The Dish

More evidence that John Kerry’s wife is a political disaster. Here are several quotes from her yesterday about the war on terror. My favorites: “The Taliban is back running Afghanistan.” Huh? And then her argument against the war to depose Saddam: “No American boy or girl should lose their lives for oil.” Is this her husband’s position? Shouldn’t he be asked? Shouldn’t more people be aware of how far left the potential president’s wife is? Well, now they are.

Belmont Club does its best to rescue the Bush administration from Jerry Bremer’s gaffe – hastily retracted in a subsequent email. (Bremer was hoping for a big job in a Bush second term, after all. I’d say the chances of that just diminished.) Their point is that Bremer was only referring to the troop levels at the very beginning of the conflict – not the levels subsequently. The quote could be interpreted either way, so perhaps we should give Bremer the retroactive benefit of the doubt. Wretchard blames the Turks and the State Department for not allowing the Fourth Infantry Division to invade Iraq from the north. But it’s odd that this talking point has not been made today by the Bush people; amd wasn’t made at the time. Ken Mehlman was on CNN this afternoon, for example, arguing that the reason for the low troop levels was that the military commanders never asked for more. Even over at the Corner, no one has tried to spin the Bremer quote away (although Ledeen takes a swipe at Bremer himself). At the time, Rumsfeld’s response to the looting and chaos in Baghdad was not: “Wait till the 4ID gets there.” It was: “Stuff happens.” So you either blame the Turks, the military, the State Department, or Bremer, or, like Rumsfeld, you claim that nothing was awry and so there’s no reason to blame anyone. The important thing in this war is never, ever hold the president to account for anything. Remember? Somehow, I forgot.

I’ve been anticipating “Team America” for months and months. It may be even better than I’d hoped for. Hey, guys. Give me an ad!

More evidence of the corruption behind the U.N.’s food-for-oil program in Iraq. Saddam never had it so good – thanks to the French and Russians.

BULL MOOSE FOR KERRY: Marshall Wittmann, who ran the website ‘Bull Moose’ before leaving to work for John McCain, is now working at the DLC. And, as a Teddy Roosevelt fan and McCain Republican, he’s voting for Kerry. Here’s why. Money quote:

Anyone who was involved in the 2000 McCain campaign, as I was, knows exactly who is responsible for the “Swift boat” slime attack on Senator Kerry — in Bush World, all low roads lead to Rove.
When I was at the Christian Coalition, I witnessed first-hand the alliance of the deregulation, no-tax crowd with the religious conservatives. Ironically, the rank and file of the religious right are hardly the country club set. They are largely middle-class Americans who don’t rely on trust funds or dividend checks for their livelihoods. But the leaders of the religious right have betrayed their constituents by failing to champion such economic issues as family leave or access to health insurance, which would relieve the stresses on many working families. The only things the religious conservatives get are largely symbolic votes on proposals guaranteed to fail, such as the gay marriage constitutional amendment. The religious right has consistently provided the ground troops, while the big-money men have gotten the goodies.
The realization that the religious right had essentially become a front for the money men of the Republican Party was a primary source of my disenchantment with that movement. And without a doubt, the GOP has merely become a vehicle for unbridled corporate power. Such a party cannot provide a home for a movement that strives for national greatness.

Deep down, this is probably what McCain believes as well.

The main criticisms this blog has directed at the conduct of the war have been the insufficient troop numbers and allowing the looting and disorder to spread after the liberation. Now comes Jerry Bremer to say exactly the same thing:

“We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness. We never had enough troops on the ground.”

That’s a big admission. Why doesn’t Edwards bring that up directly tonight with Cheney? And since it was so obvious so soon, why didn’t the administration do anything to change that policy once its failings had become so glaring? Pig-headedness? Ignorance? Hubris? Or merely Rumsfeld – shorthand for all three?

47 PERCENT: That’s Bush’s approval rating. It’s about as low as it can possibly get if he has a decent chance of getting re-elected. The first debate did for Kerry what 1980’s first debate did for Reagan: it reassured waverers that he has the ability to be president, especially in a national security crisis. The reason for Bush’s weakness? Money quote:

Asked what kind of job Mr. Bush had done in anticipating what would happen in Iraq as a result of the war, 59 percent said he had done a poor job and 34 percent said a good job. A slight majority, 52 percent, said the United States had been too quick to go to war in Iraq, compared with 37 percent who said the timing was about right.

A majority believes that Bush was wrong in the timing of the war and wrong in its execution. And the war is the pre-eminent issue in the campaign. Unless Bush reverses those judgments, he will lose.

PREDICTING TONIGHT: Well, I could easily be wrong, but I have a feeling Cheney will crush Edwards tonight. The format is God’s gift to Daddy. They’ll both be seated at a table, immediately allowing Cheney to do his assured, paternal, man-of-the-world schtick that makes me roll on my back and ask to have my tummy scratched. (Yes, I do think that Cheney is way sexier than Edwards. Not that you asked or anything.) Every time I’ve heard Edwards talk about foreign policy, I’ve winced – not because he’s some kind of U.N.-style liberal, but because he’s obviously winging it, hasn’t thought much about foreign policy, and seems miles away from thinking about anything like, er, strategy. Then again, Cheney’s record so far in this war has been unencouraging. I’ll be drinking a shot every time Edwards says Halliburton. And I’ll be fascinated to see how and if Cheney grapples with his president’s war on his own daughter’s dignity. (Stay tuned later tonight. I’ll be commenting for C-SPAN by phone from Philadelphia, and then doing my usual blog summary – and on TNR.)

One reason some people might get over their fiscal concerns about Kerry is that most observers seem to agree that the Congress is likely to stay Republican after November 2. That means that Kerry is unlikely to be able to afford his big healthcare package and may be forced, like Clinton, into getting serious about deficit reduction. One thing we do know is that unified Republican government means vast new spending increases, and the collapse of fiscal discipline. I’d be just as terrified by unified Democratic government, mind you (although we wouldn’t have to deal with excrescences like the FMA). Divided government, in other words, is perhaps the only real mechanism we have – apart from a constitutional amendment to balance the budget – to restrain the politicians in D.C. from spending even more of our money. My advice: if you’re voting Bush, think seriously about pulling the Dem lever for the House and Senate; vice-versa for the Kerry backers. The last thing we want is to give either of these guys the carte blanche Bush has had for four fiscally ruinous years.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “If we were to sum up where we have ended up after four years of the Intifada, [we would find that] there are three opinions: the first opinion is that after the killing of 1,000 Israelis in the Intifada, Israel would collapse, as would Sharon; the second opinion is that the armed Intifada would liberate the homeland; the third opinion is that the Intifada would bring the settlements to a halt. An examination [of the matter] shows that Sharon did not fall. On the contrary, he has become the most popular [leader] in the history of Israel, after having been subjected to condemnations in Israel. On the same note, all of the Palestinian lands are now occupied and vulnerable, and the settlements have nearly doubled. We damaged our relations with the Americans and with Israeli public opinion; the latest statement from the Quartet is an additional indication of what has become of us.” – former Palestinian Authority prime minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen).

GAYS N GUNS: Glenn has an interesting post. I’m basically against gun control and for gay rights – for much the same reason. Liberty, and all that.

This time, of Iraqis. The doomsayers will argue that any drop in the number of people saying they are “very likely” to vote in the January elections is a bad sign. But 62 percent is still good news to me. More worrying: “More than 55 percent said people in their city did not support the authority of the Iraqi police. A similar proportion had little faith that the Iraqi army could maintain security during the elections.” It’s security, stupid. Without it, as Hobbes observed, civil life can hardly begin, let alone prosper.

A LETTER FROM FRIST: RightThinking.com’s Lee is unimpressed.

BUSH’S SERVICE RECORD: The Onion gets to the bottom of it.

IDOLIZING DEMOCRACY: How Simon Cowell could bring freedom to the Middle East.

South Carolina Republican Senate candidate, Jim DeMint, has now reached another anti-gay low. His was the campaign that accidentally sent out an email using the word “dike,” and now he’s declaring that gays should not be allowed to teach in public schools:

DeMint, a Greenville congressman, said the government should not endorse homosexuality and “folks teaching in school need to represent our values.” Tenenbaum, the state education superintendent, called DeMint’s position “un-American.” DeMint said after the debate that he would not require teachers to admit to being gay, but if they were “openly gay, I do not think that they should be teaching at public schools.”

It’s interesting to remember that, two generations ago, Ronald Reagan specifically opposed a California initiative to bar gays from teaching. But today’s Republican party is not Reagan’s party any more. It’s Santorum’s.

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HOW UNDECIDEDS VOTE: A great primer from a great new blogger, MysteryPollster, with encouraging news for Kerry. Every presidential challenger against an incumbent tends to do better in the final result than in the final polls – because undecideds break decisively for change. Bottom line: keep your eye on Bush’s approval number. If it’s appreciably below 50 percent, he’s in trouble. My own view is that the first debate was deeply damaging to Bush because it mainly confirmed people’s view that this is a president who doesn’t merit re-election. That’s much more significant than anyone’s views of the challenger.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “This morning after church services, I sat with several of the older ladies who are faithful members of my congregation. The conversation turned to the Bush-Kerry debate. And I was amazed at the hostility expressed towards Bush! Of the six women at the table — four over 70, all over 65 — only one had previously been so outspoken. Today, all of them expressed serious doubts about Bush and five indicated their support of Kerry. To a person, they voiced concern about the war in Iraq and how we are in trouble there.
One of them, born in Canada, but now naturalized, has never voted — “it didn’t seem to matter” — but is so motivated that she is registering this week for the first time precisely so she can vote for Kerry, against Bush.
What’s the difference from the previous week? Frankly, it’s their boldness in speaking against Bush. My congregation leans Republican, and many Democrats have been reluctant to speak up, intimidated by the general feeling that criticizing the President is unpatriotic and unsupportive of our troops. But no more. The debate changed their mood. They watched Kerry raise reasonable doubts about Bush’s conduct of the war. They watched Bush unable to speak articulately about his conduct of the war. His stumbling emboldened them.
This matters. The prevailing mood of “criticizing the President is unpatriotic” has been crumbling for some months in all parts of the culture, including polite church ladies having coffee after worship on a Sunday morning. When the crumbling reaches this level, a mainline Protestant congregation in a small midwest manufacturing town, something has indeed changed in the debate.” More feedback on the Letters Page.

The re-taking of Samarra by American and Iraqi forces is not the end of the story in the restless Sunni town, but it’s reason enough for celebration. It must surely help relieve the Allawi government, and make the task ahead in Fallujah and the rest of the Sunni Triangle seem more manageable. The question now, of course, is how the insurgents will regroup and challenge the new authorities in the city, and whether the Iraqi army is capable of holding the town by itself. That’s the real test – and we won’t know for a while. Meanwhile, even the Weekly Standard realizes it has to have a response to the worsening situation in Iraq. Reuel Marc Gerecht provides a sobering – and damning – assessment of the botched occupation so far, and argues that our current softly-softly Iraqification policy is insufficiently aggressive to prevent the country from veering off course. He wants the Samarra success to be a prelude to far more aggressive attempts to wrest back control of Sunni cities. There’s just one problem:

The odds of a massive November surprise offensive, after the U.S. elections, aren’t high given how thinly spread American combat forces are across the country. Also, Secretary Rumsfeld’s remark about partial elections may indicate that the secretary, who has consistently looked askance at deploying more troops, has little intention of adopting counterinsurgency tactics requiring a lot more manpower (for example, simultaneous or even sequential house-to-house offensives in Falluja, Ramadi, Baquba, Mosul, or the worst sections of Baghdad). The president could order thousands of Marines from East Asia and the United States to Iraq fairly quickly. But such an offensive in November or December would be essentially an all-American affair: Even the most expedited deployment of Iraq’s new, American-made army would likely be too late for an all-out assault in 2004.

Rummy, again: “Just Enough Troops To Lose.” I wonder if president Bush will rethink the current strategy before November, if he thinks it might make him lose at home as well. Maybe Samarra is a test-case. Here’s hoping.

CRAWFORD AND LOWELL: So the president’s home-town paper endorsed Kerry. Look what the Lowell Sun in Massachusetts has just done. Money quote:

John Kerry … has all the attributes of the shape of water when it comes to telling us what he believes and what he’d do for America. Like incoming and outgoing tides, Kerry is content to go with the flow. In a dangerous world infested with sharks, Kerry would be chum at America’s expense. We in Massachusetts know John Kerry. He got his first taste of politics 32 years ago in the cities and towns of Greater Lowell. In his 20 years in the U.S. Senate, Kerry, a Navy war hero, hasn’t risen above the rank of seaman for his uninspiring legislative record.

A great and ornery country, or what?

My summary of Bush’s debate crumple; and why outing is still wrong.

HOPE IN KABUL: Meanwhile, John Simpson, a sternly anti-American BBC reporter, sums up the new conventional wisdom about Afghanistan. It’s beginning to look like a success:

But could the Taliban ever come back, I asked Mr Noori as I sat in his dark shop, surrounded by piles of carpets and drinking green tea. I have always found his political judgment very shrewd. “Never,” he says. “They only succeeded because so many people helped them.” Everyone else I have spoken to here agrees. The Taliban captured Kabul because in the mid-1990s they looked like winners, and large numbers of warlords went over to them even though they found the Taliban’s religious extremism distasteful. But when the Northern Alliance, with the help of the US Air Force and American special forces soldiers, threw the Taliban out of Kabul in November 2001, they looked like winners no longer. They have been harried and hunted ever since; and the only weapon they can use now is the car bomb.

Remember all those who said this couldn’t happen? But if you have a successful military intervention, a swift transfer of power, and elections, then even the most troubled Muslim societies can learn to breathe free. However badly the past year has been bungled, it must also still be possible in Iraq.