Moderating Editorial Page Positions On The War

On the Los Angeles Times editorial page this morning, there is a welcome addendum to the newspaper's usual stand against pursuing the Iraq war effort.

Noting that President Bush is expected to approve the recommendations of Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, for only a small scale down of U.S. forces in the next few months, back to the pre-surge level of 130,000, the newspaper writes:

"Despite Democratic protests, it's unlikely that this toothless Congress will stop him (Bush) from continuing the de facto occupation of Iraq for the remainder of his term. We fear this is a grave mistake that will compound the colossal lerror of invading Iraq in the first place -- although we fervently hope that Petraeus, (U.S. Ambassador Ryan) Crocker and the courageous people they lead will somehow manage to prove us wrong."

I'm glad to see that qualifier, because it strikes me as very important that the American press adopt a less strident tone than is appearing in the New York Times these days against the war. It's good to know, the L.A. Times editorial writer still wishes the U.S. well, even if she doesn't agree with the policy.

But just yesterday, the Times made an excessive statement in an editorial on the sixth anniversary of 9-11, when it declared that some of the surveillance and other anti-terrorist tactics adopted by the Bush Administration have resulted "in the loss of faith in America itself, in the values and institutions that have historically defined this nation."

The editorial went on to conclude, in my view outrageously, that, "No matter how much he insists otherwise, President Bush lacks that fundamental belief in American freedom. As a result, his war has not only subverted U.S. military interests but has undermined the liberties that make this a nation worthy of emulation. That is the tragic and true cost of these past six years."

I believe this is a gross overstatement of the civil liberties consequences growing out of the policies followed after 9-11. Yes, the Administration has adopted controversial tactics, but they have almost always been directed at known enemies of the U.S., the tettorists who attacked New York and Washington on 9-11, and undoubtedly would do so again if we were to drop all our defenses.

The sweeping statement that President Bush "lacks that fundamental belief in American freedom" has about as much validity as the Civil War critics who called President Lincoln "a baboon." The President is sincerely trying to protect our freedoms, even if sometimes he has carried matters to excess.

Just last week, due to an American tip derived from extensive covert surveillance of terrorist communications, the German government was able to head off what would have been a devastating attack against both American and German airfields in Germany by terrorists trained in Pakistan. Just last year, the British government, which has its own stringent surveillance techniques, was able to foil a plot that could have bombed ten trans-Atlantic airliners out of the sky between England and the United States, killing thousands of people.

It was surveillance that prevented such attacks, and it is surveillance that could one day foil a nuclear or biological attack against us or our European allies.

We do not live back in the pristine days of the Declaration of Independence. We have to take steps to protect ourselves, even while protecting essential civil liberties on the domestic front. So for the Times to simplify these issues by its flat declaration that Mr. Bush "lacks that fundamental belief in American freedom" is out of place.

Now, if the Times wanted to question something the Bush Administration may have been involved in that would be grossly improper, that could be the imprisonment of former Alabama Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman on corruption charges that might have been a figment of Karl Rove's imagination. That was the subject of a front-page New York Times investigative report yesterday that did raise very serious questions.

We need debate in this country, both by political candidates and newspaper editorial pages. It is certainly proper that Sen. Hillary Clinton send a letter to the President, as she is reported to have done today, questioning his Iraq deployment policies, and it is certainly proper that Sen. Barack Obama give a speech calling for an immediate beginning of troop withdrawals. There is no doubt these presidential candidates are patriotic Americans, who follow their own beliefs as to the best way to defend American freedoms.

What is improper is a suggestion by the L.A. Times that the President doesn't believe in those freedoms, or a suggestion, in an advertisement run in the New York Times this week, by the radical Move On organization that Gen. Petraeus is "betraying" us by pursuing the war over which he has been given responsibility, and that his name should be "Betrayus," not Petraeus.

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So, Bill Boyarsky, former City Editor of the L.A. Times, got only one vote, his own, for President of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission after serving as its vice president. Bill seems more amused by the defeat than anything else, and why not? It proves Bill is just too honest for the ethics commission. He really believes in ethics, while the other commissioners give it only lip service.

We see that in the paltry $5,200 fine the commission levied against Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for violations. As Boyarsky remarks, even Villaraigosa's lawyer seemed pleased by that fine, and why not? The commission as a whole beat a hasty retreat from any idea of really disciplining the undisciplined mayor.

Pacifists In Academia Mean Well But Are Dangerous

As Hitler came to power in Germany, a group of Oxford students pledged not to fight for God or country. They had something to do with spinning Britain into an appeasement policy toward the Nazis that ultimately resulted in a war killing millions of people.

This is the price of those liberal academicians who do not realize that "freedom is not free," and that the price of liberty is not only eternal vigilance but a willingness to fight against the evil people who are always ready to assail us and take away our freedoms.

I thought of this when I read on the L.A. Times Op-Ed page Friday the excerpts from the graduation speech at U.C. Berkeley by Mark Danner, a professor of journalism and politics on that campus.

Danner is representative of all the silly people -- good Americans but severely deluded -- who blame not the terrorists, the suicide bombers, the kidnappers, the crazed militants ready to try to take over the world, but President George Bush and his administration for the wars that afflict us.

These kind of academicians surfaced more prominently in the wake of 9-11. They often blamed the attack not on the people who perpetrated it but on those charged with trying to respond to it, and, through increased security measures, trying to prevent further such attacks.

They seem to think that if there had been no response, the terrorists would quietly have disappeared, just like Hitler was going to be content with a few territorial sacrifices, like Austria and Czechoslovakia.

The fact is, however, that this would be the most dangerous course. Every American fatality in the War on Terror is a tragedy, we mourn them all. But the price paid so far has not been high when compared to what could happen should the terrorists obtain atomic weapons and use them against American and other cities.

The Bush Administration has made mistakes. Every war could be better run. But in fighting, the Bush Administration, and whoever succeeds it who is willing to protect our freedoms, is trying to avert a catastrophe.

Just today, an American warship shelled a group of terrorists who appeared suddenly at a port in northern Somalia and began killing policemen. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman explained, "We recognize the importance of working closely with allies to seek out, identify, locate, capture and, if necessary, kill terrorists and those who would provide them safe haven."

Also, today, in New York City, three would-be terrorists were arrested for planning to bomb the John F. Kennedy International Airport. Thank goodness, we have vigilant security operations.

Earlier, this week, aircraft carrying arms from the U.S., Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates carried arms to the Beirut Airport to facilitate the operations of the Lebanese Army against a group of terrorists from Fatah al-Islam that have promised operations throughout Lebanon and elsewhere in the world to spread their violence. They gave an interview to that effect in March to an L.A. Times reporter. The reason we are now assisting the Lebanese Army is that we recognize the importance of preventing Lebanon from falling completely under the sway of such terrorists. It is a highly strategic country, which we cannot afford to lose to nihilist forces.

The same, of course, is true in Iraq and Afghanistan. We cannot afford to let these countries slip into the control of people who want to install their brand of religious fanaticism all over the world and want to use those countries as safe havens.

Meanwhile, the Israelis are attacking terrorists in Gaza who have been raining rockets for months on a peaceful Israeli town. They are the same people who now threaten to go around Gaza beheading "immodest women." They are crazy, and must be resisted.

What about the argument of the Professor Danners than in confronting these evils, we are only spreading the virus of terrorism? There may be some truth in this, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't fight. The hope is that ultimately the plague will recede, when people in the Islamic world realize they are only bringing war and destruction on themselves.

Meanwhile, speeches like the Danner address at U.C. Berkeley, and the Op Ed Page piece that the weak-kneed editor Nick Goldberg so graciously afforded him in the L.A. Times aren't doing us any good. They are only subjecting us to greater danger, because they are encouraging all those who would sap our willingness to resist the evils.

Hillary Clinton And George W. Bush, I'll Take Bush

On this Memorial Day, when the sacrifices of American troops, from the Concord Bridge to the present war in Iraq, are being honored, the Wall Street Journal has an excellent editorial on the meaning of Sen. Hillary Clinton's vote last week in the Senate against funding the Iraq war.

"The vote," the Journal writes, "marks the end of Mrs. Clinton's post-9/11 positioning as a national security hawk. Her 2002 speech supporting war in Iraq was among the most forceful in the Senate, and for a while she admirably stuck with that conviction. But as the antiwar furies have built in her party, she has bent with them and now says and does whatever it takes to deny Mr. Obama or John Edwards any running room to her left. Perhaps this will win her the Democratic nomination, but it will complicate her Presidency if she ever does make it to the Oval Office. The Iranians, among others, will have seen that she can be turned when the going gets tough.

"Which brings us back to the current President. Whatever his mistakes as a war leader, Mr. Bush at least hasn't betrayed our allies or troops in the field for the sake of reviving his poll numbers. He was also right to defend the war powers of the Presidency against Congressional micromanagement. His obligation now is to do whatever it takes to succeed in Iraq so that the men and women fighting this war will not sacrifice in vain."

I think this says it as succinctly as it can be said. And, by the way, this is not the first time Mrs. Clinton has folded her tents under pressure. When President Clinton put her in charge of developing a health plan, and the couple encountered the adverse advertising of the disgraceful insurance industry, they folded their tents then too.

It's just essential that this country holds fast in the War on Terror. Not doing so would give the terrorists encouragement to spread and intensify their campaign against us. I will always admire the President for refusing to yield to the pigeons in Congress and particularly the Democratic party.

The New York Times today too has a nice Memorial Day Op Ed page piece. The L.A. Times editorial pages ignore Memorial Day, which is a mistake not likely to be missed by many readers. The L.A. Times' best Memorial Day article is in the Calendar section by the ousted columnist, Al Martinez, remembering a Marine-mate lost in the Korean War in the bitter retreat from North Korea at the end of 1950. Martinez shows again just what is being lost in forcing him to take a buyout. His last column is scheduled June 1.

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One of the unwisest things the Lebanese government ever did was to give assurances back in 1969 that the Palestinian refugee camps were outside its scope of power. That opened the way to every extreme faction seizing control over the Palestinians, one of the Earth's most undisciplined and gullible peoples, and opened Lebanon to one outrage after another.

It comes up again this week as Lebanon tries to confront the crazed terrorists of Al-Qaeda-lining Fatah Al-Islam, several hundred of whom are conveniently holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp outside Tripoli, Lebanon.

On the one hand, these terrorists say, "Remember the 1969 agreement, don't come into the camp against us." On the other, if the Lebanese Army comes in, the terrorists threaten to "burn down Beirut."

Most of the authentic refugees have now fled the camp. Now, is the time to go in and finish off this group, once and for all. There is really no expedient that works with terrorists other than to eliminate them. The Palestinians once again, in all their customary dishonor, are suggesting the Lebanese government temporize with the terrorists and just give them time to mediate. If the Palestinians can't live within Lebanon, in line with its standards, they ought to leave the country, and promptly, just as the slimy Yasser Arafat, finally pulled out.

Is This The Last Gasp For The Bush Iraq Policy?

Despite the Democrats' apparent decision in Congress to give way to the President on the Iraq funding, the vote, and it still could be close, to keep the funds coming without a withdrawal deadline, may represent the last time the Bush policy of fighting on is approved without change.

The new funding authorization would only be good through Sept. 30, and as Doyle McManus, the L.A. Times Washington Bureau Chief, LAT columnist Ron Brownstein and others have been writing, unless there is definite progress in the war effort by September, the political situation in Washington may well have changed with the balance shifting against the President.

The Democratic Congressional majority is giving way now, because it simply doesn't have the votes to override a Presidential veto. Much of what has been going on in Congress has been shadow boxing, because that has been the situation ever since the Democrats won narrow majorities last November.

But U.S. popular disgust with the war, and its war weariness may well result in a shift of Republican attitudes by fall. With the 2008 election approaching, as McManus has written, even many Republicans may insist on a change in war policy.

But the question will still remain, what kind of change?

Even former Sen. John Edwards, on NBC's Today program this morning said he felt that if U.S. forces were withdrawn from Iraq, the U.S. military would have to remain in Kuwait and the Navy keep a strong presence in the Gulf to maintain some kind of a position in the Middle East. However, later in the day, Edwards inconsistently said he thought the "War on Terror" was nothing but a slogan, and there reallly is no such thing. Maybe, Edwards, in having his $450 haircuts, is taking some hair oil that adversely affects the brain, because he frequently doesn't seem to know what he thinks from one moment to the next.

While we are preoccupied, naturally enough, with Iraq, the situation in the rest of the Middle East has already, even without our withdrawal from such a highly strategic country, been deteriorating. New strife has erupted this week in Lebanon, another highly strategic locale, with an Al-Qaeda offshoot, Fatah al-Islam, engaged in a major battle with the Lebanese Army, using a Palestine refugee camp as a base. In Gaza, Hamas, which is increasingly becoming close to both Iran and Al-Qaeda, continues to rain rockets on nearby portions of Israel, while the Olmert government dithers about a full scale invasion of Gaza to get rid of Hamas once and for all.

Within Iraq, a long L.A. Times story this morning, by Garrett Therolf, quotes a U.S. Army captain, Brendan Gallagher, as saying, "I sometimes worry thazt this period will end up going down here as their surge, not ours." This recognizes what is becoming clear -- that Al Qaeda also has stepped up the war, and has both adequate financing and manpower to do so.

Meanwhile, the new President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, sounds a call today for a step up in sanctions against Iran to try to stop its nuclear program. This issue is becoming more and more important, but the fact is, I fear, the Iranian nuclear program will not be stopped without military action, and that alone could bring about a major war in the Middle East.

Also, the New York Times suggests editorially this morning that the time has come to abandon support of Pakistan's military dictator, Pervez Musharaff (although that might bring on a nuclear catastrophy, one might injerject).

If political conditions in the U.S. should mandate this fall at least the beginning of withdrawal from Iraq, it probably would create a vacuum in that country into which the Iranians, or Al Qaeda or both would move. This alone would not only encourage Al Qaeda to pursue its worldwide aspirations, but also send the price of oil soaring to ever higher levels, threatening Western economies.

Yes, it really is unthinkable for us to withdraw from the Middle East altogether, and it is noteworthy that most of the Democratic presidential candidates aren't arguing for such a step.

So, we are entering a very uncertain period. On the assumption, there are no magic rabbits to take out of the hat in Iraq, change is coming in a few months. But what exactly will it be?

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Wednesday night came the sad news that the body of Pfc. Joseph Anzack, Jr., 20, has been found near the scene of his kidnapping south of Baghdad, along with two other soldiers. Those soldiers are still missing. Anzack's family in Torrance, California, had received a false rumor of Anzack's death just a short time back, only to hear from him on the telephone. Now, the news is real. We have to send all our sympathies to the Anzack family and all the other families whose sons and daughters have given their lives in the Iraq war.

Noam Levey Bias Shows In Reporting On Senate Vote

The Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times show sharply varying approaches today in reporting on yesterday's vote in the U.S. Senate, 67-29, to reject the Feingold-Reid proposal to cut off funding for the Iraq war on March 31, 2008, with Noam Levey's story in the Los Angeles Times being the most prejudiced and irresponsible.

Levey for weeks now has showed antiwar emotion, reporting with near slobbering admiration every step taken by antiwar Democrats that would force a U.S. surrender. Levey even gave special attention in a separate article to three California members of the House who wanted to go much further than the House Democratic leadership in terminating U.S. involvement in the war immediately.

So perhaps it should have come as no shock to me to find that this morning, Levey writes a grossly misleading lead, ignoring the main news of the day, and grasps for every straw in hoping against hope that the war will end as soon as possible with a U.S. defeat. But, I confess, I'm always shocked when reporters in Washington fail to do their duty to the public in such a blatant way.

Both the Washington Post and New York Times stories are clear about what happened yesterday in the Senate, the Post the clearest.

The Post lead, by Shailagh Murray, is, "The Senate yesterday soundly rejected a symbolic bid to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq within a year, underscoring the lingering divisions within the Democratic party on how hard to push President Bush to end the war.

"Despite heavy public opposition to the conflict, 19 Democrats broke with their party's antiwar leadership to oppose cutting off funding by March 31, 2008, joining 47 Republicans and one independent in the 67 to 29 vote."

Although the New York Times played this vital story below the fold on Page 14, its story, by Carl Hulse and Jeff Zeleny, was still honest. Its lead said:

"Congressional Democratic leaders signaled on Wednesday that they were ready to give ground to end an impasse with President Bush over war spending after the Senate soundly rejected a Democratic plan to block money for major combat operations in Iraq beginning next spring.

"The 67-to-29 vote against the proposal demonstrated that a significant majority of Senators remained unwilling to demand a withdrawal of forces despite their own misgivings and public unease over the war."

Levey's lead in in the Los Angeles Times was deplorably misleading, missing the central point of the day completely under an innocuous headline far back in Section one of the paper.

The lead here was, "Forty-four Republican senators backed a plan Wednesday to tie continued economic aid to Iraq to the performance of its government, the strongest demonstration yet of GOP willingness ro impose limits on President Bush's management of the war.

"And in an indication of growing Democratic resolve to force an end to the war, a majority of Democratic senators supported a second measure to cut off funding for most combat operations in Iraq by the end of March."

The Levey story never even mentions that 19 Democratic senators voted with the crushing majority against the antiwar plan. If it had been written by Al-Qaeda propaganda in Quetta, Pakistan, it could not have been more biased.

When something like this happens, of course, it is not the responsibility of a lone reporter. The Los Angeles Times' Washington bureau chief, Doyle McManus, assigned Levey to this story and bears some of the responsibility, as does the National desk in Los Angeles.

There will, I predict, be a day of reckoning in this war in which those who opted for an American surrender, such as a Los Angeles Times editorial did last week, will regret that they ever took their positions, no matter how sincere they are today.

But Levey, I daresay, is insincere.

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In order for President Bush to successfully persevere in the war, he is going to have to be sure his administration is in order. In this vein, it seems to me it would be wisest for the President to tell both his attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, and the head of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz, that they must resign.

Both men are caught up in embarrassing scandals in which they have done neither an honest nor a skillful job in defending their positions. This blog first called for Gonzales' resignation on March 13. It has taken both men too long to go, and President Bush too long to require that they do so.

Later in the day, Wolfowitz did resign, saying he would be gone by June 30. He ouight to go sooner than that, but this is a step forward. Now, it's Gonzales' turn.

War Weariness Grows In Washington, Afghanistan

Just in the last 24 hours, there have been strong indications that weariness with the never ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is growing in Washington, with blunt talk by 11 Republican Congressional moderates to President Bush at a White House meeting, and a call by the upper house of the Afghanistan parliament for a ceasefire in that country and negotiations with the Taliban.

It's not really that new. Doyle McManus had an article not long ago in the L.A. Times saying that if progress in the Iraq war is not discernible by September, Republican support for the President's position will sharply erode.

As the 2008 elections approach, it is plain that the Republicans in Congress are fearful of a debacle at the polls next year, much worse than in 2006, when the Republicans lost control of Congress, unless there is a change in the Iraq situation far beyond the glimmerings of light seen recently in Anbar province.

The talk yesterday at the White House put the President on notice that he has diminishing time to show a turn in Iraq, or more Republicans in Congress, beyond the minuscule member so far, will start drifting to the anti-war Democrats. It is not inconceivable, as McManus and Times Washington columnist Ron Brownstein have been reporting, that a veto-proof majority could be assembled in Congress against the President's position of carrying on the war, at least on the same basis it is now.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, where the war is in its sixth year of direct American involvement, the government of Hamid Karzai is showing signs of wanting to see whether the Taliban could not be brought to some settlement. Karzai is not naive, and probably his condition would be that in exchange for Taliban participation in the government, there would have to be a guarantee against terror being exported from Afghanistan, as it was on Sept. 11, 2001.

But already, with more repressive laws restricting a free press, and mounting protests against American and NATO bombing efforts that often kill civilians, it is evident that the Afghan situation is in flux, and that efforts for sharp reform in Islamic traditions in that country have not been successful.

There could be some war weariness as well on the Taliban side. Some of the same trends that have developed in Anbar province, where tribes have taken on Al Qaeda, can possibly be seen in the Waziristan border sections of Pakistan, where tribes have grown tired of Arab and other foreign fighters affiliated with Al Qaeda. In the Pakistan border areas, hundreds of Uzbek and other foreign terrorists have been killed in clashes with these tribes in recent weeks, and the Pakistani army has become more active in abetting such tribal efforts.

However, these developments are countered by increasing unrest in Pakistan, where the government of the military dictator Pervez Musharaff is under great pressure, not only from the Taliban but from forces determined to restore democracy to Pakistan. In an article in the Washington Post, Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistani journalist who wrote the first book on the Taliban before the Sept. 11
terror attacks, now writes he thinks Musharaff's rule is coming to an end. On Saturday, May 12, it was reported that 33 persons had been killed in sweeping riots in Karachi centering around an aborted visit to the city of a chief justice ousted by Musharaff.

Any fall of the government in Pakistan could easily jeopardize peace over a much larger area, since Pakistan is a nuclear state and just who might come to control the nuclear weapons is uncertain. It could be a nightmare for the West, at a time when Washington has grown impatient with Musharaff for failing to do more against the Taliban, and the British are charging that terrorists in Britain are being trained in Pakistan.

The situation, clearly, is fluid. Certainly if Al Qaeda perceives that America is just about fed up with the war, it will increase suicide bombings and other attacks in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq in hopes of chasing U.S. forces and turning the situation throughout the Middle East to its advantage. If the Taliban is growing war weary, there is no sign Al Qaeda is. And if Pakistan becomes more fully embroiled in conflict, it may well be not peace but war that gains the upper hand in the whole region.

Vice President Cheney's visit to the Middle East this week, including to Iraq, may represent a recognition by the Bush Administration that forces pushing it to change Iraq war policy have grown more powerful. That is why, Cheney has apparently been warning the feeble and highly sectarian government of Nouri Al-Maliki, that time is running out for it to take steps to abandon the sectarianism. However, the Cheney warnings may not be effective, and they may come too late. Maliki seems more interested in Shia dominance in Iraq than progress against the Al Qaeda insurgency or steps to placate less militant Sunnis.

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The L.A. Times again succumbs to excessive and distasteful advertising this morning, allowing the Macy's inferior department stores to buy wrap around pages obscuring the Times' metro and sports sections. Most readers will, I believe, join me in throwing away these wrap-arounds as a first step toward reading the paper. But that is not enough. Macy's and any other advertiser that buys wrap arounds should be boycotted, and Times publisher David Hiller should be informed that such stupidity will not help the paper's reputation, or its circulation.

McCain Commands Admiration With Principled Stand

Sen. John McCain's speech yesterday before the military cadets at VMI will, I believe, be remembered and honored when the history of this period is written. Just as Winston Churchill was excoriated as a warmonger when he made his speech, on Oct. 5, 1938, on the Munich Agreement, only to be revered later when everything he warned of came to pass.

We must "take our stand for freedom as in the olden time," Churchill concluded in his great address to Parliament.

So stands McCain. In warning of the calamities to come should the war in Iraq be lost, and in calling on the nation to be steadfast, McCain has put the nation's interest above that of his own transitory political fortunes. It is reminiscent, as New York Times columnist David Brooks notes this morning, of the heroic resistance that McCain made to his North Vietnamese interrogators when he was a prisoner in the Vietnam war.

The stakes today are much greater than Vietnam. A virulent fascism, seeking to arm itself with nuclear weapons, is sweeping over the Middle East and North Africa, and threatening Europe and the United States. The greatest battle is going on in Iraq, where U.S. armed forces are engaged in a bitter and protracted war against those who in Al Qaeda and other Muslim fundamentalist organizations would spread their brand of barbarism throughout the world. At the same time, weak-kneed p0liticians in Washington grow discouraged. They are willing to give up the fight in Iraq in the vain hope that the enemy would then let us alone. They are today's parallel to Neville Chamberlain and others who, in the 1930s, sought "peace in our time" by throwing over Czechoslovakia, only to see Hitler, less than a year later, launch an aggressive war that killed more than 50 million.

It is in this context that McCain's speech yesterday was given.

The Arizona senator declared, "I understand the frustration caused by our mistakes in this war. I sympathize with the fatigue of the American people. But I also know the toll a lost war takes on an army and a country. It (the Iraq war) is the right road. It is necessary and just."

McCain said of the recent Congressional votes for a timed withdrawal, "Democratic leaders smiled and cheered as the late votes were counted. What were they celebrating? Defeat?Surrender?"

But, as he asserted, the Democratic stands can lead to "disaster for the United States of America...What their motives might be, I can't ascertain. I do know what these actions will cause."

If the war is lost, McCain said, "We would face a terrible choice: watch the region burn, the price of oil escalate dramatically, and our economy decline, watch the terrorists establish new base camps, or send American troops back to Iraq, with the odds against our success much worse than they are today."

It was the NYT columnist, Brooks, who best captured the moment of this prophetic speech.

"McCain has been gradually sliding in the polls, and he has responded not by panicking, or by changing, but by surrendering himself to the fates," Brooks wrote. "He's had a wonderful life, he feels, and if he is not president, it will be no tragedy. At first I thought he was making preemptive excuses for a possible defeat, but after observing him closely I concluded this is a fatalism that Navy fliers must often adopt as they go into combat.

"And there's a stubbornness about him, now, too, which was not evident on the Straight Talk Express. The atmosphere is much harsher toward him, and you can see the hardness he must have used to resist his Vietnamese jailers."

McCain views the war as an epic, Brooks writes, and believes "he has a duty...to support the strategy he still believes in, and perhaps ward off the worse cataclysm that would come from chaos and early withdrawal."

And, finally Brooks says of McCain, "He's been consistent and steady these past few years, while others have flickered. He's been offended by Democrats who laughed and celebrated during the passage of withdrawal legislation. Yesterday he criticized them in a way that was harsh but thoroughly considered.

"But in the long run, his embrace of Iraq may not hurt him as much as now appears. In 10 months, this election won't be about the surge, it will be about the hydra-headed crisis roiling the Middle East. The candidate who is the most substantive, most mature and most consistent will begin to look more attractive and more necessary."

Nineteen months after Lady Astor screamed "Nonsense" as Churchill spoke, and most of the rest of the Parliament cheered her, the King called Churchill to become Prime Minister.

I've quoted both McCain and Brooks at length today, because I believe their words are historic. In the calamitous months and years to come, we will be glad these men stood for their principles.

Pelosi And Other Congress Should Stay Out Of Syria

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi probably should have stayed away from Syria, where she joined other recent Congressional visitors in dignifying the thuggish regime of Bashir Assad, and, actually, in her case falsified the position of the Israeli government. It showed that Pelosi has a lot to learn about foreign policy.

Pelosi foolishly told Assad that she was conveying a message from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that Israel was ready to open negotiations with Syria.

Within hours, Olmert issued a statement saying that this was not what he had told Pelosi, that Israel would not open negotiations with Syria until the Assad regime had abandoned its support of terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah, which it has been resupplying, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The Logan Act, which bars free lancers from representing the U.S. in foreign affairs, is now honored more in the breach. Many members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, have visited Damascus in recent months. It reminds one of the British Members of Parliament who paid visits to Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s. All went with good intentions, but they often came away calling the Fascist dictators reasonable men.

I don't think Pelosi is guilty of any felony here, as some political partisans have suggested, but still she should have been more careful. Syria has one of the world's most brutal regimes, and it has been allowing Arab Jihadists to cross over into Iraq, where they fight and kill American forces.

The Democrats in Washington have grown frustrated at their inability to change the Bush Administration's course in the Middle East, but they have to recognize they do not have a sufficient majority in Congress to really do so. They can pass nonbinding resolutions, but they probably cannot command a majority that would actually cut off funding for U.S. operations in Iraq and elsewhere in the region., even if they wished to do so, which many Democrats do not. Under these circumstances, the Democratic leadership looks foolish when statements are made, such as by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid the other day, that they will somehow throttle back U.S. war involvement.

Pelosi took Jewish members of Congress, such as Californians Henry Waxman and Tom Lantos, on her trip and managed to get both them and the accompanying press corps into both Syria and Saudi Arabia, and aside from the inaccurate statements she made about Israeli policy, she avoided the gross errors of French presidential candidate Segolene Royale when she went to the Middle East several months ago.

Still, it would have been better had Pelosi not meddled in the Arab-Israeli dispute. She and the Democrats In Congress run the risk of placing themselves in embarrassing positions.

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This may not be the moment for Steve Lopez or other Times writers to launch an investigation of Tribune buyer Sam Zell, his beachfront Malibu property and so forth. There is reason to hope Zell may be more friendly to the Times and California in general than the man he will succeed as Tribune chairman, inept CEO Dennis FitzSimons. I see no reason to go out of the way to offend Zell at this stage.

Now, Wimpy Time Magazine Wants Iraqi Immigrants

Time magazine has proved itself to be wimpy for many months, urging President Bush to turn tail in the Middle East, criticizing Israel for defending itself against terrorist bombings and kidnappings, and generally becoming an exponent of American guilt in the War on Terror. To Time, as with too many American liberals, it isn't the suicide bombers of Al Qaeda or Muslim fundamentalist crazies who are to blame for the wars we are fighting, but the USA.

Now, the latest issue of Time goes beyond ever before in wallowing in disgraceful positions. The magazine has a long article urging the U.S. to take in Iraqi refugees, and a page long column advocating that we take on the health problems of Vietnam on grounds that our Agent Orange used in the Vietnam war may have caused some of them. Finally, the magazine outdoes itself by devoting a complimentary page to Dennis Kucinich, the nutty peacenik from Cleveland who is running for President while, again, very few pay any attention. The Kucinich article is written by that transcontinental journalistic ditz, Joel Stein, who repeatedly embarrasses both Time and the L.A. Times with his offbeat views.

Time says the U.S. admitted just 18 Iraqi refugees in 2005 and 202 in 2006. But that is exactly 220 too many. Why would this country want to admit any Iraqis at all?

Woe has come to France for foolishly admitting hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees from Algeria after conclusion of its war for independence. These people, with rare exceptions, not only have not assimilated into France, but have rioted, added to the crime wave and rendered many Paris suburbs and other locales virtually uninhabitable.

The same thing has happened with Pakistanis admitted to Great Britain. The country now is saddled with a major terrorist problem, and in the summer of 2005, Muslim malcontents bombed the London subway and bus system, killing 52 and wounding hundreds. Later, it was shown they were trained by Al Qaeda.

In fact, look around Europe. Where ever Muslim refugees have gone, there has been trouble -- attempted train bombings in Germany, murders in Holland, a terror attack on trains in Spain that killed 191, and sedition in Italy.

Why should we wish to encourage such problems in the U.S., simply to satisfy the liberal dilettantes at Time magazine?

As for Vietnam, Vietnamese immigrants to the U.S. have often assimilated well, and are an asset to the U.S. There are no religious problems there.

Relations with between the U.S. and Vietnam have improved in the meantime. Why should we go back 30 years after the war and assume responsibility for Vietnamese problems? There's no more reason we should do this, than that they should come over here to provide care for U.S. Vietnam veterans.

No wonder Time circulation is going down. The magazine is no longer quite respectable on these issues.

Hillary Clinton Recognizes Reality; Edwards And Kerry Do Not

Sen. Hillary Clinton is not the weak appeaser that John Edwards and Sen. John Kerry are. Rather than a wholesale retreat from the world wide responsibilities of the U.S., she is willing to see things as they are. This makes her a far more credible presidential candidate than Edwards or Kerry.

Clinton, on the Today program this morning, mentioned she had been to Ground Zero in New York, and, added notably, "There are people out there who are trying to kill us."

On the day that Clinton spoke out, adhering to her centrist position on foreign policy, word came of new terror threats against the United States from Ayman Zawahiri, the number two man in al-Queda. There were sectarian killings in Iraq and a bombing in Afghanistan. In Lebanon, Hezbollah thugs representing Iran and Syria intensified their attempt to bring down the Western-backed government, paralyzing Beirut. There were 2 deaths and 100 injuries in the coup attempt led by Hassan Nazrallah.

In short, on several fronts, the day President Bush is due to deliver the State of the Union address, there was new proof that the U.S. and the West have enemies who won't go away. Unlike Edwards and Kerry, Clinton is not trying to fool the American people into believing otherwise. She has a different strategy for fighting the war than Mr. Bush, but she is not for bugging out.

No one knows what may happen next in the conflict in which American forces are engaged. But Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, testified to Congress this morning that the situation in Iraq is "dire," and he strongly supported the sending of additional U.S. troops to Baghdad.

Judging from the comments posted by readers in recent weeks on the New York Times web site and letters to other newspapers like the Tribune-owned Los Angeles Times, there are millions of Americans who would rather stick their heads in the sand like ostriches and not notice the threats that exist. Many of these people have the strange idea that President Bush is more to blame for the tensions in the world than Osama bin Laden.

I don't want these people to be proven wrong when a mushroom cloud soars over Los Angeles or another American city or an atomic power plant melts down as a result of sabotage.

Yet, today, we see the L.A. Times, edited by an imported incompetent, James O'Shea, continuing to ignore the news. Both yesterday and today, the Times kept off Page One, the terrible toll from sectarian and other violence in Iraq. Yesterday, the deaths of 27 American soldiers in Iraq, the third worst toll of the war for such a period, was not on Page One. Today, the killings of 88 people in sectarian violence in Baghdad, wasn't there either. Instead, there is a ridiculously false story that there is little Iranian interference in the Iraq war.

By contrast, the New York Times keeps its eye on what is happening. The 88 sectarian killings are its off-lead this morning, and the New York Times gave lead coverage to the arrest in Iraq last week of Iranian agents while that too was comparatively buried in the L.A. Times.

Our soldiers in Iraq are being hit daily by rocket propelled grenades and roadside bombs manufactured in Iran, and yet the L.A. Times has a Page One headline this morning, "Scant evidence found of Iran-Iraq arms link." Shame on the two reporters whose bylines headed this article, Alexandra Zavis and Greg Miller.

Hillary Clinton, thank goodness, is not so blind.

Hillary Clinton Strikes A Centrist Position On Iraq

Sen. Hillary Clinton, back from her trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, struck a reasonably centrist position Wednesday on U.S. war policy in an interview on the Today program. With Sen. Barack Obama moving toward making a presidential bid, and former Sen. John Edwards already assuming a left wing McGovernite position, it's becoming clear that Clinton will try to occupy the Democratic center, assuming she makes her own bid. This would put her slightly to the right of Obama and distinctly to the right of Edwards in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination next year.

This morning, Clinton said she feels the U.S. ought to withdraw Green Zone support and protection for the Maliki government in Baghdad unless he promptly knuckles under on helping U.S. forces fight the Mahdi militia. So far, he has proved totally unsatisfactory in that regard. In fact, he is complicit with the Shiite Mahdi killers.

Clinton said she believes that unless he comes around, U.S. forces should be withdrawn from Baghdad and simply used in Anbar and the northwest to fight the Sunni insurgents, while, presumably not joining in in the civil war now raging between Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad.

While Clinton opposed the troop increase in Iraq as a whole now being implemented by President Bush, she said she does feel U.S. troop levels should be increased by two battalions in Afghanistan in anticipation of spring attacks by the Taliban. The U.S. currently has only 23,000
troops in Afghanistan compared to about 140,000 in Iraq.

I'm heartened, overall, by these positions by Clinton, since it is clear she does not favor a withdrawal from the Middle East and has adopted a realistic position toward the Maliki government and its persistent support of sectarian violence in Iraq.

Perhaps, not so coincidentally, President Bush sharpened his criticism of Maliki in comments made yesterday, specifically saying the brutal hanging executions of Saddam Hussein and two of his close associates had been mishandled. The President warned in his speech last week that the U.S. commitment to the Maliki government was not "open ended" and there may be less space between his and Clinton's positions than there appears to many observers to be.

Obama, meanwhile, has also been leaning a bit toward the center on what to do in the Middle East. He has made it clear he is not for a precipitate withdrawal from Iraq, and has supported a larger U.S. commitment in Afghanistan.

Only Edwards sounds thoroughly defeatist, and he is demagoguing this issue. He voted for the war in the first place, and now has adopted the cut-and-run attitude of the cowardly Sen. John Kerry in an attempt to stake out a position he thinks will benefit him in the primaries. It's a position which could work in the primaries, in my view, but not in a general election. With that in mind, Clinton's position is far more beneficial both to herself in the long run and to American power and success in the world.

We'll see what happens, but it's becoming apparent that Maliki and his corrupt and murderous government is on an increasingly short leash with all factions in the U.S. Getting rid of him may well prove necessary

It's Good That Republicans Must Adjust To Democratic Control Of Congress

I confess to mixed feelings about the Democratic takeover of Congress. I was thrilled when I saw Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, the first woman to ever become Speaker of the House, at the podium this week with a flock of children and grandchildren, as she assumed her responsibilities. The number of women in the House has steadily increased and has now reached 74 in the 435-seat House chamber, so it's high time a woman reached the top most post.

But when Pelosi joined Sen. Harry Reid, the new Senate majority leader, in trying to head off President Bush's projected increase of troops in Iraq, I didn't agree with them. The President is the commander=in-chief, and as long as he's in office, within limits, he has most rights to conduct the war as he wishes.

Still, Democratic input is good. It is good that the Democrats will now have some influence over war policy, because despite anti-war feeling on the Democratic side, it will be better for the country in the long run if the Democrats have some responsibility for a war that affects us all.

It's going to require an adjustment of thinking to figure out just what "some responsibility" will mean.

There is a short, but amusing, story in the L.A. Times this morning by Noam Levey, about the tribulations of Rep. David Dreier, who is from Southern California, as he settles into a minority role on the House Rules Committee, after running the committee with an iron hand during the years of Republican control.

Dreier all of a sudden has become an exponent of openness, and is now criticisizing the Democrats for doing some things on the Rules Committee that he used to do, such as banning some amendments on the House floor.

Levey quotes Rep. Alcee Hastings, the Florida Democrat, as saying of Dreier, "He is the only person in this chamber who can take a position directly contradictory to the one he took a few minutes earlier with a straight face."

I suspect it's going to take Dreier a while to adjust to the new order. In my contacts with him over the years, he has not proved to be very elastic in some things.

But both Dreier and the system will adjust. One of the glories of American government is that occasionally the voters do perceive it's time for a change, and act on it. This lets fresh air into the system, and brings along younger generations, which is a very good thing.

Kerry And Other Cut-And-Runners Should Stay Away From Syria

--Written from San Carlos, California

Three Democratic senators, Ben Nelson, Chris Dodd and now, John Kerry, have either already seen or will see the thug who is the president of Syria, Bashir Assad. They are not doing America any good on these trips, and they have no business going to Syria.

It used to be a standard of American law that unofficial emissaries weren't permitted to practice foreign policy while abroad. However, that is now a rule honored more in the breach.

The three Democratic senators undertake their Syrian trips in the wake of the foolish advice of the Baker Commission that America ought to seek Middle Eastern peace by appealing to both Syria and Iran. However, President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice have already rejected that advice as counterproductive. It would, under present circumstances, be perceived throughout the world as negotiating from weakness, and there is no evidence either of these countries are showing any good will.

Kerry is a particularly significant example of someone actually doing the U.S. interests in the region harm by consorting with evil doers like Assad, who is under suspicion in the assassinations of pro-Western officials in Lebanon, and is, in his own country, a terrible tyrant, like his father.

Kerry, the former Democratic presidential candidate, has behaved more and more disgracefully as time has gone by. Before the Mid Term elections, he had to suspend campaigning after he insulted American troops in Iraq with his "botched joke" that they were uneducated fools who had gotten "stuck" there. Just this week, Kerry, as phony as a three-dollar bill, is quoted as advising Time magazine to name the U.S. veteran as Person of the Year. This, of course, is an attempt to overcome his pre-election remark about the troops.

Even before that, Kerry was one of just a few senators who tried to advance legislation for a precipitate withdrawal from Iraq, conceding the war, and giving terrorists full sway in the Middle East. As far back as the Vietnam war, Kerry, after first exhibiting heroism in combat, later helped the enemy by arguing America should quit.

Now, Kerry is running off to see Assad. It reminds one of Lloyd George's visit to Hitler in the 1930s, when he came away saying what a gentleman he thought Hitler was.

As for Dodd, he also has made a fool of himself lately. He was supposedly a great friend of Joe Lieberman, the other senator from Connecticut. But when Lieberman was forced to run an independent campaign after being defeated in the Democratic primary by peacenik Ned Lamont, Dodd quickly abandoned the friendship and backed Lamont. Fortunately, Lieberman won.

Now Dodd too runs off to see Assad.

Are the American taxpayers paying for the travels of these craven appeasers? I'll bet we are.

With Left Now Taking Out Against Baker Report As Much As The Right, It's A Dead Letter

Events in the Middle East are in the saddle, and, despite wishful-thinking such as represented Saturday in Tim Rutten's column in the L.A. Times, the Baker Commission report is already a dead letter.

In the Sunday New York Times, the left is taking out after the Baker report as strongly, although from a different perspective, as the right did last week.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah warns an Arab Gulf state summit today that it will only take a spark now to ignite a Sunni-Shiite war all over the Middle East.

The New York Times reported a few days ago that the sectarian civil war now roiling Iraq has already sent 1.6 million fearful Iraqis swarming over the country's boundaries. About 600,000 of them have gone to Syria and 700,000 to Jordan, threatening to destabilize those countries.

Such events are far more important for the moment than the policy of weakness enunciated for America by the ill-fated Baker commission.

Today, two noted New York Times writers, Frank Rich and Roger Cohen, both discuss left-wing reaction to the Baker report, and it is just as vitriolic as the right-wing reaction.

Rich writes, notably, "Even if we could wave a magic wand and quickly create thousands more military advisers (and Arabic-speaking ones at that), there's no reason to believe they could build a crack Iraqi army and police force where all those who came before have failed."

As for the Baker commission suggestions in general, Rich is caustic.

"Its recommendations are bogus." he writes, "because the few that have any teeth are completely unattainable. Of course, it would be fantastic if additional Iraqi troops would stand up en masse after an infusion of new American military advisers. And if reconciliation among the country's warring ethnicities could be mandated on a tight schedule. And if the Bush White House could be persuaded to persuade Iran and Syria to influence events for America's benefit. It would also be nice if we could all break the bank in Vegas."

Meanwhile, Roger Cohen, quotes a possible future Democratic secretary of state, Richard Holbrook, the architect of the Bosnian settlement, as calling the Baker report a weak Washington-style compromise.

Holbrook is ready, just as Rutten was, to call the Baker commission report well-written. It just doesn't propose anything that's the least bit workable.

Please do not get me wrong, I'm not saying that President Bush's policy has been adequate. It seems like the President is in a quandary as to what to do, and he has fought three and a half years in Iraq without positive results. A more intelligent man would have tried new policies there long ago.

For now, however, we're just going to have to await developments to dictate our next steps. As the King of Saudi Arabia suggested, they may not be long in coming.

Meanwhile, the L.A. Times today sticks most of the critical Middle Eastern news well back in Section A. Are new editor James O'Shea and new publisher David Hiller crazy? You bet, they are. They no more realize what's important than their inept director, Tribune Co. CEO Dennis FitzSimons.

Two East Indian Journalists Make The Point: Baker Commission Has Sold Out the U.S.

From two east Indian journalists, friends for the last 37 years, comes a highly pertinent comment by e-mail on the Baker Commission report on Iraq and the Middle East:

"On all sides," they write, "people are advising the Bush Administration to try diplomacy in Iraq/Iran etc. Can they be serious? Who is going to make concessions -- which is what a diplomatic solution is all about -- when they know the Bush Administration is weak and besieged by domestic opposition? Can you see the insurgents in Iraq or Ahmadinejad or Bashir Assad being sweetness and light now? It is absurd."

This reasoned judgement convinces me that my first impressions are correct -- that not since Neville Chamberlain went to Germany three times to beg Hitler to take only half of Czechoslovakia have we seen a more dangerous approach to appease Fascist enemies as we have in the Baker Commission report.

It is highly fortunate President Bush has already brushed off key parts of the report, specifically both its foolish advocacy that we go hat in hand to the Syrians and Iranians in an attempt to find an Iraqi settlement, and also that we set a schedule for withdrawing U.S. combat units from Iraq.

It is, as I wrote the other day, a prescription for total failure in Iraq and the creation of new, fatal dangers in the Middle East.

I agree that the President has to explore a new strategy in Iraq, since it's obvious that as the commission says, the situation has been deteriorating there. He is now making those explorations and promises an outline by the end of the year.

But just because the war is difficult does not mean we can afford to bail out of it.

There is dangerous nonsense abroad in the U.S. these days -- that we can temporize with the evils that afflict us and sell out our allies in the Middle East without devastating consequences here at home and throughout the world.

Already, this morning, there are dangerous signs in Lebanon as to what such a policy would mean. A lengthy AP story begins, "Prime Minister Fuad Saniora denounced Hezbollah and its leader on Friday in an unusually personal attack, a day after the guerrilla group's chief renewed his pledge to bring down the U.S.-backed government." This and other reports show the tremendous pressures that are being brought by the Fascists against the lawfully constituted government of Lebanon.

What is happening in Lebanon is of critical importance, and it is clear what it is: Iran and Syria with their stooges in the terrorist organization, Hezbollah, are trying to take over Lebanon. It is an attempted power grab such as we have to fear in many places should the U.S. retreat in the Middle East.

Baker and his commission are as dangerous to the U.S. as the appeasement policies that brought on World War II. The President has made mistakes, but in this instance he must stand fast.

There are all kinds of people who are trying to roll him over. We see it in Time magazine this week, where Michael Duffy writes he thinks the President will give in.

I have more confidence in Bush and his stubbornness than to believe he will. For the good of America, he simply cannot afford to.

There Is No Mandate To Bring All American Troops Home From Iraq

Some of our liberal friends would like to convince everyone that the results in the Mid Term elections constituted a mandate to withdraw all American troops from Iraq. But I believe this is not the case.

Saul Halpert, the former excellent KNBC reporter, now retired, writes in the L.A. Times letters column this morning, "The president is standing by his refusal to accept anything less than victory, although he has never defined what will constitute winning in that war, which many experts agree has already been lost. Any future moves can only minimize further damage to Iraqis, U.S. standing in the world and U.S. casualties.

"This portends contentious weeks and months ahead in Washington unless Democrats (and many Republicans) carry out the mandate of American voters to bring this sad war to as speedy a conclusion as possible."

Halpert, however, has misread both the election returns, and polls taken at the time of the election that showed only 27% of the voters wanted a precipitate withdrawal from Iraq.

Many of the 232 Democrats elected to the House are moderates who oppose any cut-and-run policy, although many would like to bring some American troops home in phases. If there was a clear majority of the American people who wanted to bug out of the war, then it seems to me Ned Lamont would have been elected over Sen. Joe Lieberman in Connecticut, where, instead, a coalition of Republicans, independents and Democrats finally gave Lieberman a solid majority.

The war, as Halpert accurately notes, has not been going well, and many, although not all, experts are contending it has already been lost.

I disagree it has been lost. As long as 140,000 American troops are fighting in Iraq, the war is not irretrievable. It was announced last night that President Bush will meet Iraqi Premier Noury al-Maliki in Amman, Jordan, Nov. 29-30, to discuss the war. At this meeting, a new means of fighting it may emerge, and for the sake of the morale of U.S. and Iraqi government troops, it is essential it does.

Continuing does mean a time of contention in Washington, I agree with Halpert on that. But the price to the U.S. and the West of quitting in Iraq would be too great for us to bear. We see in Lebanon this morning, with the latest assassination, that the appetite of the terrorists for pushing us altogether out of the Middle East, with all the consequences for our oil supply, the future of Israel and peace in Europe, has not diminished. It is stronger than ever.

This is not Vietnam. We have a much greater strategic interest in this war than we did in Southeast Asia. We quit that war with impunity. I don't believe we can do that in this one. There is no way that a retreat of America from Iraq, not to mention Afghanistan, would not adversely affect our standing in the world and our future capacity to stand with our allies.

In the Mid Term elections, the American people registered their impatience, which is understandable. But it will not be until 2008, with election of a new President, that there will likely be a mandate.

Between now and then, also, we cannot expect to see our enemies do nothing. Future attacks may compel American persistence. A major attack in Britain or the United States would shift public opinion dramatically again.

Nancy Pelosi Off To A Bad Start After Murtha Endorsement Fails

The House Speaker-designate, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, is off to a bad start with the refusal of the majority of House Democrats to go along with her endorsement of Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania as House Majority Leader.

Instead, the newly-elected House Democrats (including a few in still-disputed races) voted today 149-86 to go with Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, who has had a fractious relationship with Pelosi in the past.

Pelosi's choice to make a public issue out of this was a mistake. It shows that Pelosi may not be as skilled a politician as all the rave notices of recent days have indicated.

It is almost incredible, in light of what she has said since the Mid Term election about ethics, that Pelosi would back Murtha, who showed up visibly in network coverage in recent days turning down only conditionally a bribe years ago, and also again, in recent days, voiced his opposition to proposed new House ethics rules.

Pelosi said she backed Murtha because she admired his position for troop withdrawals from the Iraqi war. Iraq was not overtly an issue in the contest for House Majority Leader, but at the same time it seems obvious that there is no majority at present, even among Democrats, for a precipitate withdrawal from Iraq.

That being the case, Pelosi faces another danger in her apparent plan to replace Rep. Jane Harman of California with Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida as head of the House Intelligence Committee. Here, too, there are ethics problems since Hastings was actually impeached by Congress from a federal judgeship he had held in Florida. On Iraq, Harman is tougher for pursuing the war than Hastings.

Just as with Hoyer, Pelosi has had an unfriendly relationship with Harman.

But as Speaker she is going to have to demonstrate an ability to get along with people, if she is to be effective.

As a political writer for the Times, I had only scant contact with Pelosi, but what little I had did not give me the impression Pelosi was all that skillful a politician. From what I could observe, she sometimes does not pay much attention to detail. This can be devastating for a House Speaker.

London Times Column Suggests Kerry Might Be Rove's "Manchurian candidate"

--Written from London

The British papers can be so much more entertaining than the big American ones. They don't always take everything seriously.

Take today's London Times. It has a wonderful column by Gerard Baker suggesting that Sen. John Kerry might be a "Manchurian candidate" engineered by Karl Rove to sabotage the Democratic party.

"It seems entirely possible that at some point in his career, he was seized by a youthful Karl Rove, brainwashed and programmed to kill off, at crucial moments in American history, the Democratic party's political prospects," Baker writes.

This first became evident in 2004, he adds, when Kerry snatched defeat from Democratic victory prospects against President Bush, and has just been proved by Kerry's joke besmirching American troops fighting in Iraq.

Sounds quite reasonable to me.

The London Times also has a good article speculating on the critical ramifications for Prime Minister Tony Blair should the Republicans lose on Tuesday.

My flight to London on United Airlines business class at a discounted rate wasn't bad. I recommend it. Today, when I arrived, was an unusual day in London, bright and sunny. But I quickly proved to myself that the chances of getting really bad food here in Britain haven't been diminished, when I ordered "French" onion soup and got something that was an insult to France.

Kerry Has Done Himself In, If Not The Republicans, With Silly Remark

George Romney never recovered politically from his campaign remark that he had been "brainwashed" about Vietnam, and so it will go with John Kerry in his "botched joke" denigrating the American military.

Kerry apologized this morning on MSNBC, saying, "I said it was a botched joke. I'm sorry about a botched joke." And he cancelled campaign appearances for Democratic candidates in the Mid Term elections, not wishing to be a distraction.

I think this is too late to save the Republicans in an election that has been trending heavily Democratic in the polls. But it's probably the end of Kerry in the 2008 race. Even before this happened, Kerry was caught somewhere between his heroism in Vietnam and his cut-and-run advocacy in Iraq.

The L.A. Times does a service this morning when it prints, accompanying the lead story in the paper, exact quotes of what Kerry's prepared remarks would have had him say at the appearance with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College, and then what he actually did say.

In the prepared remarks, Kerry was to say, "Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush."

What Kerry did say, was, "You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

The remark, either the prepared or the actually declared, would have landed Kerry in trouble, and is at least an illustration of the old adage that it is dangerous to joke in American politics. Maybe, just maybe, in the prepared remarks, Kerry was talking about President Bush. The way it came out, he never mentioned him.

For one thing, suggesting American troops have failed in their education is not true. Through personal experience I can say that many educated people go into the military, and some are in Iraq today.

But, for Kerry, it is devastating. This reminds one of Kerry's inopportune remarks during his presidential campaign that he had voted for the Iraq war in the Senate, but he had also voted against it. The Massachusetts senator does not seem to know his own mind, and one reason he lost the presidential race in 2004 was that he waffled on what his Iraq policy was.

Since then, Kerry has been leading the Democratic minority (thus far) who wish simply to withdraw from Iraq without paying attention to the probable consequences.

While it's all probably too late to save the Republicans in the Mid Terms, it still could be felt in such close races as the Senate contests in Missouri and Virginia.

Regardless, I believe, it's the end of Kerry's presidential aspirations. He will never live this down.

House Republican leader John Boenner drove that home today by stating of Kerry, "he is a liberal, a leftist and this is the typical attitude they have toward our military. It goes to show you what liberal Democrats would do if they were to take control of the House and Senate."

Maybe not, because not all Democrats want to exactly cut and run, as does John Kerry. Still, he has embarrassed both himself and the Democratic party.

Questioning Whether Bush Bashers Actually Hurt The President

There's an outstanding review in the New York Times Book Review this Sunday questioning the one-sidedness of two new Bush-bashing books, "Pretensions to Empire," by Lewis H. Lapham, and "How Bush Rules," by Sidney Blumenthal.

The reviewer, Jennifer Senior, a contributing editor at New York magazine who writes about politics, points out what should be obvious: Johnny One Notes generally do in themselves, because they screech so loudly that few listen to them.

It's become clear that President Bush, to some extent, benefits from all the criticism directed at him. I remember one night, during the 2004 presidential debates, when I was present, in Hanover, N.H., watching one of the debates between Mr. Bush and Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee. Every time the President spoke, a man in the audience made an insulting remark about him. I thought to myself at the time that every time this critic spoke, he was, in fact, steering votes to Mr. Bush.

Now, just for the record, I'm an admirer of the President, although I think nonetheless that he has made many mistakes in his conduct of the War on Terror. I think some correctives are in order, but at the same time I like Mr. Bush for the same reason I like the Notre Dame football team: They continue to fight, as the Irish did last night in their game against Michigan State, regardless how heavily the odds seem to be against them.

Ms. Senior clearly thinks for herself, and I wish the editors of the New York Times, who have allowed their commentary pages to become overly liberalized, would pay some attention to what she says. At least, thank goodness, the editor of the NYT Book Review is paying attention, because he not only has hired her four times to write reviews, but he even gives her a complimentary blurb at the beginning of the Book Review today.

Of Lapham's book, a constant assault on Mr. Bush, Ms. Senior writes, "Well, at least his (Lapham's) point of view is unambiguous. But unless you agree with it 100 percent -- and are content to see almost no original reporting or analysis in support of these claims -- you may feel less inclined to throttle Lapham's targets than to throttle Lapham himself."

Later, she adds, "People who are serious about politics don't just preen. They report, explain, explore contradictions, struggle with ideas, perhaps even propose suggestions. If they do none of these things, they're simply heckling, and if the best Lapham can do is come up with 50 inventive new ways to call Bush an imbecilic oligarch, that's all he's doing: heckling."

The reviewer compares Lapham to Ann Coulter, the right wing polemicist. "He's just another talk show host really -- only this time by way of Yale and Mensa," she writes.

As for Blumenthal, Senior finds that his columns for Salon and The Guardian newspaper in London, are "hardly pitched to win over undecided voters" either.

Senior admires certain things about Blumenthal's writing. "These columns have a certain cumulative power," she writes. "But their content has also been curated with one aim in mind, and that's to cast the Bush Administration in the grimmest possible light."

Senior concludes, "It's hard to trust a narrator who only and always assumes the worst...The left has often complained that what it needs isn't polite speech, but voices as pungent as those on the right. Maybe so. But even the angriest people on the right tend to be funny. Books like this one are a depressing reminder of how important it is for writers to have a slight sense of humor about themselves, if they want to be taken at all seriously."

How great it would be if the New York Times substituted Senior for one of its polemnical left wing columnists, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert or Frank Rich. It would certainly improve the newspaper.