The Dish

According to David Blunkett, former Home secretary for the Blair government, the Brits did all they could to prevent the biggest mistake of the early occupation: dismantling the Iraqi army. Money quote:

"The issue was: ‚ÄòWhat the hell do you do about it?’ All we could do as a nation of 60 million off the coast of mainland Europe was to seek to influence the most powerful nation in the world," he said in interviews to publicise his new diaries.

"We did seek to influence them, but we were not in charge, so you cannot say that if only the government recognised what needed to be done, it would all have been different. The government did recognise the problem," he added.

"We dismantled the structure of a functioning state," he said, adding that the British view was: "Change them by all means, decapitate them even, but very quickly get the arms and legs moving."

The culprits? The usual suspects, Cheney and Rumsfeld.

The British politician, Jack Straw, former Home Secretary, Leader of the House of Commons, and representing a seat with a big Muslim population, has some brass cojones. He has argued that the full chador is an impediment to the kind of civility and social interaction that makes an open society possible. The chador is a sign of withdrawal from dialogue and society, he argues, not integration:

The Leader of the Commons’ latest comments followed his controversial call for Muslim women to remove their veils when they come to see him at his constituency office.
Asked whether he thought veils should be discarded completely, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: "Yes. It needs to be made clear I am not talking about being prescriptive but with all the caveats, yes, I would rather."

Straw is a tolerant, multicultural man. But he also sees the need for a single society to have its new immigrants abide by the civil, democratic norms of everyone else. Blair is wobbly on this. I get a sense that Europe is developing a spine with respect to Islamist alienation and withdrawal. Money quote:

"You cannot force people where they live, that’s a matter of choice and economics, but you can be concerned about the implications of separateness and I am."

Deltona, Florida, dusk.

A reader writes:

You say that Rumsfeld must be confronted and ousted "after the election." I know that you’re being realistic, because nobody will be politically able to step up and do anything so drastic before the election – even though it would be the right and moral thing to do.

But as the father of a U.S. Marine, I think I speak for many military families when I say how scared and angry I feel, every hour of every waking day, knowing that my son could be killed or maimed because of the stubborn pride – and as a minister I would also characterize it as sinful pride – of a few men who value their power over the lives of these remarkable young troops.

These power-mongers have clearly placed power politics way above their concern for the welfare of our brave troops. It’s a sickening thing to behold and deal with if it’s your kid‘s life on the line.

Some would say, and many in fact have said to me, "Well, your son was 21 when he joined the Marine Corps – plenty old enough to have made the decision for himself, knowing he could be killed or hurt."

I ask, if it were your son, would you not be disgusted by your son being used as a political pawn? It’s one thing to have your son and the troops genuinely supported by those who send them into harm’s way, not to mention supported by the public; it’s another thing to have his life laid on the line by a bunch of cynics who have a war that they either don’t know what to do with or the will to change course.

I, like the parents of all our brave troops, am one extremely proud papa. But I can’t tell you how extremely sick I am of Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney, whom I’ve taken to calling the Three Stooges.

More obscenities from the vice-president:

MR. RUSSERT: Have you spoken to the president or the vice president since this book came out?

MR. WOODWARD: The vice president called me I guess as it was coming out 10 days ago.

MR. RUSSERT: And?

MR. WOODWARD: Well, he called to complain that I was quoting him about the meetings with Henry Kissinger that he and the president had. I had interviewed Vice President Cheney last year a couple of times at length about material I‚Äôm gathering on the Ford administration, on-the-record interviews, but he volunteered, he said, ‘Oh, by the way, Henry Kissinger comes in’ and he, Dick Cheney, sits down with him once a month and the president every two or three months. And Cheney was upset I was quoting him. And I said, ‘Look, this‚Äîon-the-record doesn’t have anything to do with Ford, you volunteered that.’ He then used a word which I can’t repeat on the air. And I said,’Look, on the record is on the record,’ and he hung up on me.

MR. RUSSERT: What, what do you mean, he swore at you?

MR. WOODWARD: He, he said what I was saying was bull-something […] No, but he, but he hung up. Now, look, I can, I can see, I went back and looked at the transcript that he can—ever had a disagreement about ground rules with someone. Have you?

MR. RUSSERT: Well, he thought he was talking, he thought he was talking to you for one project and you used it in another project.

MR. WOODWARD: Well, exactly. But it had nothing to do with it, and it’s clearly spelled out that it’s an on-the-record interview. And so‚Äînow, what does he do instead of saying, ‘Well, OK, I look at it this way, you look at it that way.’ It‚Äôs a metaphor for what’s going on. Hang up when somebody has a different point of view or information you don’t want to deal with.

It’s a metaphor for what has been going on for years now. Think of yourself as a CIA agent with actual intelligence that might conflict with the veep’s preconceptions. You’d get hung up on as well.

(Hat tip: Crooks and Liars. Photo: Charles Dharapak/AP.)

They’ve become more trusted by the public on values issues:

A new poll by Newsweek indicated the Foley scandal was doing significant damage to the Republicans’ political fortunes and could sink their chances of holding onto control of Congress on Election Day, Nov. 7. The poll found that 52 percent of Americans, including 29 percent of Republicans, believe Hastert was aware of Foley’s Internet communications with underage pages and tried to cover up Foley’s actions. More of those polled, 42 percent, now say they trust Democrats to do a better job handling moral values than Republicans; 36 percent favored Republicans on the values question.

And Jim Kolbe apparently confronted Foley as far back as 2000 about inappropriate emails to pages. The bottom line for me is not whether Hastert knew specifically or not. The bottom line is that he should have known. Negligence is not an excuse.

Josh Lanchester sees the testing of a nuke as a sign of the West’s success, not failure, in putting the screws on Kim Jong-Il. It’s certainly an opportunity to try to bring together the serious Asian powers in an anti-nuke alliance with the U.S., specifically Russia, Japan and China.

I don’t know what’s worse for him : the fact that he may not have disclosed stock options or that a Christian right website is reporting it.

John Warner may have to be to Bush what Goldwater was to Nixon: he has to tell him that he must fire Rumsfeld, overhaul strategy, and add tens of thousands of more troops if we are to have a chance of success. Either that, or leave.

McCain is ready to grasp the nettle, it seems:

"We will never surrender. They will," McCain said. McCain told reporters afterward that the Army and Marines need to expand their forces by at least 100,000 to give National Guard units a break.

"It is my conviction we have to have a larger Army and Marine Corps. It is absolutely essential because we are asking the Guard to do things that we have never asked them to do before," McCain said.

Amen. I have an idea for his campaign bus in 2008. Scrap the "Straight Talk Express" and call it the "Reality and Victory Bus."