Matthew Yglesias argues that bloggers are the new media, but not quite like people think:
It’s not the case that weblogs let everyone be a journalist, but they do let everyone be a public intellectual — spouting off their ideas on whatever whether or not they have any particular expertise. The flipside, though, is that it lets all experts be popularizers of their own work, which is a very valuable thing for those people (like, say, me) who are paid more-or-less in order to be generalists.
A case in point is blogger Steve Bainbridge, who also dabbles in teaching business law at UCLA, and has combined the two to publish a new column for TCS on the Dick Grasso case.
Public intellectuals are a fascinating breed in that my training as a specialist leads me to be skeptical of people presenting non-expert views while under the cloak of intellectual qualifications (e.g., the brilliant but often wrong Paul Krugman) but yet I’m strangely drawn to them. Indeed, when pressed for time on various talking heads shows, I invariably skip past the interviews with policy wonks and go right for the roundtable discussions with the bright, amiable non-experts.
A quick perusal of my blogroll will reveal a bias toward intellectuals — certainly a much higher concentration of PhDs, JDs, professors, Ivy Leaguers, and other big brain types than a random selection of the blogosphere would produce — and yet there are almost no specialty blogs on the list. My own blogging is much the same. Certainly, I concentrate on national security affairs, where I have some modicum of geniune expertise, more than the average blog. But I also feel free to spout off on other things that interest me, whether or not I’ve done a lot of research on the topic. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much what all the public intellectuals on television do as well.
A quick perusal of my blogroll will reveal a bias toward intellectuals — certainly a much higher concentration of PhDs, JDs, professors, Ivy Leaguers, and other big brain types...
I'm very amused to note that at the time I'm posting this comment, my blog is at the top of your blogroll. I don't think I qualify in your list of intellectuals there, James. :lol:
I think in a twisted sort of way maybe I do -- of all the high-credentialed poli-sci professors I had in college, the one I found most intelligent and thought-provoking had only a B.B.A.
No master's in anything. No degree at all in poli sci. But he was the best poli-sci professor that institution had.
And that institution was supposed to be the system's best poli-sci school. Naturally, it was down the rabbit hole in California.
Steven Taylor points to some “not good” developments on the Venezuala-Colombia front.
King of Fools provides a glimmer of hope about the intelligence of Americans.
Rob Tagorda wants to know why NYT is only apologizing for Iraq, given all the other stuff it gets wrong.
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Dean Esmay solves the world’s overcrowding problem by moving all seven billion people to Alberta, Canada, noting the population density would still be lower than in several very livable cities.
Now, granted, the daily commute is going to be a bear, especially for those in agribusiness. But as long as they don’t force me to watch hockey. . . .
You have to drink their beer too. It's going to be a very tolitarian mega-city.
The point of the exercise, of course, is not that we would all actually do this, but to emphasize just how much space there really is, and how efficiently it can be used if we want to (or need to) be more efficient.
There are of course related issues we're discussing, such as providing enough energy, clean water, and so on to all the world's people. All tricky problems. But problems with, I believe, solutions, and not things we all have to panic about.
I had read someplace that you could fit the entire population of the U.S. in the state of Oregon, and everybody have a decent size house and yard ... with room to grow. So, I can see this being plausible.
I’m rereading a superb article by Robert Kaplan called “Supremacy by Stealth” that appeared in the July/August 2003 Atlantic Monthly. His thesis is that the future of warfare is embodied by U.S. Special Operations Command soldiers that were, at the time, conducting nearly 170 missions a year with an average of “nine quiet professionals.” The piece is especially interesting now in light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandals, as the conduct of a few loud, unprofessional soldiers has seriously undermined our mission.
A couple of excerpts demonstrate the point.
The hero of Hersey’s World War II novel is Army Major Victor Joppolo, an Italian-American civil-affairs officer appointed to govern the recently liberated Sicilian town of Adano. Joppolo is full of resourcefulness. He arranges for the U.S. Navy to show local fishermen which parts of the harbor are free of mines, so that they can use their boats to feed the town. He finds a bell from an old Navy destroyer to replace the one that the Fascists took from the local church and melted down for bullets. He countermands his own general’s order outlawing the use of horse-drawn carts, which the town needs to transport food and water. He goes to the back of a line to buy bread, to show Adano’s citizens that although he is in charge, he is their servant, not their master.
***
One good man is worth a thousand wonks. As The Times of India wrote on July 7, 1893, the mind of a sharp political agent should not be “crowded with fusty learning.” Ian Copland, a historian of the British Raj, wrote that “extroverts and sporting types, sensitive to the cultural milieu,” were always necessary to win the confidence of local rulers. In Yemen recently I observed a retired Special Forces officer cementing friendships with local sheikhs and military men by handing out foot-long bowie knives as gifts. In a world of tribes and thugs manliness still goes a long way.
The abusers at Abu Ghraib were the polar opposite of Joppolo: cowardly men (and women) with no honor who took advantge of their position of power to feel like big men.
One can debate what members of El Salvador’s military “understood,” but Roach’s team and others pounded home the point that violating human rights almost never makes sense from a pragmatic perspective, because it costs the military the civilian support so necessary to rooting out guerrilla insurgents. “Human rights wasn’t a separate one-hour block at the beginning of the day,” Roach said. “You had to find a way to couch it in the training so that it wasn’t just a moralistic approach.” Human-rights abuses didn’t come to an end in El Salvador, but observers agree that they were sharply curbed.
The world is a gritty, messy place, and there are no perfect solutions. But the fact is that Third World military men are more likely to listen to American officers who brief them about human rights as a tool of counterinsurgency than to civilians who talk about universal principles of justice.
And talking about human rights while grossly violating them, presumably, has precisely the opposite effect.
You're right: that piece is excellent. I actually incorporated it in my Tech Central Station essay, though I focused on the fourth rule for managing an unruly world, which urged the use of the military to promote democracy.
James,
Very good article. Robert Kaplan has become one of my favorite authors: his Coming Anarchy should be required reading for anyone involved with national secuity. A month or two ago he had a article interviewing the military representative in Mongolia that is also a must read.
Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, who is leading the Army’s investigation into the role of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib prison and other detention facilities in Iraq, is an insurance company executive who has been on active duty for five years.
Fay, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, was still listed as a managing director of the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies in its 2003 annual report. He was selected March 31 to head the sensitive investigation into intelligence practices and procedures in Iraq, and began work on April 23, said Lawrence T. DiRita, the Defense Department assistant secretary for public affairs.
Pentagon officials, lawmakers and others are looking to Fay to help answer a central question in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: whether the military intelligence soldiers responsible for interrogating detainees directed or encouraged military police officers to commit the abuse captured in photographs that have roiled the Arab world and damaged U.S. credibility. Fay’s probe into military intelligence follows the widely reported Army investigation by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba that focused primarily on the role of military police.
Two Pentagon officials and one public affairs officer in Iraq said yesterday they could not say who chose Fay to run the inquiry, but one Army official said the orders “were cut by” Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the commanding general in Iraq.
I’ve often wondered about this phenomenon myself. How in the world can someone with the combined active duty experience of a junior Regular Army captain be a two-star general? And, if it’s possible to be a competent two-star general with that much service, why not just promote the ones on active duty that quickly? Or, for that matter, why have an active force at all, if we can generate that kind of competence in part timers?
That is heresy. If you were on active duty, you'd be in big trouble...
Somehow officers who drill a few days a month are supposed to be the equivalent of active duty officers who perform the same job 24/7.
Which leads me to wonder, why even have active duty forces at all? Think of all the money we could save. We could have an entire just-in-time inventory of military personnel.
Why do we have active duty inspector/instructors stationed with Reserve units?
Believe me, I am not denigrating the Reserves - we need them and I value their dedication and professionalism. But I have to question the assumption that you can swap out active and Reserve units interchangeably.
One note about the reserves (this is far from universal, but it does address the competence and capability of the reserve component): for some "reserve personnel", military service is their full-time employment. I am myself a reserve military officer with over 11 years of active duty service and a few more in the reserves, currently enrolled in a reserve component training course. Many of my peers in the course, ranging in grade from O-4 (Army/Air Force Major or Navy Lieutenant Commander) to O-6 (Air Force Colonel or Navy Captain) not only have substantial active duty service under their belts, they are full-time employees of their units (meaning they work a normal 5-day week AND the weekends when the "part-timers" come in to drill).
Yes, there are some who reach senior rank while serving minimal active duty time--but they are not that common, and tend to be assigned to roles that leverage their civilian experience rather than emphasize traditional military roles.
I'm presuming you're talking about what used to be called (maybe still is) an AGR position? Back when I was in the Reserves, those guys were fairly rare--and were usually administrators rather than command personnel.
You have to be careful with "competence and capability" arguments. I think few people would argue that for any person, more time on the job means a better-qualified, more capable employee.
It's hard to make the argument in any field that coming in once a month for drill equates to doing the same job full-time. During drill weekend, a lot of time is wasted just getting up to speed and getting people's minds in the game. This is not anyone's fault - it is the nature of the beast. It requires significant dedication from the Reserves to overcome - I often wonder how they manage to constantly switch gears between their civilian careers and the demands of their military jobs - it can't be easy.
My comment was in no way meant to imply that they are not competent or professional, as I believe I stated. I have the utmost respect for the Reserves - we could not function without them. Equivalence is another issue, and I'm not sure one can make that argument. For one thing, the Reserves don't get nearly the training time the active forces do, and then they're expected to perform the same mission in wartime. That's not a standard that would make sense in industry - why do we expect it to fly in the military?
America is about to pass - or may already have passed - another sad milestone in Iraq: 800 dead soldiers.
The Pentagon's official death toll, usually a few days behind the actual number, stood at 797 yesterday. But a reliable count maintained at the lunaville.org Web site, which monitors news reports and compares them with the Pentagon's running tally, put the real number at 803.
Showing just how disproportionate the U.S. sacrifice is in Iraq, the total number of deaths for the other countries in the Iraq coalition is 110.
Certainly, 800 deaths is substantial. It's four times what I had predicted beforehand (I was low for the regime change phase but didn't anticipate the scope of the insurgency/terrorist aftermath). Each one of these deaths is a personal tragedy, leaving behind a lot of mourners.
But let's have a little perspective, shall we?
War
Deaths
Addendum
American
Revolution
25,324
Bunker
Hill cost 400 American lives
War
of 1812
2,260
Mexican
War
13,283
Civil War
Union
Confederacy
498,332
364,821
Antietam
cost 5,000 lives on both sides: bloodiest day in American history
Spanish-American
War
2,446
World
War I
116,516
Battle
of Somme cost 19,240 British lives on a single day (total British casualties
that day: 57,470)
World
War II
405,399
Other Losses:
Soviet: 10,000,000
German: 3,500,000
Japan: 1,500,000
British: 280,000
As the data show, 800 deaths pales in comparison with almost every war we've ever fought. And, certainly, one doesn't want to take the disproportionate American deaths argument too far when one looks at the two World Wars. We lost many times 800 in both the Mexican War and the Spanish-American War, the rationales for which are long forgotten by most.
Indeed, there are perhaps dozens of battles in American history in which we took more than 800 deaths. A very few examples:
Ahhh.....but the day is still young. At least in former wars, there was a definite structure to be fought. The enemy was a concrete entity existing within physical boundaries. This is a "war on terror", or, at least its being marketed that way. Iraq is merely the "central front". Of course, terror, like torture, has always existed and always will. There will be no end to it, particularly if the already murky parameters of the war continue to shift towards "civilizational boundaries" (East versus West, Christian versus Moslem, light skinned versus dark skinned, etc). Give it another decade or two, particularly as the self fulfilling prophecy of WMD use begins to be used by both sides against the other. That is the slippery slope that we have got to (who would have imagined that elements in America governement and media, like Inhofe, Lott and Limbaugh, would ever stand up to defend the istitutional use of torture even 2 years ago?). In the present accounting, we are "only" (tell that to the families of the dead) 800 bodies down, a certain number maimed, 268 billion in the hole....but the day is young.
(who would have imagined that elements in America governement and media, like Inhofe, Lott and Limbaugh, would ever stand up to defend the istitutional use of torture even 2 years ago?)
Or elements of left-wing legal academia, like Alan Dershowitz?
Oh wait -- that was more than two years ago. Never mind.
What is more significant than the raw number is the population of the U.S. during each of these conflicts and the realization that prior to the 20th century each loss meant somone wasn't coming home to run the farm and there was no social program to help the widows and orphans left behind.
Your "perspective" is simplistic. How can you compare the war in Iraq with WWs I or II, the Revolutionary war, or the Civil war?
Those were not exactly wars of choice -- which I now believe this war was.
Additionally, you are now and rationalizing. None of those wars distracted us from the real war -- catching the bastards who were behind 9/11. Moving men and material
away from Afghanistan has turned out to be a colossal strategic blunder.
Then add to the mix that the war was executed poorly by rank amateur civilians, micromanaging and overruling the pros in the Pentagon.
Unfortunately for your view, Barry, the U.S. military was originally designed to be managed by "amateur civilians." It would be naïve to think that the military is anything but a political tool, to be wielded by politicians.
On the other hand, how well those civilians have used the military is a valid point for debate. But in my mind, not the fact that the U.S. has always had civilian control of the military. That's the way the Constitution was written.
Hmm. Given the medical technology of the time, and the high death rate among the injured while under doctors' care, the idea that only about 240,000 or so survived war wounds doesn't strike me as all that far-fetched.
Of course, I suppose I could Google® the actual official casualty figures (if there are any) but where's the fun in that?
Indeed, I'd argue that almost all of the encounters on the list were wars of choice. Aside from WWII, where we were directly attacked by the enemy, they were pretty much all avoidable. Certainly, our Mexican and Cuban adventures were far more optional than taking out Saddam. One could argue that the post regime change nation building exercise was optional, since it was, but the numbers are still small by any historical measure. And, of course, all the soldiers are volunteers now.
Two things:
1. As was mentioned before, battlefield medicine was abysmal during the Civil War. The technological advancements in killing devices far outstripped advancements in combat-related medical care for quite a long while, at least until penicillin and improvements in wound care. Something like 50% of Civil War deaths were due to the poor state of medicine.
2. Most other wars have seen high rates of casualties because everyone lines up and shoots each other. At the end of the war, they all shake hands and start rebuilding. Here, the war really didn't start until we'd invaded and reached the "end of combat operations." Leaving the media aside for the moment, I think that's why you're seeing such a distaste in the US public for this war -- it's supposed to be over, and people are supposed to die accidently, not from IEDs and ambushes. If we were losing 2-3 a day in battle, it would be tolerable. But we're losing 2-3 a day when we're not even supposed to be fighting these people. 800 looks like 8000 under these terms.
Mind you, I supported finishing the job of Gulf War I, but this has been a piss-poor joke of a management job. To paraphrase Wag The Dog, some people up there think this isn't a war, it's a pagent. Someone sold the Iraqis on the idea that the US would come in and give them gold-plated toilets and a Veg-o-matic in every home. Their overblown expectations have been the death of us -- literally.
Journalists don’t put Al Qaeda’s spin on the news because they sympathize with it. No one sits around the copy desk thinking of clever ways to shill for the enemy. It gets in there anyway, partly because of acute feelings of guilt over some Americans’ bad behavior in Abu Ghraib but mostly out of sheer laziness. Al Qaeda provides ready-made “news analysis,” so why not just stick it in there? It takes more effort to get contrary quotes and, besides, debunking propaganda is “editorializing.”
***
The idea that Al Qaeda murdered Nick Berg in retaliation for anything is absurd on the face of it. We already know Al Qaeda says every Jew (Nick Berg was Jewish), every American (Nick Berg was American), and every “infidel” (Nick Berg was an “infidel”) has a hit put out on his head. This was the case years before most of us had ever heard of Abu Ghraib, even years before September 11. Nick Berg would not be alive if Abu Ghraib were a soup kitchen. Saying one event triggered the other flies in the face of everything we know about Al Qaeda.
Indeed.
Sometimes, the “neutral” position that both sides in a conflict have equal standing amounts to propaganda, conferring false legitimacy on the perpetrators of evil. Blithely reporting that a dictator got 99% of the vote in an “election,” calling generations-old villages “refugee camps,” referring to terrorist groups as “militants,” and using the term “extreme Right” to refer both to Newt Gingrich and the Taliban are all classic examples of this.
What’s with local stations pre-empting broadcasts of network shows to give me weather reports? I sort of understood it when I lived in Alabama and we had a heavy tornado season, but even then I thought it was assinine. Let me know if there are any new developments but don’t turn the tornado report into a two-hour program wherein you send your idiot junior woodchuck “meterologist” outside to get his hair blown around interviewing morons who are outside in bad weather. Also, I really don’t want to look at your blasted Doppler Super Duper Weather Radar XVIII Mark A9A. Why don’t you interpret the data and get back to me when you’re done? You’re the one that took the two week training course.
The idiots running the DC CBS affiliate have this week ruined the only two (non-NFL football) shows I watch on that network with thunderstorm warnings. It’s raining? What precisely am I supposed to do with the information? For one thing, I already know it’s raining. For another, if I’m inside watching television, I’m probably reasonably safe from lightning strikes whereas, conversely, if I’m in a location where I’m in significant danger of being struck by lightning, I’m unlikely to be watching television.
The phenomenon is even worse when watching the program via TiVo delay, when the offending weather event is over.
I hear you: my dad worked at Entertainment Tonight for like 23 years, and on his last day they showed his retirement party on-air. Except that CBS in DC pre-empted to cover some minor thunderstorm.
Lemme guess, James, you're a little pissed. Right?
It was a significant weather event, by the way. While we were well past it here in Loudoun County, folks living in southeastern Prince Georges County, Charles County and Calvert County were under a Tornado Watch. To put it in context, a couple of years ago, a tornado ripped through Charles County, with lots of damage and several deaths. Folks in that area are a little sensitive about weather events that might kill them.
As a side note, the area Skywarn Amateur Radio network had been active for several hours, and continued to receive reports of severe weather throughout the period of preemption (9:00-9:30 EDT). Hey, at least they didn't preempt American Idol, right? You did Tivo AI, right?
Providing severe weather info is one of the 'community service' requirements of a station's broadcasting license. Of course, providing unending team coverage of a Severe Drizzle Advisory isn't mandated. So why do they do it? Because it gets ratings.
The digital "HD" broadcast from WUSA was showing the network feed, while the network feed was getting replaced and mangled on the analog broadcast.
WJLA (ABC) divides their digital channel bandwidth into two subchannels--subchannel 1 is the network feed and subchannel 2 is weather radar (except when they screw up and end up broadcasting a frame from an Appleby's commercial for over an hour... like they did during the recent broadcast of "Unbreakable". WJLA seems to screw up on their digital broadcasts quite a bit.)
A tornado watch is pretty much nothing. It just means conditions are "favorable" for a tornado. In Alabama, we called that "summer." If it's a tornado warning, then I want to know about it. But even then, a little icon at the bottom of the screen, scrolling text every once in a while, or even a very brief interruption is enough to convey the info. 25 consecutive minutes of coverage, pre-empting the programming, simply isn't warranted unless there's actual tornado activity causing significant threat to people's lives. Otherwise, it's not only annoying it's crying Wolf.
Yesterday during the '24' finale, WTTG (Fox 5 DC) ran big text bars along the left and bottom edges of the screen, displaying useless information such as "severe thunderstorm alert" in the bars. The broadcast was displayed in reduced size in the remaining portion of the screen.
Fun fact: when stations screw with the video signal like that, the closed captioning data gets lost.
I'm sure hearing-impaired and other viewers who depend on the closed captioning were rather unhappy to miss the dialogue for half the show, especially for this.
I see your point, James, but (merely playing devil's advocate) there were tornado warnings for Prince Georges and Calvert counties last evening, and the weather folks got the clearest indication that you can get from radar that there was tornadic activity in those storms (there were two different ones that converged over southern PG County).
Add to that the fact that folks are a mite sensitive, especially in Southern Maryland since the La Plata disaster in 2002, when there's the possibility of a tornado touching down. They don't happen as often around here, but they do tend to be more destructive than in other places around the country.
Sorry, the debate team fought it's way to the top of my consciousness. I'm better now, thank you.
Yeah, I vaguely remember that storm now. The one was so close to 9/11 that I didn't pay much attention and, really, minor catastrophes elsewhere (I didn't move here until 8/02) tend not to interest me all that much.
I figured they must have banned trailers up here; I don't think I've seen one. In much of the Deep South, there are no zoning laws, so you can literally have a trailer across the street from a mansion.
The Weather Channel was covering the DC-area weather pretty intensively last night. But I didn't see whether they dispatched Mike Seidel or -- more ominously -- Jim Cantore.
James, you have to understand, the DC area reacts to these kinds of weather events the way Alabama would react to a snowstorm.
When the tornado warning was in effect for Loudoun County, I turned to the Weather channel to see if they were covering it and to check the radar so that I could see where in the county the heaviest of the storm was (it's a large area). Local alerts overrode the audio of the Weather channel! For an hour, some lady's recorded voice warned of imminent danger.
Interestingly, channel 8 had good coverage of the storm and I was able to see that my area of Loudoun wasn't affected. We got barely a sprinkle.
I guess the preemptions didn't bother me so much because I'm very weather-oriented, and when weather events happen I'm usually watching them evolve from my computer and on the local Amateur Radio Skywarn net.
I just love watching red blobs move across the map!
Skywarn. With storm season approaching here in Georgia I'm glad we seem once again to have a working radio in the house. Last May we had a tornado warning in our county and our local net was going strong.
Nothing of significance happened at my house of course (nothing ever does), but a few short miles away some microburst winds knocked down a bunch of trees and damaged houses.
I'd hate to have to hunker down for another storm like that, but without my ham radio.
Steve Bainbridge argues that, despite the recent speculation that President Bush is in trouble with the libertarian faction of his base, a more worrisome issue is losing the “resolutely pro-military, devoutly Catholic, and moderately anti-abortion” Tom Clancy vote.
It is a nice paradox: those who let Clancy infleuence their vote know too much about him to allow him to influence their vote. Sorry, his reputation has become too soiled (arrogence, personal life problems) that those who would take great stock in what he would have to say would end up discounting it.
Army Reserve officials recently screened the records of thousands of members of the Individual Ready Reserve and drew up a list of 22,000 people with skills that are in demand given the military’s current manpower squeeze, as a result of U.S. commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A decision is expected soon as to how many may be called back to active duty. In fact, some members of the IRR have received phone calls from recruiters and retention officers saying they should volunteer for assignment to an active reserve unit or risk being assigned involuntarily.
***
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What’s bizarre is that this story has been around for quite some time (in Internet time, anyway) and has been debunked here and elsewhere:
Indeed, I’ve gotten so many comments on these posts that I wound up shutting them down because they became veritable Internet chat rooms as people arrived from links elsewhere and posted hysterical comments without bothering to read the posts that would have allayed their concerns.« Nothing more to see here.
"Indeed, I’ve gotten so many comments on these posts that I wound up shutting them down because they became veritable Internet chat rooms as people arrived from links elsewhere and posted hysterical comments without bothering to read the posts that would have allayed their concerns."
You shut them down without really reading them.
The issue is that despite all these articles exposing the "scam," recruiters and HRC officials are STILL using the same tactics to pressure IRR members into joining involuntarily. I have read many, probably DOZENS of these articles that quotes some Army official as saying "No, no, that was a miscommunication. It's all voluntary" but then I call HRC and they are still threatening us with words like "you are definitely vulnerable. Want to talk about your options before you no longer have any?"
We are STILL getting threatening phone calls from recruiters. Even one recruiter posted on one of the threads you shut down, saying "These articles are wrong. I have called my superiors all the way up the chain and they keep telling me that I am doing the right thing and to drive on."
So you post articles that allay peoples' fears temporarily, but then some recruiter or officer who works at HRC gets on here and says something completely different. Then common sense folks like me pick up the phone to call HRC and find out the REAL, no kidding story, only to find that HRC officials are still peddling the same crap.
This rumor may have been around for a while, and all these news articles may be "debunking" it in your mind, but I am the one just home from the middle east, still getting calls from recruiters, and still being told to "join a reserve unit or else."
So the problem is not that people aren't reading the articles, it's that they are reading the articles, but are STILL being told the same crap by the Army.
Sources inside and close to the New York Times say that the newspaper is preparing an “Editors’ Note” that will reassess its pre-Iraq War coverage, particularly its coverage of weapons of mass destruction. The note is said to address the reporting failures of Times staffers, including Judith Miller, and could be published as early as tomorrow (Wednesday, May 26).
***
Miller’s work on WMD in the Times deserves special scrutiny because so many of her sensational stories never panned out—from a December 2001 piece about now-discredited Iraqi defector Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, who claimed inside knowledge about a score of Iraq WMD programs and storage facilities, to a December 2002 scoop about a possible Russia-Iraq smallpox collaboration, to a January 2003 eve-of-war piece reiterating the defectors’ stories of Iraqi WMD. Miller’s credulous reporting turned absolutely hyperbolic when she joined the search for WMD on the ground in Iraq, embedding with the U.S. military’s Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha. In an April 21, 2003, piece, Miller claimed that an Iraqi scientist had led the military to a cache of precursor compounds for a banned “toxic agent.” She told The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer the next day that the scientist was more than a “smoking gun” in the WMD search, he was the “silver bullet.” But by July 2003, still no WMD had been found in Iraq. Instead of blaming the defectors and inside sources who had led her astray, Miller put the onus on the poor logistics of the weapons search! [Hyperlinks omitted]
It’s clear that Miller was a bit sloppy in her sourcing, often relying on only one source and sources with a rather obvious agenda. Then again, isn’t almost all reporting on matters closed to the public done in that manner? Almost all political scoops are sourced to one or two (usually nameless) insiders who have an axe to grind. One would think foreign reporting—especially when the country involved is a totalitarian regime and those involving highly technical matters far beyond the expertise of the reporter—is almost always going to be suspect. Reporters report what they know—which, often, isn’t much—at any given time and have to produce stories on deadline. Journalism is the first rough draft of history. There are usually many revisions before the final version hits the books.
Hat tip to Kevin Drum, whose commenters have a somewhat different take on the situation.
As far back as March, Sulzberger mentioned Miller's reporting in a talk to college journalists. His tone was decidedly negative, which led me to believe at the time that she was in for some rough sailing. Sulzberger seemed decidely embarrassed by the fact that the NYT wasn't "tough enough" in reporting leading up to the war.
But I have to question the blame on the single reporter. Where were her editors? Who was asking her about her sources, her secondary sources, etc.?
After all, so far as we know, she wasn't just making stuff up like Jayson Blair Jack Kelly.
It sure sounds like the NYT thinks its reporting was responsible for everyone thinking there were massive stockpiles of WMD in Iraq just waiting to be used on Americans.
So when will we hear from the moonbats that "The Times Lied, Thousands Died"?
Can it be that the Times, Sulzberger in particular, is putting retractions on anything that Made the Administration look like it might have a clue? Knowing the history the Times in general, and of Sulzberger particularly, I wouldn't put it past them that this 'apology' is politically motivated.
According to a U.S. intelligence official, the CIA has hard evidence that Chalabi and his intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib, passed U.S. secrets to Tehran, and that Habib has been a paid Iranian agent involved in passing bogus reports of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to U.S. hawks and giving good U.S. intelligence to Tehran.
"It's pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner," said an intelligence source in Washington. "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States for several years through Chalabi."
Steve Verdon notes that Atrios’ failure to issue a retraction proves tax cuts are good for the economy.
Dean Esmay ponders gender differences and abortion.
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Former NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso has an impassioned column in WSJ defending his innocence and denouncing his critics, including New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who is suing him for making too much money.
I must admit that this one strikes me as even more bizarre than the Martha Stewart case. It’s bad enough to be charged with covering up a crime with which you’re not charged; how in the world can you be charged for taking a pay raise that’s legally offered to you by your board of directors?
Update: Steve Bainbridge has an interesting post on the topic, complete with some suggestions for reforming the NYSE.
Update: Kevin Drum wonders whether I’ve read anything about the charges. I’ve read some NYT reports and heard about a lot of it on NPR but haven’t conducted any in-depth investigation. Still, the whole concept of the case seems odd to me.
But some of Mr. Spitzer’s claims will be difficult to prove, and last night he appeared to back away from one of the most explosive accusations against Mr. Grasso - that as chairman and chief executive of the Big Board he knew of fraud by research analysts and failed to act against it.
The complaint includes accusations that Mr. Grasso intervened in the exchange’s regulatory processes and in those of other regulators to get favorable treatment for companies run by directors of the exchange. It contends that those directors, mostly top executives at major Wall Street firms, rewarded Mr. Grasso with compensation that Mr. Spitzer views as outrageously high.
But the issue may not be that clear-cut. The suit claims that most of the exchange’s directors were misled about what Mr. Grasso was being paid, particularly in regard to pension benefits that made up a large part of his $187.5 million pay package over a multiyear period. It names only one director - Kenneth G. Langone, who served as chairman of the board’s compensation committee during the time Mr. Grasso’s pay skyrocketed - as having acted improperly.
The 52-page complaint filed in New York State Supreme Court by Mr. Spitzer paints a harsh picture of Mr. Grasso, with new evidence contending that he inflated his pay and deliberately misled his high-powered board about many details of his package to enhance his pay above and beyond a benchmark of comparable chief executives.
Although the other board members of the exchange voted for Mr. Grasso’s pay package, the suit is narrow in focus, naming only one other defendant — a former director, Kenneth G. Langone, who is a friend of Mr. Grasso and was the chairman of the compensation committee from June 1999 to June 2003, the years when Mr. Grasso’s annual pay peaked.
Mr. Grasso, who has vociferously defended his pay as fair given the success of the exchange during his tenure as chairman from 1995 until he was forced out last fall, said in a statement: “I’m disappointed that New York’s attorney general has chosen to intervene in what amounts to a commercial dispute between my former employer and me. I look forward to a complete vindication in court.”
In what could help his case against Mr. Grasso, Mr. Spitzer also disclosed that Frank Z. Ashen, the internal compensation expert at the Big Board, has decided to cooperate with authorities, agreeing to pay back $1.3 million of compensation he received. Among the new evidence presented yesterday was a statement from Mr. Ashen, a 25-year employee at the exchange, that Mr. Grasso did not disclose to the board $18 million of bonus payments. Mr. Spitzer said that the cooperation of Mr. Ashen, who originally was going to be named as a defendant in the suit, was crucial in putting the case together.
“There is a simple reality here,” Mr. Spitzer said. “Mr. Grasso was paid too much. He has the money in his checking account and he has an obligation to return it.” Mr. Spitzer reiterated his assertions that Mr. Grasso’s pay was unreasonable for the head of a quasi-public institution like the stock exchange. Mr. Grasso’s total compensation was actually close to $200 million, Mr. Spitzer noted, including an additional $48 million in future compensation that Mr. Grasso agreed to forgo when he left the exchange.
The problem is, of course, what’s too much? I understand that NYSE is a non-profit, but I’m unaware of any regulatory limit on what CEO’s can make in non-profits. Maybe there should be one as a requirement for getting special tax breaks. But it’s unclear how we can impose them ex post facto. I’m unconvinced that any wrongdoing was done in setting the level here. The rest of the charges seem to amount to the existence of a good ol’ boy system in the NYSE. I had pretty much always presumed that to be the case.
NYT has the text of the case in PDF format.
This handy graphic gives a visual illustration of the rise in Grasso’s compensation. It’s too wide to copy into my screen and shrinking it will distort it.
As somebody in the M&A; field, I can say that too many of the jew bankers have too much say in our markets. They don't mind making their money, but hate it when somebody else makes some.
My first take on this issue mirrored yours -- i.e., if that was the contract that he was offered...how many of us would look at a salary offer and say -- geez, that's way too high, you're offering to over pay me.
But upon reflection, I think there are two points. When does the compensation become so outlandish that the whole package becomes suspect? And what is the person really agreeing to do for such a "payoff"?
Second issue -- A case against Grasso allows Spitzer to depose other "knowledgeable sources": I'm sure there is a wealth of info to be had.
Keep in mind -- under Grasso and his Board of Directors, the operation was corrupt. Or do you think it was not?
Previous base-closure efforts, known as base realignment and closure, or BRAC, began in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War. Four closure rounds shuttered 97 major military installations and 352 smaller ones across the country. But Congress and the Clinton White House brought the process to a screeching halt in 1995.
Now BRAC is embraced by the Bush White House as it pushes for cost-cutting efficiencies and by Pentagon officials who aim to transform the military into a more flexible fighting machine more reliant on information than heavy armor. DuBois, as the deputy undersecretary of Defense for installations and environment, has the reins to the effort. He hopes this BRAC will be different from base closings of the past by encouraging the military services to share resources and technology, and take greater advantage of what may be available in the private sector.
“It’s not your father’s BRAC anymore,” DuBois said during an interview at his Pentagon office. “Closure is not necessarily the operative word — it is realignment. We’ll be moving assets from one base to another. There will certainly be closures, but there may be a lot more realignment than we have anticipated.”
***
Seven joint-service groups focusing on specific issues will also be pitching in for those collective decisions as they share assets and ideas about areas that embrace similar functions, including education and training, industrial affairs, logistics, shipyards, medicine, intelligence, and technical laboratories.
“Why should every service have its warehouses and its own distribution and its own information systems that control inventory?” DuBois asks. “Look at the way Wal-Mart works and let’s see if we can apply those disciplines, technologies and management skills to a more jointly managed supply and storage distribution process.”
DuBois poses more questions than answers about these discussions, but the questions reflect a predisposition for integrating the services with an eye on what the private sector can provide.
“When you do a BRAC, you cannot just look at what the military services own in terms of assets, you have to look at what can be done in the private sector,” he said. “You don’t necessarily want to duplicate things.”
This makes an enormous amount of sense. Consolidation of duplicate facilities has been advocated literally for decades with only minimal result. I’m more than mildly surprised that they’re getting away with doing this in a top-down fashion with limited congressional oversight. Congress, because of its nature as a 535-member constituent service institituion, is a natural obstacle to any of these moves because of local impact. Indeed, that’s why the BRAC process was created to begin with; it essentially delegated the hard choices to a blue ribbon panel and Congress could only vote up or down. The process was, unfortunately, destroyed by the Clinton Administration, which put substantial pressure on the commision to prevent the closure of key bases in California and elsewhere, crucial for his 1996 reelection campaign, from making the list. By re-politicizing the process, the rationale behind the BRAC movement was undermined.
From my research (for a Joint Forces Staff College paper I wrote), I got the impression it was always a top-down process in which the military services made a set of recommendations to the Commission, which in turn made a set of recommendations to the Secretary (who then had the power to kill the process, ask the Commission to reconsider, or send it forward to the President for his review/rejection and submission to Congress). The thing that kept the process from dragging was presumably the attention that could be brought to whichever political/executive entity failed to keep the process moving.
One of the projects I worked on in the mid-90s involved an attempt to standardize the way the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines inspected their various bases and facilities. I was amazed at the differences, and the provincialism, that were brought to light. Something as seemingly straightforward as inspecting a chiller unit would produce hours of debate and argument. This is a worthwhile goal, and could yield significant benefits, but the obstacles are many, and involves political will at many levels.
I think this is a Good Thing. Now that we're not worried about Soviet ICBMs raining down on us, there's really no excuse (other than local economies) to spread our forces all across the map. The Air Force's old 'one wing, one base' philosophy was good before the Berlin Wall fell, but it's time to move back to fewer 'superbases'. Maybe the old facilities can be used for deployment exercises...
The real interesting question is whether they'll take this opportunity to create some real 'joint' bases...
'"Why should every service have its warehouses and its own distribution and its own information systems that control inventory?” DuBois asks'
Actually this was one of the safeguards the Founding Fathers put in place at the birth of this great nation. They lived in fear of large standing armies, which is why after every war we quickly disbanded the Army. For the US to maintain a large standing Army during peacetime is a modern phenomena. But even in doing so, it should be noted that at least half the Army was stationed outside the continential United States.
It is also why the Army and Navy are funded differently by Congress and why the Army doesn't get multi-year funding while the Navy does. The Founding Fathers want to keep a close hold on the Army, but the same fears did not hold for the Navy as the ability of a Navy to overthrow a government or occupy ground mass was limited. It also is a significant contribution behind fostering the "interservice" rivalry.
One of the major drivers behind the National Defense Act of 1948 was to ensure civilian control over the military while at the same time preventing the creation of a centralized military staff on the German military staff model. The Act limits both the size of Department staffs and limits tour lengths to prevent growing a permanent military staff.
So..... while all these initiative to centeralize and streamline are wonderful for efficiency, they will still run into "irrational" opposition from folks carring forward the Founding Father's concerns for large standing military forces and centralize command and control.
We might not be worried anymore about Soviet ICBMs, but it may be premature to assume that the generic worry is past. Are we best friends yet with everybody who has, or is trying to get, the ability to "rain down" nukes on us?
I don't think so.
There are valid reasons to close military bases where appropriate, but the end of the Cold War isn't one of them.
I had the impression that the type of threat we face today is different in kind that the one we faced from the Soviets: that, notwithstanding the possible nuclear capabilities of our current foes, they are more likely these days to be "freelancers" (not officially affiliated with a nation) and to represent smaller forces. As I understand it, we are dealing with smaller institutions, and need to rely on brains more than sheer brawn in our approach.
I suspect that the best answer to the potential nuclear threat is to get much better intelligence, and stop it before it happens . . .
A longtime career federal employee, Mary E. Lacey, has been named to run the office that will develop plans to overhaul the civil service pay and personnel system at the Defense Department, the Pentagon announced yesterday.
Lacey was named program executive officer for the new National Security Personnel System and will report to Navy Secretary Gordon England. Lacey had served as technical director of the Naval Surface Warfare Center, which oversees weapons and systems testing, research and development at six major divisions.
***
Congress authorized creation of a new personnel system for the 746,000 civil service employees in the Defense Department last year — one of the biggest workplace changes inside the government in decades.
The Pentagon, however, got off on the wrong foot with some members of Congress, OPM and some labor leaders when some Defense officials created the impression that they were rushing the launch of the system.
After Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld selected England to oversee the process, the Navy secretary put it into slow gear, saying he intended to approach the personnel overhaul as he would the development of a large, complex weapons system.
Lacey, as head of the NSPS project office, will oversee teams that will work on an array of personnel issues, such as compensation, employee appeals of discipline and the bargaining rights afforded unions.
Although no decisions have been made, the new system seems likely to shift Defense employees out of the 15-grade General Schedule and into new pay categories that more rigorously link pay raises to a worker’s job performance ratings.
The rationale for this overhaul is likewise unclear. As I’ve noted in a different context, DoD civilian employees are paid far less than their uniformed rank equivalent counterparts. The 15-step GS schedule is well established and reasonably flexible. Further, the civil service career system is aligned across government agencies so any restructuring of the DoD system—since it’s the largest employer—is going to create an imbalance elsewhere.
In a manpower shell game, the Pentagon plans to hire more civilians and contractors to do jobs currently done by uniformed soldiers so more than 20,000 troops can be freed up for combat duty in coming years.
It’s part of an effort that began last year to bolster the number of front-line troops without adding more people to the ranks. Within a decade, it could involve 300,000 more troops, including the 20,070 positions being shifted to front-line roles by October 2005.
Unlike the civilian contractors driving fuel tankers to Baghdad, Iraq, or guarding Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer, these new civilian jobs will be permanent and at stateside bases.
Already, hundreds of civilians have replaced sailors aboard a Navy flagship based in San Diego and, next year, jobs at area military hospitals and clinics and Marine bases could change over, officials said.
With only about three of every 10 troops in fighting roles, the 1.4 million-strong U.S. military has been hard-pressed to keep 138,000 troops on duty in Iraq.
Although more than 660,000 civilians work for the Pentagon, officers and enlisted personnel still do many noncombat jobs.
While some key decisions are weeks and months away, the conversion of military jobs to civilian positions may affect who orders Army supplies, treats children at Navy hospitals or hands out base passes at Marine Corps bases. Administrative, supply, medical and maintenance positions are likely targets for conversion, officials said.
While I’ve opposed the heavy reliance on contractors for missions in a combat zone, especially those involving direct combat or quasi-combat operations, this move seems logical enough. The DoD has for years been converting uniformed jobs in the service support arena to civilian, whether civil servants or contractors. There’s little downside to this move, as these folks tend to work for somewhat lower wages, have radically less generous benefits packages, and are much easier to get rid of as needs change.
Within the DoD portion of the Intelligence Community, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency already uses a "pay band" system (five levels, plus executives) and DIA is, I believe, starting to implement something similar. It reduces pay transparency a bit, but gives managers more flexibility in setting pay and handling assignments, as I understand it.
Congressional agencies and GAO do something similar. I'm not sure how it works in practice.
One thing that would seem an obvious problem in doing that with DoD is the issue of rank equivalency, which is important in such a hierarchical system. If you have a pay band so wide that it encompasses everything from CPT to LTC, then it's problematic.
I agree, James. NGA basically uses Band 5 for GS-15, Band 4 for GS-13/14, Band 3 for GS-11/12, and then I'm not sure (my friends and associates are in the top three bands)...I think only the GS-7s and up ("officer grades", more or less) are in the "Band" system at all, so that would imply GS-7/8 are Band 1 and GS-9/10 are Band 2...
I think the clerks, etc., are handled separately, using the "standard" General Schedule.
I've always had a problem with civilians considering themselves "equivalent" to military ranks. Obviously, you should use the civilian's grade to determine billeting and dining requirements, but waaaaay too many have taken it much further than that.
I don't care if you're a GS-15 or a GS-7: you've got no military standing, and it doesn't benefit anyone for you to act as though you're some sort of officer.
"If I were on active duty..." "Yeah, well, you're not, so shut up."
The problem with that is that DoD civilians are often in the chain of command, actually rating military personnel. As a supervisory GS-12, my dad was the primary rater for a major and several captains and the senior rater for many NCOs. He as also a retired E-8.
My current boss is a GS-15 and she's an 0-6 equivalent. She rates several LTCs and MAJs.
Eliot Cohen has a superb op-ed in today’s WaPo looking at the Abu Ghraib scandal and what it says about soldiers and society’s relation to them.
Military service, or a life spent with soldiers, brings one to the realization that soldiers, like the rest of us, fall on a continuum, a normal distribution of most human virtues and vices. At the right end of the curve lie men and women of extraordinary physical, mental and indeed spiritual distinction; people of exceptional character, whose fortitude, largeness of spirit and greatness of soul leave one humbled. The armed forces also have the others — the liars, petty tyrants, place-hunters, opportunists, even, yes, the cowards and the brutes. By and large military service excludes or winnows out most of the latter, attracting and retaining far more of the former; it has a higher concentration of the finer types than any other walk of life that I know. But despite its best efforts, it has its share of moral weaklings and scoundrels.
Quite right. The whole piece is well worth a read.
John F. Kerry yesterday defended the idea of leaving the Democratic National Convention in July without a formal nomination as his party’s presidential candidate, saying that there is ample political precedent to support it and that Republicans are complaining about the move because “someone might have a way of neutralizing their advantage.”
The Massachusetts senator told the Globe: “One thing I can tell you is that on Wednesday night, the [candidate for] vice president of the United States will be nominated and give a speech, and on Thursday night I will give my speech.”
Asked if it would be a nomination acceptance or merely a party address, Kerry winked and leaned back in his seat as his campaign charter jet flew from Hanscom Field to Dulles International Airport outside the nation’s capital.
At the same time, two prominent campaign finance watchdogs questioned whether it would be legal for the host committee to spend $15 million in federal funds to stage the Democratic National Convention if the event does not produce Kerry’s nomination.
“I think there is a very strong case here that it would be illegal,” said Fred Wertheimer, who runs a campaign finance organization called Democracy 21. “They received the money to conduct a nominating convention, and a nominating convention tends to include the concept of a nominee. At a minimum, they face real legal questions.”
Representative Martin T. Meehan of Lowell, a fellow Democrat and coauthor of the country’s new campaign finance law, agreed that the $15 million is at risk. “The question is whether it could be made up in private contributions,” the congressman said.
One also wonders about the logic of nominating a vice presidential candidate but not the presidential candidate, given that the former is chosen by the latter. The minimal tactical advantage this move would afford—since there are plenty of ways to spend “outside” money on advertising that are techically legal—would seem far outweighed by the flack generated.
kerry's efforts to manipulate the dimolib convention may be a final nail in his campaign chances. American's (generally speaking) hate liars and cheats. kerry seems to have been given a pass on lying (after all we know EVERYBODY lies), but not playing by normal convention rules smacks of cheating.
We all have been cheated at one time or another and we hate it on two levels -- personal and intellectual.....Personal because we took a loss; Intellectual because we have been personally made a dupe and fool.
So his dalliance with gerrymandering the convention is at his own great peril. The CHEATER.
Lets take this issue to the realm of the absurd. I understand that the federal funds are approx 75 million. Why not wait until....lets say Oct 31 to declare the nominee and then you have 75 million to spend the week of the election. As long as Kerry's donations continues until then...why not? Or maybe Bush should wait....it would be the most interesting game of chicken.
Or maybe Kerry will never 'accept' the nomination and if he loses in November he can say he didn't lose the election because he was never in the election....a perfect Kerryism.
I understand the rationale, and I know that anyone who was going to vote for him from the beginning will find this an acceptable workaround, given that we've never had the Dem and GOP conventions simultaneously (and maybe now we should, since they are increasingly meaningless).
But this election is going to be decided by those in the middle who could go either way, and this maneuver is *not* going to appear Presidential.
