The Dish

The most extraordinary part of the story today about Israel’s decision to kill Mustafa Zibri was to my mind the accuracy of the missile and the confidence of the Israelis in its use. This amazing weapon was fired by a helicopter into the third floor of a building and was so accurate it actually decapitated its target. Americans and other innocents in the same building were completely unharmed. Amazing. But talk about an invasion of privacy! This must be the most high-tech assassination ever, and makes me wonder how anyone is truly safe. The less extraordinary part is the way in which the Bush administration urged Israel to calm down. It seems pretty clear to me that we are in the early stages of a real war. At this point, Israel has little choice but to seize the initiative. But if Sharon doles this strategy out piece-meal, he will surely die a slow death in international opinion. Far better to invade far more extensively, retrench quickly and build a new wall to defend the Jewish state in one fell swoop. If that means large parts of the West Bank are simply ceded, along with Israeli settlers, so be it. But the invasion had better be bolder and swifter than this phony war if Israel is to get away with it. And getting away with it now could well be critical for the long-term survival of Israel.

HOW PREGNANT WAS CHANDRA?: Bob Somerby is on a roll at the Daily Howler. He pinpoints something that, I think, tells you quite a lot. It’s been a recurring theme of the Condit lynching that Chandra was pregnant when she disappeared. That’s what the now-authoritative National Enquirer reported. That’s the implication behind Chandra’s statement on her last recorded phone message to her aunt: “And I have some big news ? Call me.” It’s also a critical piece of information that lends suspicion to Condit. If Levy was pregnant, he has a motive for something drastic, like murder. Now Vanity Fair’s Judy Bachrach tells Paula “Psychic News Network” Zahn that Levy wasn’t pregnant:

“BACHRACH: Finally, I think something has to be said. [Condit] is constantly accused of having made Chandra Levy disappear because she was pregnant. She was not pregnant. Her own mother says Chandra Levy was not pregnant at the time of her disappearance. She had just had her period a week or two before her disappearance.

ZAHN: All right, you know I heard you say that on another program, I’m like, you know, who talks to their mothers about their cycles? But-

BACHRACH (interrupting): They had it at the same time, and they had it over Passover [April 8], when the daughter was visiting the mother.”

So the mother clearly knew her daughter wasn’t pregnant (and the Levy family is obviously one of those where menstrual cycles are discussed over dinner). So why did she let the press continue with this charade? Susan Levy told Talk’s Lisa DePaulo in June that “we don’t think she was pregnant.” In mid-July, the Levys’ hatchet-man Billy Martin said, “We do not yet have a final answer on that.” What’s the point of this deception except to leave Condit hanging in the wind? Either Judy Bachrach is lying or the Levys are lying. I believe Bachrach.

WHO WAS REALLY IMPEDING THE INVESTIGATION?: When did the cops first respond seriously to the disappearance of Chandra Levy? The answer is May 7, after they were called by Michael Dayton, Condit’s top aide. If it weren’t for Condit, even more time would have been lost. And the cops are accusing Condit of impeding the search for Chandra? According to a recent story in the Washington Times, “‘It was the congressman’s staff that finally got the police interested, when a member of his staff called police on Monday, May 7, and said a constituent was missing. He called both the D.C. police and the FBI,’ the source said.” The only critical lost time in this investigation was the first few days, when security cameras in Levy’s apartment still had the tapes that could have given a real clue to what happened. Whose fault? The cops. And they still won’t answer relevant questions. Here’s the damning extract from the Times: “Questions from The Times that neither Chief Ramsey nor his deputies would answer include the possible effect of the department’s having abolished a missing persons squad when it decentralized detective bureaus during the past five years. The chief also would not say whether Detectives Durant and Kennedy are among detectives who, as he testified in January before the D.C. Council, were promoted without passing merit exams. Nor would the department describe their qualifications to lead such an investigation.” I’ve insisted all along that the real story here is police incompetence. But that wouldn’t help the ratings, would it?

NO IDENTIFYING CHARACTERISTICS?: One of the more damning “facts” to have emerged during the Condit lynching is the notion that Levy’s lack of baggage or even i.d. when she disappeared implicates Condit because he allegedly always asked his tricks to leave any identifying marks behind. But the same story in the Washington Times by reporter, Frank Murray, states that “Police also are said to no longer credit a report by Miss Levy’s aunt, Linda Zamsky, that Mr. Condit told Miss Levy not to carry identification when she was with him.” Hmmm. There goes another theory. I wonder what other Zamsky theories the police don’t buy. But, as Somerby notes, I won’t hold my breath waiting for the press corps to follow up.

This time against p.c. defenses of Palestinian terrorists.

GAY PARENTING AND BEING SAVAGED BY ANIMALS: Taking a breather from his Scarlet Letter campaign against Gary Condit, James Taranto of OpinionJournal.com equates having gay parents with being savaged by a rottweiler. He recounts the tale of children who were removed from their p[arents’] custody after one of them had been found “wandering outside his home in a diaper after being locked out of the house and sleeping in the car.” Taranto’s complaint is that the children were subsequently given to gay parents. “Ross may have been an unfit mother,” Taranto opines. “But the homes into which the DSS placed her children were scarcely better. The Massachusetts News reports: ‘DSS placed Damien with a gay couple and Kyle was placed with Linda McNeil and her boyfriend, Eddie Finklea Jr., who kept a Rottweiler in the backyard. . . . In a shocking story that made headlines, Kyle was attacked and killed by the Rottweiler in June of this year after he wandered into the dog’s unlocked pen.” So let’s get this straight. Is it Taranto’s view that having gay parents is “scarcely better” than having a child locked out of the house and wandering the streets? Or than being savaged by a Rottweiler? Just asking …

Regular fans of John Tierney’s Big City column in the New York Times know what a star he is. Regularly pricking liberal platitudes and assumptions in New York’s biggest liberal paper, Tierney knows he’s out on a limb – and that gives his column a certain edge. Maybe it’s because I’m in a similar posiiton at The New Republic these days that I take such solace in the Times’ benevolent attitude towards a thorn in their side. It speaks well of both Tierney and his bosses. If you’re interested in finding out more about Tierney, check out this fair piece in the American Prospect.

An ally out there with some relevant questions that Chung, engaged in her sexual inquisition, didn’t bother to get to: “Did Levy ever complain about danger while working as an intern for the Bureau of Prisons? Did she tell you she was afraid of anybody? How did she describe her relationship with her parents? Did you know the last person Levy talked to before she disappeared? If so, how did he describe their relationship? Where did you first meet Levy? Do you in some way feel responsible for the fact she is missing?” The Chicago Sun-Times’ Michael Sneed puts her finger on something here. Those are the questions someone with an open mind would have asked someone close to a missing person. Chung’s questions were designed to humiliate and punish a man for adultery.

Some hope for the party in a wonderful letter to the editor from Zell Miller. Why no press about this? Oh, never mind.

LINE-TEM VETO: A late night entry had me reinstating the line-item veto presidents lost in 1998. Sorry. But I still think Bush should exercise brinkmanship in vetoing pork-laden spending bills.

So far, the administration’s response to the inevitable avalanche of stories about the disappearing budget surplus has not exactly been encouraging. Yes, the critical rhetorical move by the president has already been made – but he needs to make it a central theme of the next few months if it is to get through. He should quickly and loudly hail the disappearance of the surplus as a critical goal for his administration. Call it the balanced budget strategy. Here’s a rough rhetorical outline: The surplus is simply the people’s money. If left in D.C., it’s at risk of being spent by the government. It should be ferried back to the people before their benighted leaders get their grubby little hands on it. Bush should criticize Republicans as well as Democrats for this, a triangulation that can only help his ratings. He should line-item veto pork – especially corporate welfare. He should point out the 8 percent increase in domestic discretionary spending in the last fiscal year as an indication of Congress’s lack of self-discipline, and ask the public whether they want the surplus to go into more government spending or back into their own pockets. Above all, he mustn’t play defense. If he does, he’ll be killed. This is the central debate of the fall, and Bush needs to get his strategy organized now.

FINALLY, A REAL INTERVIEW: Check out Mike Isikoff’s interesting dialogue with Gary Condit in Newsweek. For the first time, an interviewer seems interested in the relevant facts of the case. And for the first time, Condit makes some sort of sense. He’s an uptight guy who clearly doesn’t get today’s media culture, and who stumbled badly into a slow news summer. He still won’t say what he easily could to defend himself, by giving his account of the first police interview in which he allegedly impeded the investigation. His reason? That’s the police’s business, not the media’s. He seems to be unaware that in politics today, even cooperating with a police investigation must always be done with an eye to spin, and media strategy.

RUNNING THE NUMBERS: As to the Chung interview, a reader ran it through a computer, comparing it with Jim Lehrer’s interview with Bill Clinton when the Lewinsky scandal broke. Nothing mind-blowing in the data – but something worth thinking about nonetheless. Chung had 2,333 words of questions and interrupted Condit 27 times. Lehrer had 1,463 words in his questions and one interruption. Condit was allowed 4,040 words in response compared with Clinton’s 6,842. For every word Chung spoke, Condit got back 1.73. For every word Lehrer uttered, Clinton replied with 4.68. This is testament to the fact that the Chung interview wasn’t really an interview; it was a public execution. It’s also testament to Bill Clinton’s immensely superior political and theatrical skills. As we watch lesser mortals see their careers explode when they haven’t even been accused of anything, it’s worth remembering the amazing genius of a man who, for misdeeds far more legally and ethically serious than Condit’s, got away virtually unharmed.

MICKEY GLOATS: Mickey Kaus thinks it’s deeply embarrassing for me to have predicted “a small chance [Condit will] simply blow this non-scandal away,” in his interview Thursday night. He says it’s up there with Will Saletan’s “Bush is toast” prediction during the campaign last fall. Well, if Will Saletan had said that there was “a small chance” that Bush was toast, would anyone have remembered? (He seems to have missed my only surefire prediction about the interview: that Chung would ask Condit if he killed Chandra Levy. She did.)

Correction: you don’t all think I’m nuts. The anti-anti-Condit backlash begins.

“If he had told everything up front to the police (which he stubbornly insists that he did), if he had confessed all 90 days earlier, or 80 days, or 70, etc., etc. his wife and children would still be shielded from the consequences of his stupidity?” – Michael Graham, National Review Online. Aren’t the words in italics relevant here? Has it occurred to Graham that Condit might be telling the truth? And how does he know he isn’t? I wish someone would tell me why this obviously pertinent issue can simply be dismissed as if it doesn’t exist. Or are we in a world now where such obvious facts are irrelevant to some moral grandstanding?

You all think I’m nuts about the Condit affair. Bumper edition.

Many of you are mystified by my apparent open mind about the guilt or innocence of Gary Condit, and my belief that someone is innocent until there is even one solid piece of evidence that he is guilty. The point that you keep making is that Condit impeded the investigation. Levy’s parents make that statement again today, saying that Condit “came forward only after pressure began to build and the facts of his relationship became public.” It’s public record that Condit offered a $10,000 reward immediately he heard of Levy’s appearance, called the DC cops and tell them to take it seriously and talked to the cops for 45 minutes two days later. The only people we know impeded the investigation are the DC cops. We don’t know what Condit said to them, and the story I cite below suggests he told them in so many words the nature of his relationship with Levy. When the story leaked, Mrs. Levy complained that her daughter’s privacy was being invaded. After Levy’s complaint, Condit’s office pooh-poohed the story. The story has not been retracted by the Washington Post. So what’s the problem? The real inconsistency has come from the Levys, who first didn’t want their daughter’s active sex life made public, then blamed Condit for not making it public himself. As this investigation continued and the DC cops did their usual comic routine, the Levys needed a scapegoat. They found one. The media was willing. The trap was set. The facts be damned. Look: I have no beef for Condit. He seems a slippery worm to me. But slippery worms are exactly the people that good journalists and police should be careful not to smear. They’re the easiest to smear. And the invasion of my own privacy earlier this year is not the reason for my concern. I was just as concerned to defend Clinton’s privacy – until he compounded it with perjury and clear obstruction of justice. The discrepancy between my reaction and most of yours might be better explained by the fact that I haven’t watched any TV for three months. I haven’t been slowly poisoned against a non-suspect by the drip-drip-drip of smear promoted by cable news. Until there’s a shred of credible evidence that Condit lied to the police or has any connection with Levy’s disappearance, he will get the benefit of my doubt. If that’s nuts in today’s media world, then please escort me to the asylum.