Sad but true
U.S. wins. Freedom loses. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:41:00 PM -- |    

 

Texas Rangers: Courtesy, Service, Deception
Yesterday I wondered whether the AMICC agency that helped locate the Texan Democrats failed to follow procedures, or whether those procedures were too loose. The answer turns out to be: too loose -- at least, too loose to trip up deceptive state law enforcement officers. My apologies to AMICC for the implication they'd abused their powers ("..or help locate," etc. etc.)

Via the Dallas Morning News, via Josh Marshall, here's the un-flipping-believable story: a Texas Ranger misled the AMICC to wheedle the information out of them:

The bureau says one of its officers at the center in Riverside, Calif., received "an urgent phone call from a concerned Texas Department of Public Safety officer" on Monday who stated: "We got a problem, and I hope you can help me out. We had a plane that was supposed to be going from Ardmore, Oklahoma, to Georgetown, Texas. It had state representatives in it, and we cannot find this plane." The bureau says the DPS officer "expressed concern that the plane had not arrived at its intended destination."

Moreover, it seems hard to believe [Texas House Speaker] Craddick didn't know about it. Marshall also convinces me that there's more to the DeLay-FBI angle than the Star-Telegram story implied.

Could better procedures by AMICC have tripped up the Texas DPS (motto: "Courtesy, Service, Protection") officer somehow? It's hard to conceive of a system that distinguishes "good faith" from "bad faith" missing plane search requests, unless the idea is merely to create a verifiable lie. You hardly want federal agents dickering around about a supposed life and death situation.

I'll note that if the Texas officer had an actual or implied ("plan to return? yes") flight plan, what I know of his phone performance may turn out to be borderline "truthful," in 10-year old lawyer fashion. He clearly already suspected the Dems were in Ardmore. But basically, I think he either actually or essentially placed a kind of fake 911 call, and should be on the hook for that at the federal level. And if Craddick or -- dare I hope it -- Tom DeLay knew about the subterfuge, maybe they're on the hook, too. Now if they'll only lie about it under oath. Then we'd have 'em! posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:36:00 PM -- |    

 

When medievalists go wild: debauchery in Kalamazoo
These guys rock: Sister Andrea of the Interfaith Nunnery collective reports on the Thirty-Eighth International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo:

The Dance. Quite a hallucinatory experience: hundreds of scholars between the ages of twenty-one and... seventy?... grinding on the dance floor to music that stretches from techno back to polka. I heard a sixty-some-year-old male professor enthusiastically head-banging to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" announce, "I love this song. Who sings it?"

Careful with the mead, it might be spiked. Why aren't I having this much fun? Where have I gone wrong? posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:33:00 PM -- |    

 

Farce majeure
The Texas Democratic legislators saga has veered out of the comedy lane. The Dallas-Fort Worth Star Telegram reports ("Eyes of Texas, U.S. on truant legislators," via Matthew Yglesias):

One federal agency that became involved early on was the Air and Marine Interdiction and Coordination Center [AMICC], based in Riverside, Calif. -- which now falls under the auspices of the Homeland Security Department.

The agency received a call to locate a specific Piper turboprop aircraft. It was determined that the plane belonged to former House Speaker Pete Laney, D-Hale Center.

The location of Laney's plane proved to be a key piece of information because, Craddick said, it's how he determined that the Democrats were in Ardmore.
"We called someone, and they said they were going to track it. I have no idea how they tracked it down," Craddick said. "That's how we found them."

AMICC's purpose?

The Air and Marine Interdiction Coordination Center (AMICC), located in Riverside, California, is the only law enforcement facility of its kind in the U.S. and is the Nation's "eyes and ears." Opened in October 1988, this multiagency radar, communications and control center is linked to a wide array of civilian and military radar sites, aerostats, airborne reconnaissance aircraft and other detection assets, which provides 24-hour, seamless radar surveillance throughout the continental U.S., Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, and beyond. This allows Customs to identify, track, and support the interdiction and apprehension of violators attempting to enter U.S. airspace with illegal drugs or terrorist objectives... or help locate Texas Democrats resisting Republican gerrymandering if called upon to do so. AMICC will pretty much tell anyone who gives us a call whatever they need to know about any private plane they're curious about, especially if it seems like it would make Karl Rove happy.

OK, I made up that last part.

This is small beans in one sense, but of a piece with other stories I'm following, like the "no-fly" business. That story, too, revolves at minimum around the procedures and accountability of a DHS agency. Either someone failed to follow procedure at AMICC, or those procedures are too loose. It would be nice to find out which is true.

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UPDATE, May 16: Answer: procedures too loose to catch a tricky Texas DPS officer; see above. Apologies to AMICC.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:34:00 PM -- |    

 

Iraqi WMD: not wrong. Yet.
On Sunday, Gary Farber published a mea culpa on learning that the U.S. is planning to withdraw the lead group in charge of finding WMD in Iraq (Washington Post, "Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq "). Team members seem demoralized, and doubt that they'll ever find "smoking guns." Farber, chagrined, writes:

If this bears out, I was terribly, tragically, wrong, on the threat of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq. And if so, I am a fool, a blunderer, and an idiot.

I make no saves, I make no apologies. I was, it appears, wrong. And you should consider my future opinions accordingly.

Not so fast, Gary! It now appears that the U.S. government is not throwing in the towel -- the most demoralizing implication of the Post's story -- but shifting gears in the hunt for evidence of Iraqi WMD. Reuters' Steve Holland reports:

With evidence of weapons of mass destruction elusive, the United States and its war allies are replacing arms inspectors in Iraq with a new, larger team that will try to piece together "a deception program" by Saddam Hussein, a top White House official said on Monday.

The new team will be "more expert" at following the paper trail and other intelligence left behind by the Saddam government, said President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.

Of course, with all the looting and destruction that's happened, one might reasonably ask "what paper trail?" Monday's capture of "Jack of Spades" Ibrahim Ahmad Abd al Sattar Muhammad al Tikriti (whew) and a key scientist may provide more answers. The recent possible mobile bioweapon production find (New York Times, Reuters) is encouraging, too, if not the ideal convincing case for Iraqi WMD.

Ken Pollack's recent comments to a Council on Foreign Relations editor (via Matthew Yglesias) are still worth considering, although his credibility is on the line here, too:

I still think it is very premature to suggest that Saddam either did or did not have the weapons. Now it's not just that the fat lady hasn't sung yet, it's that in some senses the orchestra is just starting to tune up. We are only at the very beginning of what will have to be a very extensive weapons search throughout Iraq.

Pollack's ensuing remarks are a bit precious for my taste: he asserts we should have either gone to war as soon as Blix found substantial lack of cooperation, or waited for a year to assemble a stronger coalition.* We waited because Blair needed us to, and were only barely willing to do even that. But if you were as resolved as Pollack and Blair that Saddam was dangerous to the region and the world, assembling the perfect coalition to take to war against him was a luxury, not a necessity.

But Pollack makes a good point: between SCR 1441 and Blix's report of non-cooperation, the formal justification for the war was there. Saddam's apparent gamesmanship with the Security Council and the United States could not be tolerated. Saddam was on probation for a good reason; even a minor violation of probation is still a violation.

Still, the whole buildup that led to SCR 1441 was premised on a serious Iraqi WMD threat. If that threat was spurious, the Bush folk have some 'splainin' to do. If they knew it was spurious, there should be resignations and even impeachment: surely a lie that leads to war is more actionable than a lie that covers up an affair with the office intern. It's fine to have liberated Iraq; it's an important relief to know Saddam is gone from power. But it definitely would not be fine to learn the United States went to war after being lied to by the Bush administration.

It won't just be the Bushies who'll have to look in the mirror. I will have given an administration I didn't really like or trust too much leeway in explaining its actions. Ultimately, I will have let my fear of one kind of mistake -- asserting Saddam could be lived with, but learning he couldn't -- drive me to make the opposite kind: supporting a war that was fundamentally about weapons programs he then turned out not to have.

I'll join Gary in mea culpas if (when?) the U.S. ends serious efforts to determine what happened to the Iraqi WMD the Bush administration was warning about, or learns they were never there. That hasn't happened yet.** If it does, a full investigation and accounting are essential.

What has happened, though, is already bad enough. While it's obvious that the forces on hand at the beginning of Gulf War II were adequate to the job of conquering Iraq, they were not adequate to the job of securing it. Untold damage has been done by allowing looters to pilfer government offices and weapons sites full of dangerously radioactive materials.*** The failure to secure even critical sites like the Tawaitha nuclear research facility is a black mark against the Bush administration, and raises doubts about what its intentions or competence -- take your pick -- really are.

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* Tim Dunlop points out how Pollack appears to waffle on this over time. Mr. Dunlop has been after Pollack's hide for some time now.
** I must mention "Operation Desert Snipe" somewhere in here, so here goes. This is a well researched and argued case against there being any Iraqi WMD before the war began. It deserves the "magisterial" accolade Jim Henley bestows on it. Well written, yes. Compelling, no.

"Cogent provocateur's" (aka RonK) key device is a "standard WMD" scenario constructed to be wrong now and claimed to be essential to supporting the war. Nutshell counterarguments: one can be 99% sure of the presence of WMD in a country without knowing precisely where they are, just as it's reasonable to infer there's a gun in a building by hearing a gunshot or finding a resident's receipt for a gun in the dumpster. The WMD did not have to be weaponized, i.e., ready to be used, to present a Security Council resolution violation and a real threat to regional peace. Biological and chemical weapons, while not as deadly as nuclear weapons, are quite deadly enough; their concealment would not augur well for efforts to prevent or find nuclear weapons development.

And if Saddam didn't have WMD, why the song and dance with Blix? Why not just welcome UNMOVIC, say "knock yourselves out, help yourselves to the fridge," and have frequent photo ops with earnest good people from around the globe?

Finally, one of RonK's own comments undermines his general "wings of a snipe" criticism:

Tactically, Saddam might have contrived to deal us a PR blow by covertly destroying residual stocks and inviting the inspectors in ... while preserving the ability to brew them up again later. [Only enriched nuclear material and biological seed cultures are physically compact and expensive enough to justify preservation.]

The "preserved ability to brew them up later" has (apparently) been found for bioweapons. I expect similar capabilities are not far-fetched for chemical weapons, which RonK points out have cheaper precursors anyway. And as far as RonK's argument goes, I feel that if WMD stocks were only destroyed in the months before this war, the "material breach" of older resolutions was still there. RonK all but makes a "Saddam was the real WMD" argument here. -- Nevertheless, his thesis of collective self-deception is a real possibility.
*** I'm leaving museums out of it here. I'll update my previous post on that when I've read the latest from David "Cronaca" and Francis Deblauwe.

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UPDATE, May 19: On Saturday, Aziz Poonawalla reposted and expanded some of his comments to this item; as always, his thoughts are worth your time. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:54:00 AM -- |    

 

Captions wanted

• ____________________

  Mountaineers on an anniversary Everest expedition are taking the impotence drug Viagra, which scientists believe will relieve high-altitude lung problems and avoid dangerous strain on their hearts.
  (Daily Telegraph, April 19, via Giles Ward)

• ____________________

  A lawyer who made $421,327 representing a suburban school district in one year submitted a bill for an 81-hour day and three for 25-hour days, a newspaper review found.
  (Las Vegas Sun, April 27, via Greg Hlatky)

• ____________________

  Hummer owners, frustrated with the vehicle's excessive fuel consumption, ranked the SUV last in a benchmark poll of vehicle quality, according to a survey released by J.D. Power and Associates on Tuesday.
  (Reuters, May 7, via Fritz Schranck, who thoughtfully provides a picture of a tiny bear monkey playing a tiny violin.)

• ____________________

  PORTLAND, Ore. -- Position available: Interpreter, must be fluent in Klingon.
  
  The language created for the "Star Trek" TV series and movies is one of about 55 needed by the office that treats mental health patients in metropolitan Multnomah County.
  
  "We have to provide information in all the languages our clients speak," said Jerry Jelusich, a procurement specialist for the county Department of Human Services, which serves about 60,000 psychiatric clients.
  (Contra Costa Times, May 12, via Andreas Schaefer)

Submit your entries as comments, or by e-mail if you like. I'll pick winners when there are, say, three choices, or by the end of next week, or when there's finally one I like. However, if a caption is so effective it would be unethical to let the contest continue, it will be selected immediately.

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UPDATE, May 15: Sadly, the Klingon story, as reported in the Contra Costa Times, is a wire service rewrite hoax with a kernel of truth: whimsical Portland health employees asked if they could pay Klingon interpreters if needed; no positions were advertised, no patients speak Klingon. First the New York Times, now the Contra Costa Times. Who's (sob) left? Who can I trust? (Via "Wrong Side of Happiness") I still want captions for the story, though. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:39:00 AM -- |    

 

Political correctness in Zimbabwe: bloody and real
Doris Lessing's April 10 "New York Review of Books" article "The Jewel of Africa" makes it clear: she does not like Robert Mugabe. Not one little bit. She has a point, and supports it well. But she nearly buries it for many readers with an early paragraph:

Mugabe is now widely execrated, and rightly, but blame for him began late. Nothing is more astonishing than the silence about him for so many years among liberals and well-wishers—the politically correct. What crimes have been committed in the name of political correctness. A man may get away with murder, if he is black. Mugabe did, for many years.

I came across her article while reading German blogger "FraFuchs," who was uncomfortable with the "get away with murder, if he is black" part. The ensuing discussion tended to refrain from seriously considering Mugabe's crimes, focusing instead on Lessing's "PC" charge. I weighed in, claiming that was a side issue ("Nebensache").

Lessing's essay, focused on events in Zimbabwe, can't possibly make a case about politically correct "liberals and well-wishers" in the West turning a blind eye to a tyrant because he was black. But it succeeds in the more important task of documenting Mugabe's pettiness, viciousness, and betrayal of his people and his opportunity. And as I read and reread it, I believe I hit on what the disconnect for me and the German readers was: Lessing isn't mainly concerned with Western political correctness. She's at least as concerned, I think, with specific Zimbabwean forms of political correctness and related self-deceptions -- including her own. Excerpts:

Early in his regime, we might have seen what he was when the infamous Fifth Brigade, thugs from North Korea, hated by blacks and whites alike, became Mugabe's bodyguards, and did his dirty work, notably when he attempted what was virtually genocide of thousands of the Ndebele people (the second-largest tribe) in Matabeleland. [...]

Fiery articles in the government press were read in the same perfunctory way as were the public pronouncements of the Soviet government, or any Communist government. The official rhetoric in Zimbabwe was worse than anywhere in Africa—so said a United Nations report. "Never has rhetoric had so little to do with what actually went on." [...]

Mugabe had enjoyed seeing himself as the senior black leader in southern Africa: he did so at a time when he was increasingly seen as an embarrassment. When Nelson Mandela appeared and became the world's sweetheart, Mugabe, according to many accounts, was furious. There were ridiculous scenes where Mugabe imagined he was establishing himself as first in importance. At lunchtime during a conference of African leaders, Mandela got in line with everyone else at the buffet, while Mugabe sat at a table that had been moved so that it would be prominent in the room, and had his followers bring dishes to him. This made everyone laugh at him; but surrounded by flatterers, he never understood why people were laughing. [...]

Well-off black farmers—some assisted by their white neighbors—and more modest black farmers have had their land taken from them. A key fact, hardly mentioned, is that since Independence 80 percent of the farms have changed hands, and under the law they had to be offered first to the government, which refused them. Mugabe's rhetoric about white farmers grabbing land from the blacks is contradicted by this fact.

As a result of his campaign of misinformation, moreover, you meet people who will tell you, "The whites threw my grandparents off their farm and took their house." At the time of the whites' arrival in the area that is now Zimbabwe there were a quarter of a million blacks, and they lived in villages of mud-walled, grass-roofed huts. [...]

He has recently set up compulsory indoctrination classes in villages throughout the country, mostly for teachers, but for other officials too, where they are taught that they should worship Mugabe and be totally obedient to ZANU, the ruling party. All the ills of Zimbabwe are said to be caused by machinations of Tony Blair in cahoots with the opposition parties. The students learn useful skills like how to murder opponents with a blow to sensitive parts of the body, and how to strangle them with bootlaces. [...]

The latest news is that Mugabe, under a contract with a Chinese company, is importing Chinese farmers to grow food, since the forcibly acquired white farms are not producing. He says this is because there is no farm machinery. Yet all the expelled white farmers had been forced to leave behind their machinery.

Lessing is a Zimbabwe/Rhodesian expatriate, a 'recovering Communist,' and a liberal. I think the combination accounts for her mixture of pride in the white farmer class she belonged to, opposition to its arrogant oppression of blacks during the Rhodesian years, impatience with ideological cant, and sorrow at what modern-day Zimbabwe has become. Her point that the West has ignored black murderers in Africa actually needs little elaboration: Rwanda, Congo, various and sundry diamond-afflicted countries of West Africa are all examples from the recent past.

The ZANU indoctrination program is a brutally concrete example of political correctness, Zimbabwean style. Mugabe's lies are part of a kind of Zimbabwean "Project 1984": rewriting history for the sake of his hold on power. As for liberals and well wishers giving Mugabe undeserved passes, Zimbabwean examples turn up throughout the essay: cronies privately sighing "it wasn't supposed to get out of hand," bureaucrats excusing corruption with the sad claim that "you can't expect democracy of the European type in Africa," Lessing herself doubting Mugabe could be making plans that would ruin his people.

The "PC" wars may be a dull topic in the U.S. or Europe. But political correctness is a deadly serious issue in Zimbabwe; it's enforced with beatings and murder, there's nothing "quote-unquote" about it. That's when lesser forms of cant and self-deception become more than mere annoyances, they become a form of collaboration. Lessing succeeds in writing about that; Mr. Fuchs, his commenters, and I all failed to recognize that message. That's generally the writer's fault, but in this case, we readers may share some of the blame. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:56:00 PM -- |