The Dish

Still think Rumsfeld had no idea what was going on at Abu Ghraib? Still believe he didn’t personally authorize "verschaerfte Vernehmung"? These documents are worth a look.

Salman Rushdie, that avatar of liberal hipness, accepted a knighthood. Tory bohemian Michael Oakeshott turned one down.

A reader writes:

I am surprised that the Politerati, or DC’s chattering class, have not seen the parallels between Hillary Clinton and Richard Nixon. They both have brilliant strategic minds, suffer from extreme paranoia about the enemy of their agenda, and both are extremely secretive. Nixon had very high negatives, and re-launched his "brand" image in the 1968 campaign, just as Hillary is doing in 2007. In short, Hillary is Nixon in a dress, or more appropriately Nixon in a pant suit. We saw what happened the first time we entrusted the White House to a person with behavioral traits like this. Do we want to go through it again?

(Photo: Win McNamee/Getty.)

Having been compared to Reagan, Thompson now seeks Thatcher’s imprimatur. The guy is the conservative nostalgia candidate – you know, for the period when conservatism meant something.

"[Bill] Kristol is like a horrifying right-pundit Chimera fusing together the worst aspects of Krauthammer and Barnes, but adding in a strain of raw cleverness that elevates – and yet denigrates – the resulting punditry from banal categories like ‘worst’ to more exalted realms of ‘dangerousness,’" – Matt Yglesias, gloves off. A little rough, but then Kristol is now writing:

Real progress has already been made in the war against Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the terrorists know it. That’s why they’re surging against our surge, and why they are attempting to convince us that we have lost when it is they who are losing.

Any argument to hand, I guess.

The Islamists are furious that Salman Rushdie has been made a knight by the Queen. I think all knighthoods are preposterous baubles, but I’d defend any preposterous bauble against the murderous rage of violent Islam. This really got my goat:

Today, Pakistan’s religious affairs minister suggested that the knighthood was so grave an offence that any Muslim anywhere in the world would be justified in taking violent action.

"If somebody has to attack by strapping bombs to his body to protect the honour of the Prophet then it is justified," Mr ul-Haq told the National Assembly.

The minister, the son of Zia ul-Haq, the military dictator who died in a plane crash in 1988, later retracted his statement in parliament, then told the AFP news agency that he meant to say that knighting Rushdie would foster extremism.

"If someone blows himself up he will consider himself justified. How can we fight terrorism when those who commit blasphemy are rewarded by the West?" he said.

He said Pakistan should sever diplomatic ties with Britain if it did not withdraw the award, adding:"We demand an apology by the British government. Their action has hurt the sentiments of 1.5 billion Muslims… If Muslims do not unite, the situation will get worse and Salman Rushdie may get a seat in the British parliament."

Now that would be pleasant, wouldn’t it? There’s an online petition in favor of Rushdie here.

As so often, Jon Rauch provides it:

Liberals are right to say that bringing unauthorized aliens into the open would make them less vulnerable to exploitation and easier for law enforcement to track, but conservatives are also right to say that mass normalization might stimulate more unauthorized immigration and erode respect for the law. Where illegal migration is concerned, the country will have to make a political choice. Mine, for what it’s worth, would be to legalize some but not all.

A reader writes:

You and I have been rocked by the recent reports detailing Gen. Taguba’s belief that his investigation was hamstrung from the beginning and that the civilian leadership of this country must have known about violations of the Geneva Conventions at Abu Graib prison.  With no intention to exaggerate for political advantage but in an honest interest in how we maintain a consistent moral position from Dachau to Kosovo to Dafur, at what point are we compelled, ethically, to call for the investigation of American war crimes?  And if we are not at that point now, when would we be?

Norm Geras tackles the train schedule in Italy. Not unlike Bush’s war-planning in Iraq.