee and a member of the defense appropriations subcommittee, co-owns a Virginia property with a top Rumsfeld aide (now undersecretary of the Army) until recently charged with Congressional liaison activities, including, as a source tells Pogo, "keeping Congress off Rumsfeld's back." And Hunter's top corporate campaign donor is a firm implicated in the Abu Ghraib abuses -- abuses Hunter vehemently urged not be investigated by Congress:

... Almost exactly a year ago, the Associated Press did a nice roundup of House leadership financial disclosure statements. Among the highlights for Hunter was his co-ownership of a rural Virginia cabin with “former Democratic U.S. Rep. Pete Geren of Texas.” [...]

Preston M. “Pete” Geren III, however, is not your average former Congressman. [...] Between 2001-2005, Geren occupied an office "strategically next door" to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, whom he served as a special assistant responsible for "inter-agency initiatives, legislative affairs, and special projects." [...]

A less-charitable description of [then Rumsfeld "Special Assistant" Pete] Geren’s Abu Ghraib duties, according to a knowledgeable congressional source, was “keeping Congress off Rumsfeld’s back”. Indeed, much to the Pentagon’s consternation, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner's (R-VA) was actually moved to investigate Abu Ghraib and hold multiple hearings on the matter. Not so with Geren's real estate partner, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Consistently dismissive of interrogation and detention excesses as isolated incidents, Hunter actively discouraged Congressional investigation into Abu Ghraib.

Absent from national press coverage of Hunter's antipathy towards Abu Ghraib investigations, however, was the fact that Hunter's top corporate campaign contributor, San Diego-based defense contractor Titan Corporation, potentially had a lot to lose in the scandal. [...]

(Hunter’s disclosures (pdf) make no mention of Geren’s Defense Department affiliation, and Geren’s disclosures simply refer to the “Hunter/Geren partnership”--to look at them, you’d have no idea that the “Hunter” chaired House Armed Services).

Kind of hard to keep the conflict of interest out of such an arrangement, if you're sharing a hunting lodge together?

Intel leading to Zarqawi killing. Did it come from a recently detained al Qaeda operative in Jordanian custody? LAT:

Interviews with officials in Washington, Baghdad, Jerusalem and Amman, Jordan, indicate that the raid occurred after a lengthy multinational intelligence effort utilizing interrogations, informants and reporting by U.S. forces.

In the last month, several suspected key Al Qaeda operatives in and around Iraq had been arrested and interrogated. Among them was Kassim Ani, a Zarqawi aide believed to be behind some of the deadliest attacks in Baghdad, who was captured there by Iraqi security forces late last month.

Days earlier, Al Qaeda operative Ziad Khalaf Raja Karbouly was detained in Jordan, where he confessed on television to kidnapping Moroccan Embassy workers and killing a Jordanian truck driver on Zarqawi's orders.

A Jordanian official speaking on condition of anonymity said Thursday that intelligence his country provided to American officials played a decisive role in the Zarqawi raid by helping them identify Rahman, known in Iraq as the mufti of the militant group.

Late Update: It appears so. See this from ABC.

Ignatius: "Zarqawi was never the master strategist the Americans sometimes made him out to be. The foot soldiers of the insurgency were mostly former Saddam Hussein loyalists, not religious fanatics. Zarqawi's power was that he was an especially ruthless killer -- and that until Wednesday, America couldn't catch him. Therein lies the opening provided by Zarqawi's death."

More from Knight-Ridder:

"It's a fair statement to say that Zarqawi's role has been overplayed somewhat," said retired senior CIA official Paul Pillar, former deputy director of the agency's counterterrorist center.

There were two reasons, Pillar said. The Jordanian provided evidence, however flimsy, of an al-Qaida presence in Iraq. And his public denunciations of democracy made him a "poster child" for the White House argument that the war in Iraq was being fought against the enemies of democracy in the Arab world.

In fact, Zarqawi and bin Laden, who came from vastly different backgrounds, disliked each other from their first meeting and sparred over tactics and strategy.

Update II: This 2004 piece by the WSJ's Scot Paltrow worth remembering too.

The latest Murray Waas.

WP:

For Sawsan Abdul Qadir, a 34-year-old nurse, though, the news of Zarqawi's death was a long-awaited relief.

"I lost my brother in one of his car bombs in the New Baghdad neighborhood," Qadir said. "He was a father of three kids. When I heard the news, his wife was the first one I called. She was so happy and she told me that 'The Americans got revenge for my husband. I feel just like they brought him back alive for me.' Her oldest son was saying, 'They killed my father's killer.'

"Today, I forget all the sadness of losing my brother."

Macleans: "The fate of Ramin Jahanbegloo."

This was yesterday's news, but this is interesting, from the WP:

...[European investigator Dick] Marty acknowledged that he lacked proof that would firmly establish the existence of the secret prisons. But he cited flight data and satellite photos acquired from European agencies as evidence that the CIA transported high-level terrorism suspects from Afghanistan to airports in Szymany, Poland, in October 2003 and Timisoara, Romania, in January 2004. Marty said a close examination of the flights indicated that the suspects were dropped off in those countries for detention.

"Even if proof, in the classical meaning of the term, is not as yet available, a number of coherent and converging elements indicate that such secret detention centers did indeed exist in Europe," Marty wrote.

Marty has accused Poland and Romania of stonewalling his requests for information. On Wednesday, officials in those countries repeated earlier denials that they permitted the CIA to run secret prisons within their borders.

AP: Zarqawi's "spiritual advisor" led US and Iraqi forces to him.

The San Diego Union-Trib's Dean Calbreath digs deeper into the allegations of Tom Casey, the former head of defense contractor Audre, as reported by NBC News last night:

A former San Diego military contractor said he has told federal investigators that Rep. Jerry Lewis, head of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, asked him for personal favors as he was lobbying Congress for millions of dollars in federal contracts.

Tom Casey, founder of the now-defunct firm Audre Inc., told NBC News yesterday that Lewis asked him in 1993 to provide Canadian stock options to Lewis' friends, including former Rep. Bill Lowery of San Diego, who is a lobbyist in Washington, D.C.

The Vancouver Stock Exchange has fewer reporting regulations than U.S. stock exchanges, making transactions harder to track.

“Did you view it as an effort (by Lewis) to hide what was really going on?” NBC correspondent Lisa Myers asked Casey last night.

“It was intended to conceal his participation, yes,” Casey responded.

Casey also said Lewis asked him to hire Lowery to lobby for his firm, which was vying for federal funds to convert government documents from paper to a computer-readable format.

At the time, Casey's lobbying efforts were being handled by Brent Wilkes, who has been identified as a co-conspirator in the bribery case of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham.

Lewis – who is being investigated over whether he showed favoritism to Lowery's clients – heatedly denied the allegations last night.

“I have never recommended a lobbyist to any constituent, contractor or anyone seeking federal funds,” he said in a prepared statement. [...]

Casey told NBC that he never issued the stock options and never hired Lowery's firm. He said he has no documents or other proof that Lewis did anything illegal.

But Casey said Lewis added funding for Casey's firm to the federal budget – using wording that Casey drafted – after Casey and his associates made thousands of dollars in political contributions to Lewis and other legislators.

“You were allowed to write language for an appropriations bill yourself?” Myers asked.

“Yes, I did,” Casey said. “That was Congressman Lewis' suggestion.”

Sources familiar with Casey's allegations confirmed that he has shared the information with FBI investigators. ...

Check out the Project on Government Oversight blog on ties between Rep. Duncan Hunter, a lobbyist we are hearing a lot about, and a defense contractor she represents.

NBC's Blogging Baghdad on getting called this morning to come to a press conference....

Regarding the interesting LAT piece on Letitia White, the former aide to Rep. Jerry Lewis turned lobbyist, blogged below, a knowledgeable reader exclaims 'holy mackerel' and points to this excerpt:

A November 1994 article in Federal Computer Week said Lewis "appears to have played the biggest role on the Hill as an Audre advocate," writing letters to defense officials urging them to expand the program.

The obscure trade journal also uncovered in financial disclosure reports that White, then Lewis' aide, had bought stock in Audre on Nov. 3, 1993, one week before the passage of the final bill.

Dorton said only that White's stock ownership was disclosed in accordance with House rules.

Why 'Holy Mackerel?' The lawyer reader explains, "It's clear evidence of a bribe. The DOJ can nail her on this if nothing else." Sometimes, perhaps, it's not what's legal that is outrageous.

NYT: Cheney goes behind Specter's back to other Judiciary committee Republicans to torpedo NSA telecom hearings. (I am sure Sen. Leahy is willing to give him a shoulder to cry on.)

Update: Or, as Wonkette puts it...

AP: "Iran Ready for Nuclear Talks, Ahmadinejad Says."

(Perhaps the covert CIA operation to flood the Persian Gulf with Prozac is working?)

Zarqawi dead:

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida's leader in Iraq who led a bloody campaign of suicide bombings and kidnappings, has been killed in an air strike, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday, adding his identity was confirmed by fingerprints and a first-hand look at his face. It was a major victory in the U.S.-led war in Iraq and the broader war on terror.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said al-Zarqawi was killed along with seven aides Wednesday evening in a in a remote area 30 miles northeast of Baghdad, in the volatile province of Diyala, just east of the provincial capital of Baqouba, al-Maliki said.

Loud applause broke out as al-Maliki, flanked by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and U.S. Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters at a news conference that "al-Zarqawi was terminated."

A great victory for the forces of civilization.

(Perhaps that is what tarried Amb. Khalilzad?)

Update: According to NPR, national security advisor Stephen Hadley informed President Bush last night at 9:20pm that finger prints and other analysis had confirmed that it was Zarqawi killed.

More from the Post.

Big Los Angeles Times piece detailing multiple aspects of staff and associates of Appropriations committee chairman Jerry Lewis interacting with companies ADCS and Audre seeking federal contracts. The paper, which had earlier reported that Lewis traveled with ADCS founder (and alleged Duke Cunningham co-conspirator) Brent Wilkes to Guatemala in the early 1990s, seems to have caught Lewis in misremembering how recently he has seen Wilkes:

Lewis has repeatedly said he was only dimly aware of Wilkes. He recently said that the last time he could recall meeting with Wilkes was "well over 10 years ago," and he said they never discussed federal contracts.

But records show that Lewis traveled to the Poway, Calif., offices of Wilkes' firm shortly before it received one of its first major government contracts in 1998. He met with executives and got a briefing on the company, ADCS Inc., which was formed a few years earlier and sought government contracts to convert paper records to electronic format.

The trip to ADCS headquarters was uncovered by the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog organization.

And also has more details on how much in earmarks Trident Systems Inc. -- whose founder, Ken Silverstein has reported, bought property with a former top aide to Lewis -- received from the Appropriations committee in recent years -- $11.7 million. They also interview Lewis' step-daughter Julia Willis-Leon, a fundraiser based in Las Vegas, who was paid $42,000 by the PAC* listing that property as its address, as Justin Rood previously reported. The lobbying firm, Copeland Lowery, for which two of Lewis' top aides worked, along with its clients, have contributed about half a million dollars to Lewis and his PAC over the years, the San Diego Union Trib reported in December. According to Tom Casey, the head of the now defunct defense contractor Audre, Lewis in turn solicited lobbying work for Copeland Lowery, co-owned by Lewis' friend, former San Diego Congressman Bill Lowery, and other favors to benefit Lowery. Lewis has denied it.

*More from the San Diego Union Trib/Copley News:

Small Biz Tech PAC was registered with the Federal Election Commission in February 2005, one month after Lewis became chairman of the Appropriations Committee.

"I'm shocked by this,” said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense. “They put the daughter of the House's most powerful appropriator on their payroll.”

So when the investigators put together the whole monster timeline of lobbying contracts, political donations, interactions between staff, lobbyists and defense contractors seeking earmarks, and the earmarks, relatives on the payroll of groups also handling PAC contributions, and various travel, will it be enough to prove a quid pro quo? I guess that's the question. Or is it enough to flip someone to tell them more? It seems Letitia White and Jeff Shockey are emerging as the Neil Volz and Ed Buckham of this case.

It's kind of painful to realize the San Diego Union-Tribune/Copley News reported most everything that's being re-reported recently back in 2005. Here's something that has become newly relevant again, "Friends Learned Tough Lesson in '92":

When San Diego City Councilman Bill Lowery was elected to Congress in 1980, he became friends with a fellow Republican, Jerry Lewis of Redlands, who had been elected two years earlier. They grew even closer after Lowery joined Lewis on the appropriations committee in 1985.

In 1992 both men faced defining moments in their careers.

Lowery was identified as one of the worst offenders in a group of lawmakers who flagrantly wrote bad checks and expected the House bank to cover them. The "Rubbergate" scandal came just two years after he nearly lost re-election because of his cozy relationship with the fast-living financier Don Dixon, who plundered a Texas savings and loan and stuck taxpayers with a $1.3 billion tab. [...]

Lewis, meanwhile, was receiving a lesson in the new, more confrontational style of politics demanded by Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and other Republicans determined to take control of the House after four decades of Democratic dominance.

In a stunning 88-84 vote, Dick Armey of Texas, who promised to be more partisan and aggressive than the courtly Lewis, ousted Lewis from the chairmanship of the Republican conference, the party's No.3 position in the House.

It seems they have been learning even tougher lessons in 2006.

I hear that we might want to watch NBC Nightly News tonight. The former head of Audre, Tom Casey, a firm for which alleged Cunningham co-conspirator Brent Wilkes served as a lobbyist, is interviewed on the record. And that he has some interesting things to say about requests from Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), now the chair of the Appropriations committee.

Update: Here's the link. Casey tells NBC that Lewis solicited him for stock options for his friend Lowery on the Canadian stock exchange in 1993 -- a claim Casey has reportedly shared with the FBI, and which Lewis denies. Here's some of the transcript:

In an exclusive interview, Casey tells NBC News that after he made campaign contributions to House members of both parties, Lewis informed him the Pentagon would get $14 million for the testing, and that Casey even could write the language.

Lisa Myers: You were allowed to write language for an appropriations bill yourself?

Casey: Yes, I did. That was Congressman Lewis' suggestion.

Casey says Lewis repeatedly urged him to hire a lobbyist, former U.S. Rep. Bill Lowery, Lewis' close friend, and when that didn't happen, pressed for another favor.

Casey: Congressman Lewis asked me to set up stock options for Bill Lowery in our company.

Casey says Lewis suggested he issue the stock options in Canada — in someone else's name.

Myers: Did you view it as an effort to hide what was really going on?

Casey: It was intended to conceal his participation, yes.

Colleagues have reminded me that San Diego Congressman Lowery became a lobbyist after losing out to Cunningham who ran a "clean hands" primary campaign highlighting Lowery's alleged corruption. (Cunningham of course is now serving a jail sentence after pleading guilty to bribery-related charges.) More here from SDUT.

A source points out that Trident Systems Inc., the defense contractor whose owner bought a $1 million Capitol Hill property with a former top staffer to the House Appropriations committee chairman, and which received this year a $2 million earmark from that chairman, Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands CA), doesn't have any business in Lewis' destrict -- or in the whole state of California. The source, knowledgeable about the process, says that is very unusual. "Letitia [White] has been getting earmarks for this company," he notes. "If a member of Congress is giving an earmark, it is almost always in his district." Not in this case. Trident Systems' homebase in Fairfax Virginia is 3,000 miles away from Lewis' home district. Its other offices are in Pennsylvania, Spokane, and North Carolina.

“I encourage a thorough review of any project I have helped secure for my constituents," Lewis said in a statement in June, as carried by the AP.

What's happened with Amb. Khalilzad?

Today, the Senate was expecting to receive a classified briefing from Ambassador Khalilzad on recent developments in Iraq. Yesterday, however, we learned that Ambassador Khalilzad was not available to conduct this briefing and the Administration was unwilling to make other officials available to brief in his place. Given the recent escalation of violence, the increasing risk to U.S. forces, and the failure of the Iraqis to agree on the two most important Cabinet positions, we are concerned that not a single national security official from your Administration was willing to appear before a bipartisan group of Senators to explain your strategy in Iraq.

From a letter to President Bush from Senators Reid, Durbin, Biden and Levin.

This doesn't look very good for Rep. Lewis, his step-daughter or his ex-staffer Letitia White. Voters may not care, but it seems likely to be of interest to the US Attorney's office.

Meanwhile, at the UN: Mark Malloch Brown v. Amb. Bolton.

The Independent: "Britain named for colluding in US rendition flights."

WaPo, AP, KR, Senators Angered by Justice Official's Silence. More.

David Ignatius, "Salvaging Iraq."

Suspension:

Crucially, the deal does not demand that Iran outright give up its uranium enrichment program – only suspend it, although likely for a long time. Two earlier diplomatic initiatives by Europe and Russia crumbled over the past year because each demanded Iran scrap enrichment completely – a stumbling block because of the program's wide popularity with the Iranian public. [...]

The current package's lack of a demand for scrapping enrichment entirely could prove key, said Iranian political analyst Mostafa Kavakebian, who predicted Iran would accept temporary suspension of uranium enrichment but would reject any permanent halt.

In past days, Iranian leaders have combined tough talk with signals that they are open to a deal – perhaps an attempt to portray to the Iranian public that they remain firm, even as they consider reversing their refusal to suspend enrichment.

Harper's: "Politics Make Strange Homeowners." Unbelievable. More from Muckraker.

NYT:

The European Union's foreign policy director, Javier Solana, arrived in Tehran on Monday night with incentives intended to resolve the nuclear crisis with Iran, including a proposal to allow Iran to upgrade its aging civilian air fleet through the purchase of aircraft parts from an American company, Boeing.

The package, to be presented Tuesday to Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and to Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, is to include waiving trade sanctions against Iran to allow the purchase of American agricultural technology, said European diplomats and a senior Bush administration official. [...]

The offer includes a commitment from the six nations to support Iran's plan for a nuclear energy program for civilian use, including building light-water reactors through joint projects with other countries, the diplomats said.

The United States and Europe also agreed to back Iran's membership in the World Trade Organization.

The package is aimed at encouraging Iran to return to a freeze of its nuclear activities, including turning off the fast-spinning centrifuges that enrich uranium.

The most compelling item, though, may be the American offer to end its nearly three-decade policy against direct talks with Iran and to join in the negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.

That proposal is the centerpiece of the administration's recent shift in strategy toward Iran, which President Bush views as the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism.

The decision to include the sale of Boeing aircraft parts, along with aircraft and parts from Airbus, is a huge step, particularly for the United States.

LAT: Iran oil threats sink Dow.

Ken Silverstein: preparing the battlefield in Iraq -- back in April 2002.

WP: "Gunmen in police uniforms abducted more than 50 people from a street in central Baghdad Monday afternoon in a swift attack that unfolded in the shadow of Iraq's Ministry of Justice building. [...] That very insecurity was on display as men in masks and camouflage fatigues shoved the abductees at gunpoint into waiting pickup trucks. The convoy of 12 pickup trucks, some with mounted machine guns, cordoned off a half-mile stretch of street in Baghdad's Karkh neighborhood, a mile north of the fortified Green Zone, police Col. Adel Younis said. The gunmen piled out, sweeping people off the street into their pickup trucks, yanking them from buses about to start their journey, and storming into travel offices to seize workers and customers, witnesses said. Then the attackers got back into their pickups and roared off. It took them only 15 minutes to finish the job, witnesses said. [...] Another witness, Hussein Ali, said he saw a police car drive up to the scene, only to be turned back by gunfire and shouted warnings that the abductors were from the Interior Ministry's intelligence section. Younis said the incident is under investigation."

AP: "Islamic Militia Says Mogadishu Captured." More from Jonathan Landay:

...The United States has been secretly supporting a coalition of secular Somali warlords, the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism, according to leaders of a largely powerless transitional central government restricted to the city of Baidoa, according to regional observers and news reports.

Prendergast said that three alliance leaders recently told him that they were receiving funds from the CIA.

"Our assessment is between $100,000 and $150,000 per month," said Prendergast, who served on the National Security Council staff in the Clinton administration.

The CIA declined to comment.

Other countries, including Italy, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Saudi Arabia, also have been backing various Somali factions, according to a May 4 report to the U.N. Security Council by the experts group led by Schiemsky...

Jackson Diehl was in Iran last month; his op-ed on Iran's desire for a "Nixon goes to China" US approach is worth reading.

Charlie Savage:

The board of governors of the American Bar Association voted unanimously yesterday to investigate whether President Bush has exceeded his constitutional authority in reserving the right to ignore more than 750 laws that have been enacted since he took office.

Meeting in New Orleans, the board of governors for the world's largest association of legal professionals approved the creation of an all-star legal panel with a number of members from both political parties.

They include a former federal appeals court chief judge, a former FBI director, and several prominent scholars -- to evaluate Bush's assertions that he has the power to ignore laws that conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Bush has appended statements to new laws when he signs them, noting which provisions he believes interfere with his powers.

Among the laws Bush has challenged are the ban on torturing detainees, oversight provisions in the USA Patriot Act, and ``whistle-blower" protections for federal employees. ....Bush has challenged more laws than all previous presidents combined.

On board the task force, former FBI director William Sessions, former Reagan administration Justice Department official Bruce Fein, and former Oklahoma Republican congressman Mickey Edwards.

Philip Gourevitch, "Just Watching."

LAT: "The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans 'humiliating and degrading treatment,' according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards. [...] The detainee directive was due to be released in late April along with the Army Field Manual on interrogation. But objections from several senators on other Field Manual issues forced a delay. [...]The lawmakers say that differing standards of treatment allowed by the Field Manual would violate a broadly supported anti-torture measure advanced by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)."

More related here.

Helene Cooper, in yesterday's NY Times:

... Was the administration again using public diplomacy for political cover while preparing to use military force?

This time, all signs say no.

The world of June 2006 is fundamentally different from that of September 2002, just one year after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Back then, the United States was fresh from toppling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, in a war viewed sympathetically at home and in many other countries.

And while a connection between the Sept. 11 attacks and Saddam Hussein was never proved, there was widespread belief that the Bush administration was correct in its determination that Mr. Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction. After a wave of anthrax attacks in the United States, the idea of ridding Iraq of chemical and biological weapons seemed a noble one. And President Bush's domestic approval rating was at 69 percent.

Fast forward to today. Thanks to the botched intelligence on Iraq's weapons program, it would be harder to rally a coalition of the willing, let alone the United Nations, for military strikes against Iran.

American troops are stretched, and polls show that most Americans think the war in Iraq is going badly.

Iran has vastly different options and resources than Iraq did. If attacked, it could retaliate in Iraq, for instance, given its close ties to Shiites who now hold power there.

But even if the military option isn't palatable to the United States and its allies now, neither is the idea of living with an Iran with nuclear weapons. If Iran gets closer to acquiring — or acquires — a bomb, policy makers could one day be tempted to think that a military clash is worth risking.

But that point hasn't been reached yet. ...

Via Susan G., Stephen Colbert gives a commencement address. "... His suggestions for securing the U.S.-Mexico border went beyond walls to include moats, fiery moats and fiery moats with fire-proof crocodiles."

More official back stories on the Rice/White House Iran reversal:

During the week of May 13, under strict secrecy, Rice assembled a small group of her closest aides to figure out how to structure and package the announcement. The group included Burns, Undersecretary for Arms Control Robert Joseph, counselor Philip Zelikow, senior adviser Jim Wilkinson, chief of staff Brian F. Gunderson and spokesman Sean McCormack. They were told to inform none of their aides and make no photocopies of documents. Meetings of the group in Rice's office were obscured on Rice's calendar by listing it under "security issues."

Joseph was assigned to write Rice's statement. Gunderson, a former Hill staffer, focused on selling the policy shift to key lawmakers while McCormack and Wilkinson developed a strategy on how to showcase the announcement. Officials wanted the Iranians to understand that this was a genuine offer, so it was decided that Rice would speak in the State Department's ornate Benjamin Franklin Room, giving the event a presidential aura.

The weekend before the announcement, Rice went to Camp David to make the final pitch to Bush. Her team had worked up answers to address questions from Bush about the wisdom of the move. Bush ultimately gave his final approval after speaking with key foreign leaders.

On Tuesday, the day before the announcement, Rice let U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton -- long a skeptic about dealing with Iran -- in on the secret. Bolton then joined Rice, Hadley and Joseph over dinner -- and was asked to call conservative commentators the next day to explain the decision.

Al Hamdania. Knight Ridder's Nancy Youssef:

AL HAMDANIA, Iraq - Before people talked about how Hashim Ibrahim Awad was killed, his friends shared tales about how the Americans wanted him to be an informant.

U.S. Marines had approached him several times, Awad's friends say he told them, asking him to help them find who was planting explosives in this small village outside Baghdad. Every time, Awad, in his 50s with a lame leg and bad eyesight, refused. His family considered the job shameful.

In an exclusive interview with Knight Ridder on Friday, Awad's family gave their version of what happened to him in the early morning hours of April 26. They said U.S. Marines dragged Awad from his home, killed him and then planted an AK-47 assault rifle and a shovel next to him to make him look like a terrorist.

The family members said American investigators have since harassed them, questioning their allegations in hours-long sessions that begin in the dead of night and last past dawn. They said they once were taken for questioning to nearby Abu Ghraib prison, the scene of previous allegations of American abuse.

There was no way to confirm the accounts. U.S. officials have declined to provide details of the allegations that led them on May 25 to announce that they were investigating the death of an Iraqi civilian and that "several service members from 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment . . . were removed from operations and have returned to the United States."

But the probe of the case has turned up enough evidence against Marines that eight individuals have been jailed and four others have been told not to leave their base at Camp Pendleton, Calif. ...

The case is one of three involving the deaths of 36 Iraqis, including women and children, that have drawn fresh attention to complaints that U.S. forces in Iraq have wantonly killed unarmed civilians. ...

Basra. Shiite hit squads in Toyota Mark II sedans and death threats -- and that is the security.

The Future of Iraq. Reader AM sends along this amazing post by Salam Pax, who seems to have become a full time, extremely frustrated news producer in Baghdad. Here's just the beginning:

... I started going around the city with a camera 6 days ago. and it took me all these 6 days to know where I was going with this.

I thought this was going to be about violent death and how it has become part of our lives but I guess it is turning out to be about more.

In the 80s Kanan Makia wrote a book about Iraq under Saddam called The Republic of Fear. Today Saddam is in prison and we Iraqis are constantly being told that we have been liberated but when I look around I still see a Republic of Fear. [...]

But I quickly realized that fear of death isn’t what has been turning my stomach into a tight knot whenever I go near one of the so-called hot zones in Baghdad. It is the life we live that fills me with fear.

I have newly found out that I should avoid getting out of Baghdad through a certain road to the south because the Iraqi Army battalion situated there really hates my family name. People driving through that route towards the city of Hilla have been arrested just because they have that name.

The reasons people are killed for are absurd to the point of being funny. ....

This Baghdad has become what sounds like a foreign country to Pax:

...A friend of mine, after seeing how desperate and frustrated I was getting trying to get someone to talk on camera, said that I should go to the Kadhimiya district. People will talk there he said. Right. [...]

In case you didn’t know Kadhimiya is a Shia district, I have a Sunni family name. The knot in my stomach was getting tighter the closer we got to the check point through which we get into the market area near the Kadhimiya Shrine. [...]

Once inside I had the biggest eye opener. I saw the future of Iraq, or at least Baghdad. Inside the barricade and past the checkpoint was a piece of the old Baghdad. Shops full of people, all relaxed and smiling. Everybody wants to talk and tell me how their lives are and I even got invited to have tea and accepted the invitation without thinking that this man saw my camera and he is just delaying me until the kidnappers arrive.

You know what was different? Kadhimiya is set up these days like a fortress. Entrances are tightly controlled, no unknown cars get in and they basically had their own secret police there; when I lingered too long with my camera in front of the shrine I was quickly called inside and a security guard demanded IDs and wanted to look through the film, I thanked heavens again for the NUJ card.

So people I give you the future of Baghdad. Districts will become tightly controlled fortresses that are ethnically/religiously homogeneous. Outsiders are only let in after being inspected and checked. I really want to go back to Kadhimiya but only after I get my fake Shia ID....

Really, must-read.

Sunday Update: Horrible, from the AP, related to this:

Gunmen dragged passengers off a buses northeast of Baghdad and killed 21 people, including a dozen high school students. The attackers spared four Sunni Arabs in one the worst sectarian atrocities in recent weeks.

Serwan Shokir, the mayor of Qara Tappah, said one other person was wounded in the early morning attack. He said there were 26 people on three mini headed from his town to Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. The 12 slain students were apparently headed for Baqouba to take exams.

Of the dead, 19 were Shiite Turkomen and two were Kurds.

The four Sunni who survived were being question at Qara Tappah police station, Shokir said.

The attack occurred on the outskirts of Diyala province, a mixed region that in recent weeks has been transformed into a sectarian powder keg, with attacks against Sunni Arab and Shiite Shrines.

Here's Conflicts Forum's Mark Perry and Alistair Crooke, with Part III, "An Exchange of Narratives," of their series, "How to Lose the War on Terror."

The Conflicts Forum has been doing some interesting work in Beirut that was written about last year by the NY Sun.

(One of the most interesting things about the channel described in the Sun story linked above is that the dialogue with Hezbollah was nudged forward "through the Israeli gate," according to sources cited by the paper.)

This American Life's "Them", Act 3 (mp3), about what the people of St. Lawrence, Newfoundland taught a shipwrecked black soldier during World War II, is so worth the time.

CSIS's Anthony Cordesman, Defense Department Iraq Reporting Deserves an F.

Iraq coverage: "The struggle, first to get stories, then to get them on the air."

NYT with the kind of official backstory to White House Iran reversal:

On a Tuesday afternoon two months ago, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sat down to a small lunch in President Bush's private dining room behind the Oval Office and delivered grim news to her boss: Their coalition against Iran was at risk of falling apart.

A meeting she had attended in Berlin days earlier with European foreign ministers had been a disaster, she reported, according to participants in the discussion. Iran was neatly exploiting divisions among the Europeans and Russia, and speeding ahead with its enrichment of uranium. The president grimaced, one aide said, "with a look that said, 'O.K., team, what's the answer?' "

That question touched off a closely held two-month effort to reach a drastically different strategy, one articulated in a single sentence that Ms. Rice wrote in a private memo to the president. It broached the idea that the United States end its nearly three-decade-long policy against negotiating directly with Iran.

Mr. Bush's aides rarely describe policy debates in the Oval Office in much detail. But in recounting his decisions in this case, they appeared eager to portray him as a president who determined that he needed to rebuild a fractured coalition still bearing scars from Iraq, and to find a way out of a negotiating dynamic that, as one of his aides said recently, "the Iranians were winning."

Mr. Bush gradually grew more comfortable with offering talks to a country that he considers the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism, and whose president has advocated wiping Israel off the map. Mr. Bush's own early misgivings about the path he was considering came in a flurry of phone calls to Ms. Rice and to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser, that often began with questions like "What if the Iranians do this," gaming out loud a number of possible situations.

Mr. Bush left open the option of scuttling the entire idea until early Wednesday morning, three senior officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were describing internal debates in the White House. He made the final decision only after telephone calls with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, led him to conclude that if Tehran refused to suspend its enrichment of uranium, or later dragged its feet, they would support an escalating series of sanctions against Iran at the United Nations that could lead to a confrontation.

Worth reading.

Somalia. The US is with the warlords this time:

...The US has set up the 2,000-strong Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) in neighbouring Djibouti to counter the Islamist threat. Human rights groups say armed gangs paid by Americans have abducted people. Some have turned up at Guantanamo Bay and the US base at Bagram in Afghanistan.

In Mogadishu, warlords are keen to talk about "foreign fighters". ...

But the claims of al-Qa'ida presence, and the American method of dealing with it, has led to dissent within the administration and questions from European and African allies. Critics believe the warlords have significantly exaggerated the foreign fighters' scare to ensure the supply of money from Washington does not dry up. The reports of US involvement is said to be, in fact, counter-productive, enabling the Islamists to claim the anti-imperialist mantle.

Michael Zorick, an American diplomat, was moved from his posting in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, the State Department hub for East Africa, to Chad after, it is said, he wrote a critical report about the Somalia policy.

The US embassy in Kenya refused to discuss the reasons for Mr Zorick's transfer, but it is believed the Somali policy is being reviewed for the State Department's head of counter-terrorism, Henry "Hank" Crumpton. Diplomatic sources say the State Department view of this is unlikely to have any impact on what the CIA and the Pentagon want to do.

In Somalia, thousands of refugees have fled Mogadishu for the town of Merka, 40 miles away. They have ended up in the outskirts of the town, on arid land miles from food and water, in makeshift tents made from rags....

And militia fighting and anti-American demonstrations in Mogadishu Friday. Writes a friend in the region, "Horn of Africa stuff is all linked together. Chad is going wobbly [see ICG latest] Sudan is a nightmare on 3 or 4 fronts, the Eritreans are involved in the east, Somalia is wobbly although Somaliland is ok, Djibouti is ok. The mandate for UNMIS to go to Darfur will be interesting. The USG are supporting an increasingly dodgy govt in Ethiopia as it is the only stable unit in the region..."

Worth reading: Lee Feinstein, "A Real Deal on Iran?"

Via The Corner:

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Monty Coles was 3,000 feet in the air when he discovered a stowaway peeking out at him from the plane's instrument panel — a 4 1/2-foot black snake.

Coles had left Charleston earlier for a leisurely flight over the West Virginia countryside last Saturday in his Piper Cherokee and was preparing to land in Gallipolis, Ohio, when the snake revealed itself.

"Nothing in any of the manuals ever described anything like this," the 62-year-old Cross Lanes resident said. But the advice given 25 years earlier from his flight instructor immediately came to mind: "No matter what happens, fly the plane."

And while we're on the topic, the Corner also points to this.

WP: More homeland security grant money for Montana. This is getting ridiculed all over DC radio stations this morning right up there with weather and traffic.

Retired Marine Colonel Thomas Hammes, writing in the NYT:

Let's face it: this laundry list of inaction on the part of the Bush administration leaves a prudent Iraqi with no practical choice but to prepare for a United States withdrawal long before the Iraqi central government and security forces are capable of running the nation. For most Iraqis — Arab or Kurd, Sunni or Shiite — this will mean looking to religious and ethnic militias, criminal gangs and Islamist insurgents for protection. This, in turn, greatly increases the chance of civil war.

The militias are already looking ahead: some are carving out safe areas they will use as bases in the coming war by driving Iraqis of other ethnic and religious groups out of mixed neighborhoods and villages. Iraqi government officials estimated that more than 100,000 families have already fled their homes. This falling back on militias and preparing for internecine conflict is not a new phenomenon. It is exactly what we saw in Afghanistan nearly two decades ago. [...]

The Bush administration, despite all its missteps since the fall of the Baathists, has clung to one correct idea: that an intact Iraq is a better outcome than a splintered one. To keep it unified, however, the White House must commit to long timelines and to providing the money necessary for both the military and reconstruction efforts. [...] In any case, the uncertainty resulting from trying to have it both ways will result in the worst possible outcome: open civil war.

Carrots and sticks:

An earlier draft shared in part with The Associated Press offers help in "the building of new light-water reactors in Iran," offers an assured supply of nuclear fuel for up to five years, and asks Tehran to accept a plan that would move its enrichment program to Russia.

If Iran remains defiant, the draft calls for banning travel visas; freezing assets; banning financial transactions of key government figures and those involved in Iran's nuclear program; an arms embargo, and other measures including an embargo on shipping refined oil products to Iran. While Iran is a major exporter of crude it has a shortage of gasoline and other oil derivatives.

[British Foreign Secretary Margaret] Beckett said Security Council action against Iran would be suspended if Tehran agrees to stop uranium enrichment and reprocessing.

Just out: Some reactions to Rice's announcement on the Iran crisis, including from the former deputy foreign minister of Iran.

WP: "Six World Powers Reach Agreement on Iran."

Ha'aretz:

Iran will not give up what it calls its right to enrich uranium, as demanded by the West, but is ready to hold talks with the United States, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Thursday.

"We will not give up our nation's natural right (to enrichment), we will not hold talks over it. But we are ready to hold talks over mutual concerns," Mottaki said in response to a U.S. offer of talks if Iran gave up enrichment activities.

The United States announced the day before it had decided to conditionally agree to take part in talks with Iran on the nuclear issue.

In a policy shift toward a long-time foe, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday the U.S. would open talks with Iran if Tehran verifiably suspended its nuclear enrichment and reprocessing activities. [...]

U.S. President George Bush spoke Wednesday morning with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to give him an advance heads-up on the American decision.

Sources in Washington told Haaretz that the Olmert-Bush conversation was preceded by a discussion on the same matter between Rice and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

Rice telephoned Livni before her press conference to update the foreign minister on the change in the American position vis-a-vis Iran.

Livni subsequently released a statement expressing support for the new American stance: "Israel appreciates the steps and measures by the United States in continuing to lead the international coalition and in taking all necessary steps to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capability. Israel supports the efforts of the United States on this matter."

The possibility of talks between the U.S. and Iran was not directly discussed during Olmert's visit to the U.S. last week.

The Israeli embassy in Washington had notified the Foreign Ministry several weeks ago the U.S. might decide to join negotiations with Tehran if the Iranians met certain conditions.