Drudge: Least Biased?

Matt Drudge links a September 2003 academic study by three academics at major schools entitled, “A Measure of Media Bias.” Doing a content analysis of several major media outlets, they came up with some interesting results.

Our results show a very significant liberal bias. All of the news outlets except Fox News’ Special Report received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. Moreover, by one of our measures all but three of these media outlets (Special Report, the Drudge Report, and ABC’s World News Tonight) were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than to the median member of the House of Representatives. One of our measures found that the Drudge Report is the most centrist of all media outlets in our sample. Our other measure found that Fox News’ Special Report is the most centrist. These findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets. That is, we omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample.

While the findings that FSR is relatively centrist doesn’t surprise me, Drudge’s histrionic tabliod style certainly strikes me as biased.

The research methodology:

To compute our measure, we count the times that a media outlet cites various think tanks. We compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same think tanks in their speeches on the floor of the House and Senate. By comparing the citation patterns we can construct an ADA score for each media outlet.

As a simplified example, imagine that there were only two think tanks, one liberal and one conservative. Suppose that the New York Times cited the liberal think tank twice as often as the conservative one. Our method asks: What is the estimated ADA score of a member of Congress who exhibits the same frequency (2:1) in his or her speeches? This is the score that our method would assign to the New York Times.

While I agree that the citing of think tanks is one useful indicator, it strikes me as a rather odd single measure. Indeed, one would think the vast majority of news stories and congressional speeches lack any such references, making the coding rather selective.

Dulles Expos?

AP/AJC — Virginia Touts Site As New Home for Expos

Northern Virginia baseball backers announced plans Monday for a $442 million, 42,500-seat ballpark for the Montreal Expos near Dulles International Airport, a proposal they hope will persuade owners to relocate the team to their community.

Northern Virginia and downtown Washington, D.C., appear to be the leading candidates to get the Expos, who were bought by the other 29 teams before the 2002 season. Other bidders include Las Vegas; Monterrey, Mexico; Norfolk; Portland, Ore.; and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Baseball officials hope to make a decision by mid-July, and financing for a ballpark has been a major concern.

The only government action required for the Northern Virginia plan would be site plan approval from the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. A majority of the board attended a rally Monday to express support.

“We have the public will to get it done,” Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority chairman Keith Frederick said. “We have a financing plan that is ready to go. We’ve got a great site. We are ready.”

The plan calls for the ballpark to be part of a town square-style development that would include residential, retail and commercial space.

The developer proposing the plan—a consortium of builders Beazer, Centex and Van Metre companies—is willing to contribute $82 million in infrastructure costs, reducing the ballpark cost from $442 million to $360 million.

Supporters say the Dulles site’s distance from Washington is a plus because a team there would be less likely to damage the Baltimore Orioles, who say a D.C.-area team will hurt that franchise.

Much of the financing for the stadium already is in place under a 1997 Virginia law that permits the state to pay two-thirds of the cost of a new stadium, using taxes generated by the ballpark to pay back the bonds.

While it would be interesting to have a Major League Baseball team (well, sort of—these are the Expos) fifteen minutes down the road, I’m not sure it would be worth it. For one thing, taxpayer financing of sports stadia is idiotic and counterproductive. For another, the last thing we need is more traffic on Route 28 in the evenings. Plus, I really don’t want an NL East team in my hometown, since I’ve long been a fan of the division rival Atlanta Braves.

Logistically, however, Dulles makes much more sense than DC. The District’s infrastructure is simply not up to hosting a MLB franchise anymore. Traffic is already a zoo in the evenings; inviting 75,000 fans to stream in during the rush hour would be madness.

Margaret Karen Joskow, R.I.P.

Matthew Yglesias’ mother has died at age 53.

My best wishes to Matt and his family.

Imperial Hubris III

Jim Henley has some interesting thoughts on the early buzz around the book (see here and here for my previous discussions).

Islamist terrorists remain a threat to kill small, medium or even large numbers of Americans if they can find further “multipliers” like the exploding jet fuel times molten steel times gravity formula of not quite three years ago. And some group of them may obtain a real WMD - a nuke or subclass of weaponized germs - likely via the still-insecure ex-Soviet arsenal. It’s stupid, as Gene says, to pursue policies that increase the number of Muslims who want to devote their lives to doing us harm or winking at those who want to do us harm. That kind of thing takes brainpower, so don’t maximize the number of brains devoted to it.

Unfortunately, given the potential force multipliers out there, the threat from Islamic terrorism is quite serious indeed. While it strikes me as quite unlikely that they’ll acquire the ability to become an existential threat to the West in the sense that the Soviet Union was, they are far more likely to use WMD against us if they acquire that capability. Despite the rhetoric of Lenin and, especially, Stalin, there was little evidence that the Soviets actually wanted to eradicate us; they merely wanted the freedom to dominate and slightly expand their sphere of influence. All indicators are that UBL and his fellow jihadists would love to kill mass numbers of Americans simply to do so.

One thing that confounds me about Anonymous’ analysis is that he stakes out two, seemingly contradictory, positions. On the on hand, he argues that the UBL and company have very discrete objections— “U.S. support for Israel that keeps the Palestinians in the Israelis’ thrall; U.S. and other Western troops on the Arabian peninsula; U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan; U.S. support for Russia, India and China against their Muslim militants; U.S. pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low; U.S. support for apostate, corrupt and tyrannical Muslim governments.”—but on the other he notes that they want to re-establish and expand the Muslim empire of old. Likewise, he argues that it is “hubris” to think they hate us because of our freedom, but then notes that they hate us because of the manifestations of our freedom: we’re not Muslim, we’re not pious, we’re sexually promiscuous, we’re materialistic, and so forth. He flatly states that this is a war with Islam.

So, while rethinking our blind support for Israel and decreasing our dependance on Middle Eastern oil might well be helpful in improving our relations with moderate Arabs, it would almost certainly be seen as a sign of weakness on the part of the jihadists. I agree with Anonymous that we’re unlikely to be able to win this with a purely military campaign—unless we’re willing to commit genocide on a scale that would make Hitler and Pol Pot seem like humanitarians—or with improved public relations. I’m just not sure what our other options are.

Failed Occupation? - II

WaPo’s three part “PROMISES UNKEPT : The U.S. Occupation of Iraq” series concludes today. As with its predecessors, it’s above the fold on page A1.

Because of the strange headline, I missed yesterday’s installment, “An Educator Learns the Hard Way.” It tells the story of a 60-year-old NEH bureaucrat who volunteered for duty in Iraq who has had a bit of a reality check.

John Agresto arrived here nine months ago with two suitcases, a feather pillow and a suffusion of optimism. He didn’t know much about Iraq, but he felt certain the American occupation, and his mission to oversee the country’s university system, would be a success.

“Like everyone else in America, I saw the images of people cheering as Saddam Hussein’s statue was pulled down. I saw people hitting pictures of him with their shoes,” said Agresto, the former president of St. John’s College in New Mexico. “Once you see that, you can’t help but say, ‘Okay. This is going to work.’ “

But the Iraq he encountered was different from what he had expected. Visits to the universities he was trying to rebuild and the faculty he wanted to invigorate were more and more dangerous, and infrequent. His Iraqi staff was threatened by insurgents. His evenings were disrupted by mortar attacks on the occupation authority’s Baghdad headquarters.

His plans to repair hundreds of campus buildings were scuttled by the Bush administration’s decision to shift reconstruction efforts and by the failure to raise money from other sources. His hope that Iraqis would put aside differences and personal interests for a common cause was, as he put it, “way too idealistic.”
“I’m a neoconservative who’s been mugged by reality,” Agresto said as he puffed on a pipe next to a resort-size swimming pool behind the marbled palace that houses the occupation authority. “We can’t deny there were mistakes, things that didn’t work out the way we wanted,” he added. “We have to be honest with ourselves.”

Agresto’s candor is unusual among the staff of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. bureaucracy responsible for the civil administration of Iraq until June 30. He is one of the few American officials here to speak on the record at length about the shortcomings of the occupation. In his case, the frustration comes from the sense of a missed golden opportunity: to reconstruct Iraq’s decrepit universities and create an educational system that would nurture and promote the country’s best minds.

Iraq’s institutions of higher learning were once the most modern in the Middle East. But they were asphyxiated under Saddam Hussein, then further devastated by the looting that engulfed the country after Hussein’s government was toppled last year. In his initial travels around Iraq, Agresto observed students sitting on the floor in burned-out classrooms. He visited technical colleges with no tools. He saw academic journals from the 1960s kept under lock at an agricultural college because the school did not possess any more recent books. “It’s difficult to describe how bad things were,” he recalled.

Agresto concluded that the universities needed $1.2 billion to become viable centers of learning and reap immediate goodwill for the American rebuilding effort. But of the $18.6 billion U.S. reconstruction package approved by Congress last year, the higher education system received $8 million, a tiny fraction of his proposal. When Agresto asked the U.S. Agency for International Development for 130,000 desks, he got 8,000.

The piece doesn’t examine why he might have been turned down before going on to criticize the politicization of the enterprise, which resulted in Agresto being chosen over prominent education establishment scholars. This is an ironic juxtaposition since, presumably, less well-connected person would have had less success in getting funds.

Today’s installment, “Death Stalks An Experiment In Democracy,” notes that the insurgency has led to a more closed government than the CPA would have preferred.

The nascent political institutions designed to replace the U.S. administration of Iraq are beset by challenges to their popular legitimacy and effectiveness, and by grave risks to Iraqis who have joined the experiment in representative government. As Iraqis prepare for their country to regain sovereignty, it is uncertain how much their political future will be shaped by the $700 million program in democracy-building that has been at the core of the U.S. occupation.

Inside the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority, which will dissolve with the handover on June 30, some officials express doubts that Iraq’s political system will conform to the American blueprints. “Will this develop the way we hope it will?” a CPA official involved in promoting democracy said. “Probably not.”

New political institutions to replace Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party dictatorship are among the chief legacies of the U.S. occupation. Every city and province has a local council. New mayors, provincial governors and national cabinet ministers have been chosen. The Shiite Muslim majority, shut out of power in Hussein’s government, is widely represented, as are religious minorities and women. Hundreds of political parties have formed, and thousands of people have participated in seminars on democracy.

But Iraqis criticize the local councils and the interim national government as illegitimate because their members were not elected. The country’s top Shiite cleric has repudiated the interim constitution drafted by the U.S.-appointed Governing Council. In several recent meetings about the country’s political future, Iraqis who favor a Western-style democracy have been drowned out by calls for a system governed by Islamic law.

This is all rather amusing, given that the people of Iraq have never had the slightest say in their government, unless one counts sham elections where Saddam won with 100% of the vote.

Given the overwhelmingly negative tone of the press coverage of the war since its inception, one wonders why a PROMISES UNKEPT series was necessary. Indeed, a PROMISES KEPT feature would have been far more interesting, since that would actually be news.

Bush Equals Hitler And Mussolini

Well, at least we’re getting some progress: Bush is now comparable to two of the Fascist leaders who butchered millions of people rather than just one.

New York Sun — AUDIENCE GASPS AS JUDGE LIKENS ELECTION OF BUSH TO RISE OF IL DUCE

A prominent federal judge has told a conference of liberal lawyers that President Bush’s rise to power was similar to the accession of dictators such as Mussolini and Hitler. “In a way that occurred before but is rare in the United States…somebody came to power as a result of the illegitimate acts of a legitimate institution that had the right to put somebody in power. That is what the Supreme Court did in Bush versus Gore. It put somebody in power,” said Guido Calabresi, a judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits in Manhattan.

“The reason I emphasize that is because that is exactly what happened when Mussolini was put in by the king of Italy,” Judge Calabresi continued, as the allusion drew audible gasps from some in the luncheon crowd Saturday at the annual convention of the American Constitution Society. “The king of Italy had the right to put Mussolini in, though he had not won an election, and make him prime minister. That is what happened when Hindenburg put Hitler in. I am not suggesting for a moment that Bush is Hitler. I want to be clear on that, but it is a situation which is extremely unusual,” the judge said.

Judge Calabresi, a former dean of Yale Law School, said Mr. Bush has asserted the full prerogatives of his office, despite his lack of a compelling electoral mandate from the public. “When somebody has come in that way, they sometimes have tried not to exercise much power. In this case, like Mussolini, he has exercised extraordinary power. He has exercised power, claimed power for himself; that has not occurred since Franklin Roosevelt who, after all, was elected big and who did some of the same things with respect to assertions of power in times of crisis that this president is doing,” he said.

The 71-year-old judge declared that members of the public should, without regard to their political views, expel Mr. Bush from office in order to cleanse the democratic system. “That’s got nothing to do with the politics of it. It’s got to do with the structural reassertion of democracy,” Judge Calabresi said.

His remarks were met with rousing applause from the hundreds of lawyers and law students in attendance.

Lovely.

Update: Glenn Reynolds (who was apparently at Yale Law when Calabresi was dean), Eugene Volokh, and Andrew Sullivan have more.

Caption Contest

Time for another OTB Caption Contest^TM.

Write your caption in the comments below.
Courtesy Slate

The picture is much smaller than the traditional OTB-CC images, but is one of the better compare and contrast opportunities I’ve encountered in some time.

Winners will be announced after noon Monday.

Hitchens on Moore

My favorite obese Leftist takes on one of my least favorites in Slate. Christopher Hitchens’ “Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore,” as one might guess from the title, is less than laudatory.

One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight.

Nonetheless, it seems that an answer to this long-felt need is finally beginning to emerge. I exempt Al Franken’s unintentionally funny Air America network, to which I gave a couple of interviews in its early days. There, one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and tripped-over wires and be reminded once again that correct politics and smooth media presentation are not even distant cousins. With Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of “dissenting” bravery.

His analysis of the logical elements of Moore’s treatise are less delicious but equally devastating. A taste:

It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore’s direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush’s removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn’t even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore’s view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending.

The piece is worth reading in its entirety.

Imperial Hubris II

Over the weekend, I wrote a rather lengthy analysis of Through Our Enemies’ Eyes, the first book by “Anonymous,” the senior intelligence officer whose second book, Imperial Hubris: How the West is Losing the War on Terror, is due out in a few weeks.

Guesting at TPM, Spencer Ackerman has an interesting interview with Anonymous. Spencer makes an important correction of the widely-quoted Guardian account of the book, which portrays the author as

animated in no small measure by “contempt for the Bush White House and its policies.” That’s a bit wide of the mark. Does the book exhibit contempt for the administration’s policies? Certainly. It also takes a dim view of the White House’s conception of what motivates al-Qaeda and how to fight it. But in the book and in an interview, Anonymous doesn’t traffic in Bush-bashing. He has much harsher words to say about the leadership of the intelligence community, whom he faults for bending too far to the predispositions of the policymakers they serve.

ANONYMOUS: The intelligence community, and especially the CIA, serve the president. I think the mistakes that were made [in Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terrorism broadly] were probably made by the intelligence community not having the balls to stand up and to say any number of things that were knowable. “Mr. President, the people we’re backing in Afghanistan will not be able to form a government and will ensure continued war and instability.” “Mr. President, if you attack Iraq you will be giving bin Laden a gift.” “Mr. President, we don’t have enough [intelligence] officers and people to run two wars at a time.” “Mr. President, all of the reporting about Iraqi WMD is coming from opposition politicians, and you have to take it with a massive grain of salt.”

I tend to blame, as I do in the book, a leadership generation in the intelligence community that is more interested in its next promotion and its career prospects than it is in talking about hard issues. Somebody needed to go and say, not just to Mr. Bush, but to Mr. Clinton, “Mr. President, this is a war about Islam. You can say all you want that it’s not a war about religion, but it is.” And it’s much more so now than in 1992, and still no one will say it.

Based on my reading of TOEE, I came to that conclusion as well.

I’m afraid that the title of the book, added to the rather interesting rhetorical approach that I critiqued in my previous post, will very much give the impression that this book is anti-American and, especially, anti-Bush foreign policy. It’s an excellent marketing strategy—there are so many books on the war out there at this point that one must generate buzz—but may wind up turning away readers from the Right and disappointing those on the Left. Indeed, the “understanding” tone he takes explaining why bin Laden is so revered is intended to demonstrate why we are in a brutal clash of civilizations.

Kevin Drum feared that Anonymous was calling for total war, so he e-mailed Abraham for confirmation. Based on his galley copy of the book, Abraham provides it:

So, what does it mean to be at war with Islam? First, it means we must accept this reality and act accordingly. Second, it means a U.S. policy status quo in the Muslim world ensures a gradually intensifying war for the foreseeable future, one that will be far more costly than we now imagine. Third, it means we will have to publicly address issues — support for Israel, energy self-sufficiency, and the worldwide applicability of our democracy — long neglected and certain to raise bitter, acrimonious debates that will decide whether the American way of life survives or shrinks to a crabbed, fearful, and barely recognizable form. (250)

Abraham follows up with a second post at TPM. There’s also more at Kevin’s, including some interesting commentary.

The reaction to this book will be quite interesting. His first book is still widely read mainly, for reasons I’ve alluded to, by Leftist policy wonks who oppose Bush’s handling of the war. While this book will certainly do that, it appears to be an attack based on being insufficiently hawkish. My guess is the Left won’t be too excited about the prescription, and especially his vehement rejection of Wilsonian principles. Nor will much of the Right.

I’ve been promised a copy of the book when it comes off the presses in a couple of weeks and will write a more extensive review of it for publication elsewhere, which I’ll share here as well. Stay tuned.

Update: Matt Yglesias: “I’m enough of a knee-jerk partisan that when I heard an anonymous important government official guy was about to publish a book arguing that George W. Bush was screwing everything up, I just assumed I would love it.” As it turns out, not so much.

Bush, Not Bush, and Nader

Rather than burying it at the bottom of the previous post, i want to highlight two questions from the ABC/WaPo poll not covered in the two news reports:

Nader is polling 6%. Granted, in a +/-3% poll, it’s hard to know how to read that. It’s both good news for Bush—a lot of Kerry’s base is less than thrilled—but also bad—some of these people would certainly vote for Kerry if the race tightens.

That’s important because of these numbers:

Is your vote more for George W. Bush or more against John Kerry? (asked of Bush supporters)
For Bush 83%
Against Kerry 16%
DK/No opinion 1%

versus

Is your vote more for John Kerry or more against George W. Bush? (asked of Kerry supporters)
For Kerry 44%
Against Bush 55%
DK/No opinion 1%

I knew such a gap existed. I didn’t realize it was anywhere near that high.

Clearly, this election is going to be a referendum on George W. Bush. That’s almost always the case when an incumbent president is running for re-election. Sometimes, though—1980 being a classic case, and 1992 at least a partial one—the challenger has enough charisma or ideological appeal to attract a substantial number of people to vote for him. So far, John Kerry seems not even to have energized his base constituency.

Certainly, part of that has to do with Kerry’s personality. My guess, though, is that much of this is a function of much of the Democratic base being against the Iraq War, of which Kerry has been a weak supporter.

Majority Opposes War

The Australian — Iraq war not worth fighting: US poll

FIFTY-two per cent of Americans believe the Iraq war was not worth fighting, according to an opinion poll released today.

The joint survey by America’s ABC News and the Washington Post found seven in 10 Americans thought US casualties were “unacceptable”.

And the number of those confident the war had enhanced long-term US security was down 11 points since the beginning of the year, to 51 per cent.

The poll results follow a report by a bipartisan commission investigating the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States that found no co-operative ties between the former Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

That was contrary to the Bush administration’s claims on going to war.

Well, actually, this contradicts a media straw man about what both the President and the 9/11 Commission said. Both the commissioners and the report say there were clear Saddam-AQ links, just no direct evidence of a Saddam 9/11 connection.

President George W. Bush also insisted Baghdad had a massive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, but no such weapons have ever been found.

Well, again, not exactly. Certainly, Saddam had a massive arsenal at some point given that he was gassing people left and right. He had a nuclear program well underway before the Israelis took it out in 1982 and another one that we stumbled upon in the aftermath of Gulf War I. And the arguments about what Bush actually said in the speeches leading up to the war have been rehashed time and again.

That aside, I’m not incredibly surprised by the poll results. The public clearly expected to find more in the way of WMD stockpiles and believed, contrary to evidence or assertion, that Saddam was directly tied to 9/11. So far, no joy on those counts. And there’s a bloody insurgency underway and the throngs of grateful Iraqis people were expecting are all either afraid to show their face, disgruntled by the insurgency, or resentful of the occupation.

This, however, is puzzling:

Evaluating Mr Bush’s overall job performance, 47 per cent of Americans polled approved and 51 per cent disapproved.

If the election was held today, Mr Kerry would have a four-point lead over Mr Bush in the three-way race including independent candidate Ralph Nader, according to the survey.

So, despite a majority of Americans now opposing the war—which should certainly be the major issue in this election— President Bush is still in a statistical dead heat with his leading challenger.

(Hat tip Alan at CP)

UPDATE: This is apparently a WaPo/ABC poll. Oddly, WaPo presents the data slightly more favorable for President Bush with slightly different, although statistically comparable, numbers.

Bush Loses Support Over War on Terrorism

Public anxiety over mounting casualties in Iraq and the doubts about long-term consequences of the war continue to rise and have helped to erase President Bush’s once-formidable advantage over Sen. John F. Kerry on who is best able to deal with terrorist threats, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Exactly half the country now approves of the way Bush is managing the U.S. war on terrorism, down 13 points since April, according to the poll. Barely two months ago, Bush comfortably led Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, by 21 percentage points when voters were asked which man they trusted to deal with the terrorist threat. Today the country is evenly divided, with 48 percent preferring Kerry and 47 percent favoring Bush.

With less than 10 days to go before the United States turns over governing power to a new government in Iraq, the survey shows that Americans are coming to a mixed judgment about the costs and benefits of the war. Campaign advisers to both Bush and Kerry believe voters’ conclusions about Bush and Iraq will play a decisive role in determining the outcome of the November election.

The shift is potentially significant because Bush has consistently received higher marks on fighting terrorism than on Iraq. If the decline signals a permanent loss of confidence in his handling of the campaign against terrorism, that could undermine a central part of Bush’s reelection campaign message.

The actual poll questions and results—along with archived polls for historical comparison—are available here.

Winning the War

Don Sensing hopes the recent murders of hostages by jihadist terrorists will shake some sense into anyone who remains unconvinced that we must win this war—and that we are actually at war. He analyzes four possible outcomes, three of which are unacceptable and the other of which will be long, frustrating, and filled with recrimination.

Beltway Traffic Jam

Late Jam today, owing to some after-work errands and then lack of Internet access when I got home.

• Jen is approaching 50,000 visitors and is going to celebrate with some Thunderbird.
  
• Rob Tagorda notes that the Europeans haven’t been very cooperative, either.
  
• Henry Farrell passes on news of a good sale on books.
  
• Dan Drezner agrees that we’re in the Golden Age of animation.
  
• Steven Taylor disapproves of twisted logic.
  
• Jeff Goldstein explains al Qaeda logic.
  
• Bryan tries to decypher liquored-up NASCAR logic.
  
• Steve Verdon examines academic donations to political parties.
  
• Jeff Quinton examines gross, inflated movies.
  
• Steve Bainbridge argues that lawyers aren’t completely worthless.

To join in, link and send a TrackBack to this post. If your blog doesn’t automatically generate one, use the Send TrackBack feature below. For more information, see this post.

Insurgency as Netwar

RAND terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman has a superb piece in the current Atlantic Monthly.

Although determining the size of the insurgency is critical to combating it, recent history has shown that to a certain degree the exact numbers are immaterial. For more than twenty years a hard core of just twenty or thirty members of the Baader-Meinhof gang terrorized West Germany—a stable country with much more sophisticated and reliable police, security, and intelligence services than Iraq is likely to have for some time. Similarly, some fifty to seventy-five Red Brigadists imposed a reign of terror on Italy; the worst period, in the late 1970s, is still referred to as the “years of lead.” And for thirty years a dedicated cadre of 200 to 400 IRA gunmen and bombers frustrated the effort to maintain law and order in Northern Ireland.

These examples are clearly not parallel to the situation in Iraq, but they do illustrate an important principle: there will always be a fundamental asymmetry in the dynamic between insurgency and counterinsurgency. Guerrillas and terrorists do not have to defeat their opponents militarily; they just have to avoid losing. In this respect the more conspicuous the security forces are and the more pervasive their operations become, the stronger the insurgency appears to be. Insurgents try to disrupt daily life and commerce with their attacks; they hope that security-force countermeasures will alienate the population and create a public impression of the authorities as oppressors rather than protectors. This, in a nutshell, is what is happening in Iraq.

***

General Abizaid has described the current conflict in Iraq as a “classical guerrilla-type campaign.” In important ways, however, it is not. The Iraqi insurgency, unlike most others, has no center of gravity. Secular Baathists and other FREs are cooperating with domestic and foreign religious extremists. As a senior official with the Coalition Provisional Authority wrote to me in February, two months before this phenomenon crystallized in the fight for Fallujah, “Here the Baathist-Islamic divide does not exist in a practical sense. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, as they were so diametrically opposed to each other during the [Saddam Hussein] regime—but it is happening.” The Iraqi insurgency today appears to have no clear leader (or leadership), no ambition to seize and actually hold territory (except ephemerally, as in the recent cases of Fallujah and Najaf), no unifying ideology, and, most important, no identifiable organization. Rather, what we find in Iraq is the closest manifestation yet of “netwar,” a concept defined in 1992 by the RAND analysts John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt as unconventional warfare involving flat, segmented networks instead of the pyramidal hierarchies and command-and-control systems (no matter how primitive) that have governed traditional insurgent organizations. The insurgency in Iraq is taking place in an ambiguous and constantly shifting environment, with constellations of cells and individuals gravitating toward one another—to carry out armed attacks, exchange intelligence, trade weapons, and engage in joint training—and then dispersing, sometimes never to operate together again. It is a battlefield situation that a conventional military often cannot cope with, and we must learn to adapt. We must build effective indigenous intelligence capabilities so that we can identify the signs of an incipient insurgency; establish, train, and forge close cooperative relations with a functioning and capable police force; improve the safety, security, and living conditions of the local population, thereby gaining their confidence; and take advantage of the training capabilities, language skills, and cultural awareness and sensitivities of American special-operations forces, whose mission specifically includes the training of foreign militaries. In the end, however, no matter how sophisticated a response we develop, and no matter how new the insurgents’ strategies are, a simple lesson that has been learned and forgotten again and again still applies: Don’t let insurgencies get started in the first place.

Easier said than done.

Clinton Striking it Rich

CNN Money — All the president’s money

Bill Clinton started promoting his autobiography with an interview on Sunday’s “60 Minutes” that ran the entire length of the show. The former president chose “My Life” as the title of the 900-page work. He might have called it “My Wallet.”

Clinton will continue to flog the book, due to go on sale in bookstores on Tuesday, with book signings and appearances across the country.

With a retail price of $35, publisher Alfred A. Knopf has enormous hopes for the book. The company has ordered a first printing of 1.5 million copies, and paid Clinton an advance of $10 to $12 million, according to Publisher’s Weekly, the largest ever for a non-fiction title. For Knopf to turn a profit, “My Life” must sell like hot cakes.

Thomas McCormack, a playwright and former CEO of St. Martin’s Press, estimated Knopf’s break-even point for the book is probably about 800,000 hardcover copies. “If they sell out the first printing,” he says, “they’ll make millions.”

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For Clinton, the streets leading out of the White House are paved with gold, thanks to the book deal and a lucrative sideline: public speaking. He may be the highest paid speaker in the world right now, although that’s a “tough call,” said Mark Castel, CEO of Boston-based AEI Speakers Bureau. “He’s certainly up there among the highest paid,” said Castel, noting it depends how it’s measured: highest average fee, total annual fees or the biggest one-shot engagement.

According to Hillary Clinton’s 2003 Senate financial-disclosure form covering 2002, her husband had 60 paid speaking engagements that year, earning about $159,000 for each speech, on average, or $9.5 million in total.

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Castel noted that Clinton benefits since he’s a scarce commodity on the speaking circuit: an ex-president. “Gerald Ford is pretty much retired,” said Castel. “Jimmy Carter does some engagements, but is very selective, speaking mostly to humanitarian groups. And George H.W. Bush has cut back a lot.” For organizations willing to pay through the nose for a presidential presence, that leaves Clinton.

Indeed. Still, $9.5 million a year—in addition to his presidential pension and perks—is a pretty handsome living. With the book revenue added in, he definitely shouldn’t have to scrimp on golf outings and Big Macs.

Back in the USSR Russia

NBC — McCartney Hits Concert Milestone In Russia

Music legend Paul McCartney has notched his 3,000th concert with a show in St. Petersburg, Russia. McCartney performed Sunday for an estimated crowd of 50,000 people. The concert was delayed almost 1½ hours because fans were in long lines to pass through metal detectors and super-tight security cordons.

It was McCartney’s first show in St. Petersburg and only his second one in Russia. The Beatles were banned by Soviet authorities because they were considered a corrupting influence.

An impressive milestone. Even for someone in the business over 40 years, that’s a lot of concerts.

US Army Combat PDA

StrategyPage — US Army Combat PDA

The U.S. Army is sending more than three hundred Commander’s Digital Assistant (CDA) hand held computers to Iraq with platoon leaders and company commanders later this year. This CDA is a new design, based on experience with CDAs sent to Iraq last year. The CDA is basically a militarized PDA (Personal Digital Assistant, like the Palm). PDA technology is changing so fast, especially by traditional military procurement standards, that the army expects to have a new version of the CDA every year or so. The 2005 model (shipping out later this year) will have satellite phone capability and be able to download maps, along with instructions overlayed on the maps. The army is taking advantage of cheaper, and more compact, memory available to provide this vital map download feature. It’s now possible to equip a PDA with a gigabyte, or more, of flash (like used in digital cameras) memory. Most users are unaware of the fact that their cell phones, PDAs and iPods have all become, basically, hand held computers. All of these use the StrongArm or XScale CPU, a processor chip designed years ago for small devices, and continually updated (and now owned by Intel, which supplies over 80 percent of the CPUs for laptops and desktop computers.) Some PDAs, like the iPaqs, have long been considered handheld computers, using a PDA version of the Windows operating system and PDA versions of WORD and Excel. Even the iPod MP3 player has an operating system, display manager, database manager, hard drive hardware and software and digital sound hardware and software.

See StrategyPage for a larger image.

In the last year, PDAs and cell phones have been merging, which is where the new CDA came from. The army needs a combat PDA that can communicate, preferably via satellite, and can display visual information (like maps). The new CDA will do both, and their use in Iraq will provide a lot of feedback from officers about what software, hardware and graphics improvements are needed. The army is already concerned with battery usage, and getting the graphics to work just right, and be easy to use. The basic idea is to keep platoon leaders (and platoon sergeants, who will probably end up with CDAs as well) constantly informed about what their commanders want, and what new information is available about the enemy. With the satellite communications link, new information about the enemy situation can be constantly sent. Of course, the new CDAs will have the “Blue Force Tracker” technology that will constantly show the location of all nearby friendly platoons, tanks and combat aircraft on the PDA screen. Instead of, as in the past, the company commander trying to explain to his lieutenants, over the radio, what the new plan is, he just sketches out a new plan on his CDA, and transmits it to his platoon leaders (and the battalion commander, so his boss knows what’s going on as well.) The young officers have taken to the new technology enthusiastically, as many have been taking their own personal PDAs into combat and training exercises for years. This is the Nintendo generation at war.

When I was in, we just had notepads and gigantic paper maps from which we had to personally construct giant folding map books. From what I can gather, the new way is better.

Iraqi Leaders: Report More Good

American Forces Press Service — Iraqi Official to American Press: Report More Good

Iraq’s deputy prime minister implored the American press to provide more balanced coverage of operations in Iraq. Barham Salih, a prominent leader from Kurdish northern Iraq, made his plea June 19 to American reporters traveling in Iraq with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.

“I hope you from the American press will be able to tell people back home … that (through) this mission you are giving an entire nation an opportunity to be rid of their challenges,” he said. “These soldiers are helping renovate schools and so on, and very, very little of that is reported,” Salih continued. “We have to be grateful to those young men and women who have come from afar, sacrificing their lives to defend our security and our freedom.”

He said context is important, and many American papers don’t put things in the proper context. For instance, he said, “Many of the op-ed writers before the war predicted that Kirkuk would become the scene of the most vicious civil war,” he said, referring to the northern Iraqi city that has been the site of problems between Kurds and Arabs. “There are tensions in Kirkuk,” he said, “but no civil war.”

New Iraqi President Ghazi al-Yawer explained his belief that 90 percent of what’s happening in Iraq is good news, and 10 percent in bad. “The media is magnifying the 10 percent, ignoring the 90 percent,” Yawer said.

Interesting.

Radio Has Too Many Ads

Variety — Ad glut rocks radio

The strategy of stuffing commercial radio full of ads has backfired, as a handful of investment banks predicted slower growth, downgrading six key radio stocks — Clear Channel, Emmis, Cox Radio, Entercom, Citadel and Westwood One — and the sector as a whole.

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Karmazin built Infinity and repeatedly predicted over the years that consolidation meant radio would be able to snatch an ever bigger piece of the overall ad pie. The results have been mixed. As radio companies merged, the number of spots has surged to a high of 25 minutes per hour in some cases, said Goldman Sachs analyst Richard Rosenstein. He and others said the ad inundation — which consumers have bemoaned for years — has eroded the value of the spots. Advertisers have started to worry that their message is being diluted by the sheer number of blurbs.

One would think the real damage would be the erosion of the audience. I used to enjoy talk radio and spend much more time in the car these days than I used to. I wind up listening to NPR or CDs most of the time anymore because the ad glut elsewhere is just ridiculous. There is a long block—at least ten minutes—that bookends the top of the hour, another significant break at the quarter hour, another very long break at the bottom of the hour, and yet another one of the three-quarter mark. Sometimes, there are additional interruptions—including pseudo ads by the host. I never sit through the commericals, so I’m either back to NPR or the CD and frequently forget to tune back into the program.

Programmers seem to forget that the audience has options. I watch far less network television—indeed, programmatic television, period—than I did a few years ago for similar reasons. TiVo allows me to fast forward through commericals but the erratic scheduling, with two or three weeks of new programs followed by three or four weeks of reruns, has erased the patterns that used to be engrained in me: “If it’s Thursday, it must be E.R.” Showing new programs only during “sweeps” periods may make sense in the short run, but it erodes audience loyalty over the longer term.

Similarly, commercial radio could well kill itself with the current strategy. CD and MP3 players make bringing your own music with you far simpler than it once was and commercial-free satellite radio may become the logical alternative for those who are on the road a lot.

Moore Film Title Angers Author Bradbury

AP - Moore Film Title Angers Author Bradbury

Ray Bradbury is demanding an apology from filmmaker Michael Moore for lifting the title from his classic science-fiction novel “Fahrenheit 451” without permission and wants the new documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” to be renamed.

“He didn’t ask my permission,” Bradbury, 83, told The Associated Press on Friday. “That’s not his novel, that’s not his title, so he shouldn’t have done it.”

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Bradbury, who hadn’t seen the movie, said he called Moore’s company six months ago to protest and was promised Moore would call back.

He finally got that call last Saturday, Bradbury said, adding Moore told him he was “embarrassed.”

“He suddenly realized he’s let too much time go by,” the author said by phone from his home in Los Angeles’ Cheviot Hills section.

Joanne Doroshow, a spokeswoman for “Fahrenheit 9/11,” said the film’s makers have “the utmost respect for Ray Bradbury.”

While I like Bradbury’s work and find Moore to be a rather loathsome creature, I don’t think Moore is doing anything wrong here. I’m no expert in copyright law but, if 2LiveCrew can put out a vile version of “Pretty Woman” over Roy Orbison’s objections, surely the use of the word “Fahrenheit”—which Bradbury didn’t invent, after all—is permissible.