Month: October 2004

Many of you have demanded I retract my criticisms of the Bush administration’s handling of the explosives cache at al Qa Qaaa. If the facts really do emerge that these materials were removed before or during the invasion, I will. But the evidence is far murkier than that and points predominantly in the direction of U.S. negligence. Marshall has the best summary. Two things stand out for me: David Kay believes the stuff was looted after the invasion; no news crew, like NBC’s, would have had the capacity to check the inventory of a plant hundreds of buildings big. But if the facts change, I’ll respond.

Who knows what to make of George W. Bush’s statement today that he now favors civil unions for gay couples – although his party platform is against them. For what it’s worth, I tend to think this is his real position, rather than a belated realization that his extremism on this matter has cost him many votes. But if it is his real position, why didn’t he say so before? And how can he support the FMA which specifically bars the “incidents of marriage” for gay couples? President speak in forked tongue. More to the point, he must surely be opposed to the state amendments in eight states that ban marriage for gays and also anything that even vaguely looks like a marriage. Those states are Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Utah. If you agree with this president, you have to vote against these state constitutional amendments. They bar civil unions as well. (On a brighter note, now that Bush has come out in favor of civil unions, will Maggie Gallagher and Stanley Kurtz finally tell us what they think? Are they against all these state amendments as well? If not, why not?)

One of the worst mistakes the administration made was not killing Zarqawi when they had the chance. They had their reasons – they didn’t want to derail the diplomatic preparation for the war against Saddam by striking within Iraq before formal hostilities broke out. But they had a chance. And they must surely regret not taking it today.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “I have recently added your blog to my daily reading and have noticed a disturbing trend. Everything — and now the missing tons of high explosive in Iraq — is George Bush’s personal fault because, as always, there aren’t enough troops there. As a bureaucrat I can assure you that bureaucrats screw up hourly. Does the President have to be on-site to ensure an explosives dump in protected, or is it safe to delegate these tasks to the 100,000+ soldiers that are there? It seems obvious that half a million troops couldn’t perform all the tasks that are required in a country that big, nor did Rumsfeld intend that the country should receive blanket security, presuming, of course, that it was possible given the manpower shortages we now know exist.
My point is, it takes a certain (yes, Liberal!) attitude to identify every burned-out lightbulb as a dire consequence of the President’s intellectual shortcomings. In their case, it’s because their lack of self-esteem makes them hate everyone (themselves in particular). But what excuses your lack of tolerance for Dubya?” Don’t forget the best Letters Page on the web.

AND LIFE AND DEATH GO ON: A beautiful journal entry from one of my longtime readers and email interlocutors, who now has her own blog. It’s about getting through an election season while nursing your own brother to his early death from AIDS. It’s about life and the need for constant prayer.

IN THE DETAILS: The latest Washington Post poll showing Kerry with a minuscule lead contains something more significant, I’d say. It’s the following:

First-time voters also oppose reelection by 58 percent to 37 percent.

Now remember how unprecedentedly copious the new registrations have been in so many states. I have to say that I’d be more surprised now by a Bush victory than a Kerry defeat. Of course, I can still be surprised.

OLSON AGAINST BUSH: Another former Bush supporter (and campaign adviser) balks this time around – on the estimable blog, Overlawyered.com.

MORE LATER: Apologies for light blogging. Been feeling under the weather here. And I’ve been working on an endorsement piece, to be posted later today. More later.

Porn for the undecideds – especially those with a hankering for Bush.

“Having mis-spent my youth in grad school studying late medieval and early modern European intellectual history, I can now — 20 years after leaving academia — shed some valuable light for you and your readers (as well as for the BBC News).
When Luther said he made his discovery ‘in cloaca‘ (literally translated ‘on the toilet’), he was using one of a long list of late medieval theological-scatological phrases that meant ‘in deepest humility’ or in a state of profound ‘worthlessness’ (i.e., like shit).
So when Luther described arriving at his big theological conclusion ‘in cloaca‘, he (like hundreds of other theologians of the time) was not making a literal reference to his bathroom routine.
If this sounds strange strange today, it shouldn’t. The English language still uses lots of scat lingo (e.g., ‘up shit creek without a paddle’) to express extreme emotions or for emphasis. (‘No shit!’, you might say).
So once again, on major matters of import, the BBC News doesn’t know ‘shit from Shinola’ or its ‘ass from a hole in the ground.'”

It’s rare you want to cheer at something a State Department spokesman says. But I did reading this:

QUESTION: Did you hear that Castro fell?

MR. BOUCHER: We heard that Castro fell. There are, I think, various reports that he broke a leg, an arm, a foot, and other things, and I’d guess you’d have to check with the Cubans to find out what’s broken about Mr. Castro. We, obviously, have expressed our views about what’s broken in Cuba.

QUESTION: Do you wish him a speedy recovery?

MR. BOUCHER: No.

Yes, I know, it’s usually unfair to enjoy the physical misfortunes of others. But given his long legacy of tyranny and murder, I’m prepared to make an exception for Castro.

Hitch is sticking with his new-found ally. Here’s why. Kudos to the Nation for publishing it.

A REPUBLICAN FOR EXECUTING GAYS: It was only a matter of time before one of them did. A state Senate candidate in Hawaii says he’d favor a law that called for the death penalty for gays.

Poring over the polls this morning, I’m struck by one big thing: Zogby is showing a real Bush surge in the battleground states. It’s dizzying following all the polls – and the races are still so close in so many states, I’m not sure what to make of snapshots like these. But Bush might be heartened. Zogby tends not to over-state his support, unlike Gallup. And he’s headed for a clear victory if these polls pan out.

The image of executed Iraqi soldiers – murdered Nazi-style – is one of the most distressing of this distressing war yet. Arthur Chrenkoff says it’s not the whole reality in Iraq.

The health problems of William Rehnquist pose an interesting question: which party’s base is more worried by the potential Supreme Court picks of the other side? I’d give it to Kerry’s base by a small margin. The news is breaking his way.

THE DRAFT SHENANIGANS: Josh Claybourne rightly bashes MTV’s campaign of scaring the bejeezus out of younger voters. Isn’t Kerry the candidate aiming to increase troop levels by 40,000?

BUSH, KERRY AND LIFE: Steve Chapman, perhaps the best libertarian columnist in the country (someone give him Safire’s job), joins the crew of new Kerry-backers. Here’s one point he makes that I think should be more salient for Catholics:

“The other big issue for ‘seamless garment’ pro-lifers like me, who reject the taking of human life except in self-defense, is the death penalty. There, Bush is proudly in favor of killing people to show that killing people is wrong.”

The Church hierarchy, of course, distinguishes between abortion and the death penalty. Abortion is always wrong. The death penalty is almost always wrong. The “almost” is very small – Rome has come extremely close to saying it is wrong in all cases, and certainly believes it should be restricted to a tiny number of cases where the alternative could be disastrous. Now compare that to Bush’s own record. He has signed more death warrants than almost any man in the country. As Texas governor, he showed absolutely no qualms about giving the nod to hundreds of deaths; in fact, he bragged about it. In one case, he even joked about it. He is far closer to the evil of the death penalty than Kerry is to the evil of abortion. And he has shown in his statements on the issue far more glibness than Kerry has ever revealed in the case of abortion. I should say: I think Kerry’s support for partial birth abortion and his extreme backing of everything the pro-choice movement wants is troubling. But Bush doesn’t get a free pass here. And I’d have more respect for pro-life, pro-Bush Catholics if they averred at least some discomfort with Bush’s ease with this particular culture of death.