Category: The Dish

A carbon tax seems to me to be the most urgent domestic economic reform facing us. And a carbon tax is the simplest, cleanest and most market-friendly device to wean Americans off oil, defund some of our enemies, and protect the planet from drastic climate change. And yet it seems such a tax is still political poison. That John Dingell is inching toward such a proposal is therefore very good news. It’s also good to witness a politician able to change his mind in the open and with a decent amount of class:

After the town hall meeting was over — and he had listened to a couple of hours of questions about timed traffic lights, nuclear power and the possibility of impeaching President Bush — Mr. Dingell sat down in a dark area behind the stage. I asked him whether Mr. Gore, who has been both a Dingell nemesis and ally at various times, had been right for all those years he was pointing out what was happening to the earth’s climate.

"I think a cold statement on that point would be yes," Mr. Dingell replied.

And would it have been easier to solve the problem if we had started earlier?

"What’s the saying? The saddest words in the English language — ‘might have been.’"

Scott Horton translates the German press. Money quote:

The three terror suspects said to have planned massive attacks in Germany are in accordance with investigations to date members of a German cell of the Islamic Jihad Union. This organization is said to stand in close contact with al Qaeda.

The Islamic Jihad Union is according to information provided by Attorney General Monika Harms a Sunni group which is principally active in Central Asia, which split off of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The German cell was founded in the winter of 2006.

According to a report of the U.S. Department of State from April 2007, this group is pursuing objectives in Uzbekistan such as the toppling of Uzbek President Islam Karimov and the establishment there of an Islamic state. In early 2004 a total of 47 people were killed in attacks on local markets and police stations according to this information, among them 33 terrorists.

So the travails of Uzbekistan end up potentially killing Americans in Germany. Welcome to our new world.

It may well happen in Europe and it may well look like this:

Ms. Harms said the two German suspects were converts to Islam who had trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan. They had 1,500 pounds of hydrogen peroxide to make explosives, which they had hidden and were preparing to move when they were arrested on Tuesday afternoon. Officials said they also had military grade detonators. German and American officials said that such indicators made them suspect connections to Al Qaeda.

"This would have enabled them to make bombs with more explosive power than the ones used in the London and Madrid bombings," Jörg Ziercke, head of the German Federal Crime Office, said, calling the links to Al Qaeda "close." German officials were visibly relieved by the arrests, which they said were the fruits of a six-month investigation involving 300 people from the police and prosecutor’s office. On Wednesday, police raided 41 houses and apartments across Germany, seizing computers and other evidence.

Congrats to the Germans. Some obvious points: these men are educated, two of three are German nationals, all seem to have been trained not in Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan, but in Pakistan, a putative ally. It is hard to see how the Iraq war – whether a failure or a success – would have any impact on this tiny cell’s attempt at mass murder in the name of God. This is simply the religious violence we have to contend with for the indefinite future. All we can do is what the Germans did: keep up surveillance (with protections against abuse), and run as many to ground as we can.

(Photo: German security officials lead one of three terrorist suspects from a helicopter to Karlsruhe’s federal court 05 September 2007. By Thomas Lohnes/AFP/Getty.)

"Under the circumstances, Petraeus’ strategy amounts to fueling several of Iraq’s main conflicts," – Matt Yglesias.

"The truth is I don’t know Larry Craig. And it’s possible he is everything some say he is. But they say it without facts. Is that moral? When the news of Craig’s bathroom encounter first broke, I thought Craig must have been involved in a Pee Wee Herman moment — or something. But he didn’t even touch himself, let alone the officer in any sexually overt way. He didn’t expose himself. Hell, he was in a bathroom stall. And neither he nor the officer exchanged a single word about having sex. In fact, Craig never said a word. In the end, what we have here is a shoe touch … or was it a tap? That, along with his hand on the divider between the stalls and something or other was, we are told, code for soliciting sex. It seems to me that the officer should have taken the sting operation at least one more step, no? Wasn’t he a little premature in flashing his badge when he did?" – Mark Levin, arch-social conservative defending a man in a gay sex sting.

One of the big alleged successes of the surge is much more tenuous than it might appear. Money quote:

[T]he Dora market is a Potemkin village of sorts. The U.S. military hands out $2,500 grants to shop owners to open or improve their businesses. The military has fixed windows and doors and even helped rebuild shops that had burned down, soldiers and others said.

"We helped them a lot. We gave them money, security, even the locks on their doors," said a 36-year-old Iraqi interpreter at the outpost whom U.S. soldiers call Jimmy for security reasons. He asked that his real name not be used. "Everything we gave them. That’s why the violence has stopped. That’s why they cooperate with us."

Some shopkeepers said they would not do business in the market without U.S. support. "The Americans are giving money, so they’re opening up stores," said Falah Hassan Fadhil, 27, who sells cosmetics.

Buying temporary security is not the same as Iraqis providing it themselves. But in the security field,
"Iraqis" don’t exist. Sunni tribes, Shiite militias and Kurdish parties are not an Iraqi government, and certainly not a national security force.

Craig’s voicemail does not sound like that of a traumatized or rattled figure to me. Is denial that deep? Or is power merely that addictive? Of course, some pols just know how to brazen out a toughie. To wit:

Ambers has it. Completely content-free blather. Which is not exactly what he needs to reassure us about at this point.

A flying car is here at last. The Guardian has more details.

They had the goods on Bush’s Iraq exit strategy two years ago.