The Dish

Of course someone has put up a blog mocking the NYT’s wedding announcements. Of course it’s hilarious. Of course you need another reason to procrastinate …

GOP TURNOUT DRIVE: The Onion has the goods.

Reihan Salam details the bloodletting that will ensue among Republicans if Bush loses.

Kerry will win a landslide. That’s the opinion of Republican pollsters Fabrizio/McLaughlin. Check out their latest Battleground Ballot press release.

THE IRAQIS SPEAK: More bad news for the Bush campaign:

Mohammed al-Sharaa, who heads the [Iraqi] science ministry’s site monitoring department and worked with UN weapons inspectors under Saddam, said “it is impossible that these materials could have been taken from this site before the regime’s fall.” He said he and other officials had been ordered a month earlier to insure that “not even a shred of paper left the sites.” “The officials that were inside this facility (Al-Qaqaa) beforehand confirm that not even a shred of paper left it before the fall and I spoke to them about it and they even issued certified statements to this effect which the US-led coalition was aware of.”

This, of course, is just one case. But we know of many others as well. Even if this one doesn’t pan out (which is highly unlikely), we know that the invasion force didn’t secure many, many critical sites because they didn’t have enough manpower. We also know that the alleged purpose of the invasion was to secure loose weaponry, especially WMD material, and prevent it being transferred to terrorists. Hence the obvious question, raised in this blog before: Is it not clear by now that the invasion actually facilitated the transfer of such weapons? And isn’t that damning enough, whatever happened at al Qa Qaa?

A New York pol faces down the teachers’ unions.

Here’s an email that’s harsher than I would be, but it does get to something problematic about the otherwise admirable James Lileks:

You wrote about Lileks bleat today, “One other thing: there is nothing in his piece about Bush’s record.” Until recently I read his column frequently and I have never, not once, seen a single criticism of Bush or any other Republican for that matter. Lileks is as partisan as Ed Gillespie. I haven’t read his column since his hateful piece essentially calling gay people a bunch of whiny complainers for being offended by the hatemongering in the Republican party. He had the audacity to compare the privacy of his preschool daughter to that of Mary Cheney. Comparing the hard slog in WWII in the Pacific to Bush’s ineptitude in Iraq is absurd and shows just how he’s lost his grip on reality. Lileks is a Democrat turned Republican. My theory is that he’s lot like every Catholic convert I’ve ever met. When they’re around you can’t tell a pope joke without getting a scornful look. Converts of all kinds are the most radical and dogmatic.

Of course, we’re all products of our own environments. As basically a conservative, I’m much madder at Bush than I’d be if I were a Democrat. My beef is with my own side. Similarly, some of, say Marty Peretz’s or Ron Radosh’s support for Bush is vested in their own valiant struggles against peacenik see-no-evil Democrats. That’s where their passion is. Lileks is similar. But if he had made sensible criticism of the shambles in Iraq, or even acknowledged it in anything but dismissive terms, I’d be more persuaded.

BUT NONE OF THAT MATTERS: On the other hand, here’s a typical email in defense of Bush:

I agree with you that Lileks could have written that piece a year ago, and that he essentially ignores Bush’s record. However, it seems to me that Bush’s mistakes — and there are many — do not matter, so long as one doubts that Kerry will prosecute the war aggressively. If you’re not sure — and many of us are not — that he fundamentally “gets it,” then you cannot possibly vote for him. The question of Bush’s mistakes is a second-order question. First, you must ask if someone will fight; then, you ask if he will fight well. You jump to the second question, say Bush will not fight well, thus Kerry must be elected, QED. I’m not saying you can’t vote for Kerry — but you can only vote for Kerry if you think that he will fight. Personally, I don’t. Neither does Lileks. This is why, fundamentally, their relative competences are not relevant to us. Bush might not be the best wartime leader imaginable, or even available, but he is by definition preferable to someone we’re not sure will actually fight a war.

But the competence of the current leader cannot be completely irrelevant. If his incompetence means we actually lose the war, then surely some kind of reassessment is due. So the question becomes: how incompetent is he? And that’s a matter of degree not kind. You also have to unpack the notion of “fighting a war.” What does that exactly mean? Invading Iran? Or North Korea? Those are not viable options. We’ve already invaded two countries in three years. And much of this war is indeed police work and law enforcement and this president understands that as well. It’s a blend of strategies; and the blend will shift with the circumstances. This hyperventilating about who “gets it” only gets us so far. And what disappoints me about Bush supporters is their apparent inability to give specifics about where their candidate differs or would differ from Kerry. I’m listening. And I hear little but rhetoric.

A classic NYT wedding announcement correction.

In the interests of debate, here’s James Lileks’ dissection of my endorsement. I think it comes down to: he doesn’t trust Kerry in any way. If that’s your opinion, then I think you have to vote Bush. But it isn’t mine. One other thing: there is nothing in his piece about Bush’s record. Reading James is always a pleasure. But he could have written this piece a year ago without changing a jot. Has he learned anything from what has happened in Iraq? Or is he just not telling?

RUMMY FLASHBACK: Just to recall the heady days after the fall of Baghdad:

Rumsfeld: Let me say one other thing. The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it’s the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, “My goodness, were there that many vases?” (Laughter.) “Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?”

Ha ha ha. Just a few broken vases. Mission Accomplished. This is the judgment we want to see re-elected?

So the other tattered pro-war British shoe drops:

I am assuming for now that this is a single-issue election. There is one’s subjective vote, one’s objective vote, and one’s ironic vote. Subjectively, Bush (and Blair) deserve to be re-elected because they called the enemy by its right name and were determined to confront it. Objectively, Bush deserves to be sacked for his flabbergasting failure to prepare for such an essential confrontation. Subjectively, Kerry should be put in the pillory for his inability to hold up on principle under any kind of pressure. Objectively, his election would compel mainstream and liberal Democrats to get real about Iraq.
The ironic votes are the endorsements for Kerry that appear in Buchanan’s anti-war sheet The American Conservative, and the support for Kerry’s pro-war candidacy manifested by those simple folks at MoveOn.org. I can’t compete with this sort of thing, but I do think that Bush deserves praise for his implacability, and that Kerry should get his worst private nightmare and have to report for duty.

And so we agree again. Let’s see the National Review crowd spin that as a vote on the FMA.

MY ENDORSEMENT: It’s now posted opposite. Reihan will be assembling the best responses for the Letters Page. Forgive me for not responding to all the emails. It’s physically impossible. But I read as many as I could. Thanks for your praise and criticism.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “It is quite right to worry whether the Americans are sincere about bringing democracy to Iraq – given their record in the region, it would be insane not to be. But I don’t agree at all that if the Iraqis get the chance of democracy they won’t take it. If you look at all the opinion polls, they are absolutely unequivocal about his. They put tribe very low on their list of reason why they will vote for a candidate. The Ayatollah Sistani has emerged as a committed democrat – showing that democrats always emerge in the strangest of places. If Arabs are irredeemably tribal, then dictatorship is the only possible route for the region. I don’t believe that, and far more importantly, the evidence doesn’t show it. We shouldn’t be naxefve about US power, but we also shouldn’t be patronising about the capacities of Arabs.
And please remember: if the invasion hadn’t happened we wouldn’t be talking about Iraqi democracy, ever. We would be talking about Saddam and Uday and Qusay forever. I say better a chance at democracy and trade unions and decency – even if you think it’s slim – than an eternity of Ba’athism.” – Johann Hari, in an interesting debate with Robert Fisk, on his own website.

JOHN PEEL: Most Americans will have no idea who this irrepressibly individualist DJ was. But that’s what the British obits are for. Herewith the wonderful life and deep integrity of a man who knew what he liked in music and played it. I also admired his description of a professional relationship he had with a radio producer: it was that of “the organ-grinder and the monkey. With each one believing the other to be the monkey.”

Before crashing Monday night, I was bombarded with emails informing me that NBC had reported that the explosives at al Qa Qaa were gone before the U.S. troops arrived. But last night, Tom Brokaw reported as follows:

“Last night on this broadcast we reported that the 101st Airborne never found the nearly 380 tons of HMX and RDX explosives. We did not conclude the explosives were missing or had vanished, nor did we say they missed the explosives. We simply reported that the 101st did not find them. For its part, the Bush campaign immediately pointed to our report as conclusive proof that the weapons had been removed before the Americans arrived. That is possible, but that is not what we reported.”

Just for the record.

SADDAM’S WAR-PLAN: How he foiled the U.S. And how we can still win. An interesting assessment from the Belmont Club. Just ignore the anti-Kerry stuff at the end. The analysis is worthwhile.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “As a senior military officer, I am aghast at the incompetence associated with the Iraq planning and execution. I always thought we would win, but I also thought the President stretched his polemics, and I cannot comprehend (even recognizing the inherent political repercussions) anyone’s failure to acknowledge how these failures have stretched our troops thin, and endangered them more. I also find it unfathomable that no one has been held accountable. Perhaps it’s a factor of having been raised with “Catholic guilt,” but how can no one take responsibility for these shortfalls? My only explanation is this is all about power and not about doing what is right.” More feedback on the Letters Page.

“The commander of the first unit into the area told CBS he did not search it for explosives or secure it from looters. ‘We were still in a fight,’ he said. ‘Our focus was killing bad guys.’ He added he would have needed four times more troops to search and secure all the ammo dumps he came across.” – CBS’ latest press release on the missing explosives. Four times more troops. But that would have meant doing it right.