Check out Lilek's bleat on Kerry's mysterious lucky hat.

My day job is as a co-owner of a major sports photography marketing firm, otherwise know as a photo agency or photo wire service. What the heck is that, you ask? Basically, we gather digital sports photography (mostly every conceivable pro and college sport you can image) taken by photographers all around the world and market the images via an images database on the internet to newspapers, magazines, book publishers, ad agencies, etc with clients ranging from The New York Times, to Sports Illustrated and ESPN the Magazine to EA Sports. Its a fun job and there's nothing better than being your own boss. Is say all this because my company was notified today that we got the cover of Newsweek for their Olympic preview issue. Hurray for me! Here's the cover:

Newsweek Cover by Icon SMI

So if you happen to see this issue remember the image is from Tim at The Beacon.

PS I'm still deathly ill and am going home now.

------UPDATE------
I had justed finished posting this when I found out we had a couple of images on the cover of this week's Sports Illustrated too. Two major magazine covers in one week is quite rare.

Yesterday I noted John Kerry's predictably nuanced answer to a question put to him by the President. Bush took answer to mean the Kerry now supports the President's decision to go to war, an artful tactic that has put Kerry in a bit of a bind. Kerry's response:

"The Bush folks are trying to say that we've changed positions, this and that," Kerry told a rally at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. "I have been consistent all along, ladies and gentlemen. I thought the United States needed to stand up to Saddam Hussein. I voted to stand up to Saddam Hussein."

The Kerry Spot notes Dick Cheney has responded in very Cheney-like fashion:

"John Kerry has had some difficulty explaining where he stands on the liberation of Iraq. He voted for the war. Then he was against the war when it was politically expedient. Now John Kerry says he was for the war. But now some of his own aides are saying that his vote to authorize force wasn't really a vote to go to war.

"That statement cannot be reconciled with what he said when he voted in 1991 against using force in the first Gulf War. During the debate in the Senate, he declared that a vote on the authorization of war was 'not a vote about sending a message. It is a vote about war.'

"John Kerry is caught in a tangled web of all his shifts and changes. We need a commander-in-chief who is steady and steadfast."

Great response.

Meanwhile, Jim Geraghty has an excellentpost on Kerry's nuance (Jim's permalinks stink so I'll provide the entire post) :

It's easy to get mired in the daily back-and-forth of the campaign and to lose sight of the big picture: How a potential president would handle the life-and-death issues of war and peace.

Perhaps this is the right time to closely reexamine Kerry's plans for Iraq, based on his recent statement that he would have gone to war in Iraq, even if he had known there were no WMDs and no direct ties between Iraq and 9/11 (notice the distinction between ties to 9/11 and ties to al Qaeda).

Specifically, Kerry was asked whether he would support the war "knowing what we know now" about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction that U.S. and British officials were certain were there. In response, Kerry said: "Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have."

A mind of insufficient sophistication might conclude that this comment renders moot Kerry's insistence that "We were misled about weapons of mass destruction," as he said in March. Or his charge that "we were misled in very specific terms about the evidence that we were showed within those briefings to the Congress of the United States" might appear, at first glance, to be rendered irrelevant if a President Kerry would have made the same choice. But this is not the case.

For example, there are many who erroneously believe that Kerry has pledged to never use the doctrine of preemption.

These Kerry critics might have gotten that wrong notion from Kerry's statement to the Boston Globe on February 28 that, "President Bush's policy of "unilateral preemption" had failed to win the war on terror and only fueled anti-American anger worldwide." Or his speech before the Council on Foreign Relations last December, when he said, "We have a President who has developed and exalted a strategy of war — unilateral; pre-emptive; and in my view, profoundly threatening to America's place in the world and the safety and prosperity of our own society." Or his comment on Meet the Press last December, when he said, "I did not buy into preemption...I thought that was wrong.... [The doctrine of preemption] is the most arrogant, inept, reckless and ideological foreign policy in modern history."

But to conclude from those statements that Kerry opposes preemption would be a simplistic, non-nuanced, and probably "neocon" interpretation. As Kerry made clear in mid-July, he would be willing to launch a preemptive strike against terrorists if he had adequate intelligence of a threat. "Am I prepared as president to go get them before they get us if we locate them and have the sufficient intelligence? You bet I am."

You see, Kerry has always approached the issue of handling Saddam Hussein with a nimble-minded flexibility, an ability to adapt to changing conditions. Way back on January 22, 1991, he wrote to a constituent, Wallace Carter of Newton Centre, Mass.:
Thank you for contacting me to express your opposition ... to the early use of military force by the US against Iraq. I share your concerns. On January 11, I voted in favor of a resolution that would have insisted that economic sanctions be given more time to work and against a resolution giving the president the immediate authority to go to war.

But Kerry is no blind peacenik, as demonstrated by his January 31, 1991 letter, also to Wallace Carter, stating:
Thank you very much for contacting me to express your support for the actions of President Bush in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. From the outset of the invasion, I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crisis and the policy goals he has established with our military deployment in the Persian Gulf.

"Strong and unequivocal" is exactly the term that comes to mind when considering Kerry and the issue of Iraq, and the broader war on terror.

For example, he explained to Tim Russert on Meet the Press in February, "It's basically a manhunt. You gotta know who they are, where they are, what they're planning, and you gotta be able to go get 'em before they get us."

But only a fool would conclude from those comments that Kerry believes the war on terror is a manhunt. As he put it in a speech at UCLA two weeks later, "This war isn't just a manhunt — a checklist of names from a deck of cards. In it, we do not face just one man or one terrorist group. We face a global jihadist movement of many groups, from different sources, with separate agendas, but all committed to assaulting the United States and free and open societies around the globe."

Back on March 18, 2003, when America stood at the brink of war, Kerry was clear that President Bush's impatience was the reason for war, not Saddam Hussein. "The Administration's indifference to diplomacy and the manner in which it has treated friend and foe alike over the past several months have left this country with vastly reduced influence throughout the world, made impossible the assembly of a broad, multinational effort against Saddam Hussein, and dramatically increased the costs of fulfilling our legitimate security obligations at home and around the world."

Diplomacy is an unexhausted, potential solution, Kerry made clear. And yet, his faith in it is not endless, as revealed by his February 2, 2002, comment expressing skepticism that diplomacy with Saddam Hussein would get anywhere. Kerry told Chris Matthews that Saddam "would view himself only as buying time and playing a game in my judgment."

The future course of a Kerry administration is clear. It is also apparently secret, and those of us not in Kerry's inner circle are not entitled to know about it. But that is appropriate. We can take solace in the Democratic candidate's comments that, "The key at this point is to have a stable, nonfailed state that is moving towards democracy and security sufficient for the government to stand on its own. And for its own forces to stand up for that government. I have a plan for how we can get there. I'm not going to negotiate my plan in the newspapers or publicly.... I will provide for the world's need not to have a failed state in Iraq." Or back in May, when Kerry explained, "It will not take long to do what is necessary," he said. "I'm not going to give you a specific date, but I'll tell you that I have a plan, and I will put that plan in place."

It's easy to dismiss this as flip-flopping, but clearly studying Kerry's positions long enough, we can discern a coherent logic. No man as smart as Kerry would just make up his policies as he goes along. No, it takes a nuanced, sophisticated mind to grasp the emanating penumbras of these statements, and understand that if in office, a President Kerry would chart a clear course of...

Oh, who am I kidding? These policy statements are a joke. This is incoherent. Add more troops to Iraq? Pull them out? Preemptively attack other rogue states? Discard the doctrine of preemption? Treat the war on terrorism as an "intelligence and law enforcement" issue, or keep military options on the table? Who the heck can tell with all this contradictory rhetorical jumble?

This. Is. Gobbledygook.

Some people mock Bush's incoherence because he turns "nuclear" into a three-syllable word and says things like, "I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein." But nobody doubts what Bush stands for, and that makes it easy to debate his policies. You know what his plan is, and you can argue whether it's a good idea or a bad idea. That's more or less the way our elections are supposed to work.

Kerry's incoherent, sort-of-for, sort-of-against, shapeless gray blobs of linguistic ooze make debating his views impossible, because there's nothing to support or to dispute. Kerry never comes out and clearly and consistently advocates one position that the voters can either endorse or reject. As the public mood shifts, so does he. And he always leaves the wiggle room, the subordinate clause with caveats that nullifies the original statement.

It's enough to make a guy miss Howard Dean.

Apparently the could-be First Couple has a geography problem. John Kerry can't keep tell if he's in Vietnam or Cambodia and Teresa, Michigan or Ohio, and Teresa can't tell if she's in Nevada or Arizona:

Think it's been a long trip for Teresa? On a slow pass through Arizona last night, Teresa took the microphone and said, "Hello, Nevada!" Kerry leaned into his fatigued wife quickly and said, "Arizona." "Oh, Arizona!" she replied. "We're in Arizona. We're still in Arizona. and we are going to Nevada. If you've been in as many places as we've been in in the past 12, 13 days, even if you have a map, the hours make you mix them all up."

Obviously this isn't a big deal (although a good chuckle) but these little gaffes are the kind of thing that the media and the Left used to build a case that George Bush is stupid, ignoring the fact that he is the first President with a Harvard MBA. So, are we to conclude, despite John Kerry's Ivy League education (his grades weren't as good a Bush's by the way) and Teresa's education, they are both morons for not being able to tell the difference between Nevada and Arizona, Ohio and Michigan and Vietnam and Cambodia?

I wanted to post something on Kerry and his Vietnam record but I'm ill and not getting better. Check out Hugh Hewitt, Roger L. Simon, Power Line and InstaPundit for all the latest. Then check out Mark Steyn column on Kerry's geography problem.

Last week Dennis Prager wrote an article in which he criticized the Democrats for using a 12-year-old girl to ridicule Vice President Cheney. He received a lot of angry email in response. Check it out.

Brendan Miniter wonders if Senator Kerry's alleged conservativism will prevent him from verring left if elected:

Bill Clinton knows a little bit about the pitfalls of the bait-and-switch approach. He was elected in 1992 on a similar wink and nod campaign and promptly veered to the left once in office. He managed to increase taxes, pass new gun control measures, cut military spending and roll out a massive health care initiative. And for a while it seemed liberalism was back.

But then the voters spoke in November 1994, handing Republicans control of both houses of Congress--it was the first time the GOP controlled Congress since Eisenhower was in the White House. Ever the populist, Mr. Clinton got the message--voters hadn't signed up for his voyage of liberalism. Mr. Clinton soon proclaimed the era of big government to be over, signed a landmark welfare reform bill and was re-elected.

This is a walk down electoral memory lane Democrats seem reluctant to take. So we must wonder, what would Mr. Kerry do in office? It's anyone's guess, but it seems likely he'd not only roll back Mr. Bush's taxes cuts for the "wealthy" but also allow most of the other tax breaks to expire five years from now. He'd probably keep up with Mr. Bush's defense spending levels, at least initially, and there's also the pipe dream of "energy independence." And it seems a safe bet that he'd toss more money into the public school furnace without doing much in the way of accountability.

But that's mostly the price of admission for a Democratic president. What about real reforms? It's not a sexy issue, but what about Social Security? He promises not to privatize it, but will he do anything to get the program onto the road of solvency? What about Medicare, immigration, trade and terrorism? Will he hire the spies we need and have the guts to drop them into dangerous territory? Will he keep the pressure on countries that would rather sit idly by in the war on terror? The list of tough issues is long.

Last week, I stated that I did not believe John Kerry has any intention of cutting middle class taxes. The Wall Street Journal demonstrates that Kerry's spending proposals will lead to huge increases that will doom any middle class tax cut (which isn't a cut but simply making Bush's tax cut permanent):

According to last month's estimate from the National Taxpayers Union, Senator Kerry is promising to increase net spending by $226 billion in the first year, or $6,066 per taxpayer over four years. And that's a lowball figure. The calculation used the lowest cost estimate of each spending proposal. And it took at face value proposed spending cuts, such as ending subsidies to corporate farmers and reducing federal energy usage by 20%, which may be impossible to implement. Cuts in corporate welfare and the federal travel budget sound good, but they are campaign perennials that never seem to happen.

Even overlooking these flaws, how can Mr. Kerry blow out the budget so badly? It's not hard if you promise to be all things to all people. On top of Mr. Bush's huge education spending increases, the Democrats want to add $75 billion more in the first year alone. Another $56 billion is earmarked for public works and social programs. The Kerry health care proposals will cost another $71 billion that year, or $653 billion over 10, according to a former Clinton Administration economist. His original estimate was nearly $1 trillion until he found some miraculous savings.

Meanwhile, as part of his new image of toughness, Mr. Kerry promises to continue beefing up the military and homeland security, to the tune of $24 billion. Most of that will go for personnel benefits, but it will also pay for 40,000 more active-duty troops and to promote port safety, both respectable proposals.

The Democrats are trying to spark nostalgia for the Clinton era of supposed fiscal discipline. But remember the latter was achieved largely by cutting military spending. As the table nearby illustrates, Bill Clinton and a GOP Congress balanced the budget by withdrawing a "peace dividend" at a time when al Qaeda was declaring war. Mr. Bush, and presumably a President Kerry, must now walk that back up the hill.

Yes, you may be saying, but John Kerry says he can pay for all this by taxing those who make more than $200,000 a year--raking in $860 billion over the next decade. There are just a few problems. Current budget projections are based on current laws, which say the Bush tax cuts will phase out over the next five years unless Congress renews them. So the real take from soaking the rich a few years early will be modest, while the deficit projections will increase by a much larger margin if the middle-class tax cut is made permanent, as Mr. Kerry promises. Over the 10-year horizon his overall tax plan would reduce revenue by $602 billion, according to the Urban Institute.

The biggest canard is that Mr. Kerry will control spending by relying on spending "caps" and restoration of the "paygo" system, which required legislators to find offsets for any new tax cuts or spending. These only apply to the discretionary portion of the budget, not entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. The U.S. has just created the biggest new entitlement in half a century with the drug benefit for seniors, and Mr. Kerry wants to expand health spending still further. So paygo will do nothing to control the biggest sources of new spending.

Paygo really means that when the time comes to make the middle-class tax cuts permanent, there may not be enough money left in the discretionary part of the budget to find the offsets. So promises that tax increases will hit only the rich belong in the same category as Bill Clinton's 1992 pledge to raise taxes only on those making more than $200,000 a year and impose a "millionaire surtax." A year later that turned into a tax hike on those making as little as $114,000, while the definition of $1 million miraculously expanded to include those making as little as $125,000 a year.

Fiscally conservative, my rear.

Forgive me for not posting since Friday. I was away for the weekend, then ill yesterday. I'm still under the weather a bit but will try to get some posting done today.

First, I'll begin with Senator Kerry's "direct" answer to a question President Bush asked him last week. Bush asked:

"My opponent hasn't answered the question of whether, knowing what we know now, he would have supported going into Iraq. That's an important question and the American people deserve a clear yes or no answer."

Senator gave a clear yes or no answer, just not to the question Bush asked. Kerry responded:

"I'll answer it directly. Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it is the right authority for a president to have but I would have used that authority effectively."

That's not what the President asked. The President asked if knowing what we know now, i.e. no stockpiles of WMDs found, would John Kerry have supported going into Iraq? He didn't ask if he would have voted to authorize it. Even the AP misrepresented the President:

Bush last week challenged Kerry, who Republicans accuse of flip-flopping on Iraq by voting for the war resolution and against the $87 billion request to fund operations, to say straight out if he would have voted the same way if only to eliminate the danger that Saddam Hussein could have developed weapons of mass destruction.

"Now, there are some questions that a commander-in-chief needs to answer with a clear yes or no," Bush said. "My opponent hasn't answered the question of whether knowing what we know now, he would have supported going into Iraq."

"I have given my answer," Bush said. "We did the right thing, and the world is better off for it."

I predict that by the time the debates are over, John Kerry will have completely imploded and the election blowout I have long predicted will occur. Kerry's inability to answer any question without with a straight, honest answer will eventually be his great flaw that leads to a catastrophic collapse. The ambivalence some voters have about what George Bush has done will be overshadowed by an ambivalence of not really knowing what Kerry might do as President.

Captain Ed is guest blogging at Blogs for Bush. Check out Ed's analysis of John kerry's new and improved plan to "win the peace". It's quite unoriginal.

President Bush was swinging at Kerry today from the stump:

"I have given my answer," Bush told a cheering crowd. "We did the right thing and the world is better off for it."

Kerry voted to give Bush the authority to send troops to Iraq and has said repeatedly that ousting Saddam Hussein was right.

With persistent violence and climbing casualties, Iraq has become a problem for Bush, turning what once was believed to be an asset for his re-election campaign into a vulnerability. Only about four in 10 Americans support the president's handling of Iraq, polls show, and just a third say he has a clear plan to deal with the situation. Nevertheless, Bush tried to put Kerry on the defensive.

"Now, there are some questions that a commander in chief needs to answer with a clear yes or no," Bush said. "My opponent hasn't answered the question of whether, knowing what we know now, he would have supported going into Iraq. That's an important question and the American people deserve a clear yes or no answer."

Bush said America was safer because Saddam Hussein sits in a prison cell. "Even though we did not find the stockpiles that we thought we would find, we did the right thing," the president said. "He had the capability and he could have passed that capability on to our enemies."

Bush also said Kerry's criticism of his Iraq policies merely shows the Democrat doesn't understand who America is up against.

"My opponent said something the other day I strongly disagree with - he said that going to war with a terrorist is actually improving their recruiting efforts," Bush said, referring to a remark Kerry made Monday.

"Now, that's upside-down logic," Bush said. "It shows a misunderstanding of the enemy."

Anti-American forces were training in the 1990s, Bush said. "They don't need an excuse for their hatred, and it is wrong to blame America for the anger and evil of the killers."

"We don't create terrorists by fighting back. We defeat the terrorists by fighting back," he said."

Amen!

One of my biggest criticisms of the Bush Administration has been its Iran policy, or lack there of. Amir Taheri writes today that the Bush Administration is scrambling last second to pull a rabbit out its hat and reveal a policy at the RNC. This is not the way to deal with the biggest, most important member of the axis of evil. Excerpt:

The reason for this paralysis is the Bush administration's divisions over an analysis of the problem, not to mention possible solutions.

Early in his presidency, Bush included Iran in an "Axis of Evil," and came close to committing himself to regime change there.

The Pentagon supported that position. The State Department, however, retained the analysis made in the final year of the Clinton administration, which saw Iran as "something of a democracy" with which the United States must seek "positive engagement." The National Security Council avoided taking sides by refusing even to commission a paper on Iran.

The policy vacuum has encouraged some Republicans to try to commit the United States to regime change in Iran through legislation, as happened with Iraq during the Clinton administration. Meanwhile, some Democrats have tried to exploit the Bush administration's lack of policy by promoting rapprochement with Tehran.




This is in sync with Sen. John Kerry's long-held views. In a conversation on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, almost two years ago, Kerry spoke of his desire to "engage Iran in a constructive dialogue." Last December, in an address to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York, Kerry promised to adopt "a realistic, non-confrontational policy with Iran," ultimately leading to normalization "just as I was prepared to normalize relations with Vietnam, a decade ago."

Last month, the CFR endorsed Kerry's position in a report on Iran produced by a Task Force led by President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Bzrezinski and former CIA Director Robert Gates. The report amounts to an attempt at reopening Iran to U.S. oil, aircraft, and construction companies.

Yet both sets of advocates — of regime change and of détente — base their different strategies on a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation in Iran.

Advocates of "regime change" claim that the Islamic Republic is on the verge of collapse and that what is needed is an extra push from America.. The promoters of détente insist that the Khomeinist regime is "solidly entrenched" and that Iran is "not on the brink of revolutionary upheaval."

Both are mistaken because they see Iran as a frame-freeze, ignoring the realities of a dynamic political life. The "overthrow" party underestimates the resilience of a regime that is prepared to kill in large numbers while buying support thanks to rising oil revenues. The détente party, on the other hand, underestimates the growing power of the movement for change in Iran.

Both camps also ignore the dialectics of the Irano-American relations. The "overthrow" party ignores the fact that improving relations with Washington could help the regime solve many of its economic and diplomatic problems, thus strengthening its position. The détente camp fails to acknowledge that a U.S. commitment to help the pro-reform movement win power in Iran could alter "the solidly entrenched" position of the Khomeinists and encourage "revolutionary upheaval."

In other words, any U.S. action, or inaction, could help alter the picture in Iran.

Both the "overthrow" and the détente camps in Washington see Iran through the prism that was used for determining policy on Iraq under Saddam Hussein. But the Iranian system is not dependent on an individual and his clan. There are internal mechanisms for change — mechanisms which, if helped to function properly, could produce the changes desired both by the people of Iran and the major democracies led by the United States.

Iraq was a tete-à-tete between Saddam and Washington. Iran is a triangle in which the Iranian people, the Khomeinist regime and the United States have different, at time complementary and at others contradictory, interests and aspirations.

Whatever the outcome of the coming U.S. presidential election, Washington cannot equivocate on Iran much longer.

Regime change please!

The New York Post reports a connection between yesterday's arrest of suspected jihadists in Albany, NY and Iraq:

The arrest yesterday of two leaders of an Albany mosque raises worrisome questions regarding the presence of a terrorist fifth column in America.

At first glance, the case seemed to involve simple money-laundering — albeit with a troubling political subtext. Even Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Comey conceded that "this is not the case of the century."

Certainly it seems that the arrests are not on a par with the FBI bust two years ago of the Lackawanna Six, an al Qaeda sleeper cell based in the Buffalo suburb.

At its most basic level, this is a story of how two Islamic immigrants allegedly got caught up in a sting operation that they apparently believed was a plot to stage a murderous attack against a Pakistani diplomat in Manhattan.

But Washington sources tell The Post's Ian Bishop that one of the arrested men — 34-year-old Yassin Aref — apparently is linked to Ansar al-Islam, a vicious jihadist group operating in northern Iraq.

Indeed, U.S. counter-terrorism experts have linked Ansar al-Islam not only to Osama bin Laden, but also to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — the mastermind of the terrorist insurgency in Iraq.

Aref's name and his Albany address and phone number were listed in an address book taken from a terrorist captured in Iraq by U.S. soldiers. Chillingly, Aref is ID'd in the book as "The Commander."





Aref, a Kurdish immigrant, and Mohammed Hossain, originally from Bangladesh, were charged with conspiracy to commit money-laundering and conspiracy to conceal material support for terrorism.

Aref is the imam of the Masjid as-Salaam Mosque, of which Hossain is a co-founder.

According to the feds, Hossain was approached by an FBI informant — a convicted felon hoping to reduce his prison sentence — and told he could make some quick money by laundering money for a terrorist operation.

The informant claimed he imported weapons — specifically, shoulder-fired missiles — for Jaish e-Mohammed, a Pakistani Islamic extremist group.

He asked Hossain, who owns an Albany pizzeria, to launder $50,000 in order to purchase a missile that would be used to attack Pakistan's Manhattan consulate and kill that nation's ambassador.

Indeed, throughout numerous taped conversations, the two defendants expressed sympathy with the informant's terrorist activities, according to the criminal complaint.

As it turns out, there was no terror plot and no planned attack. Defense attorneys surely will claim that this was little more than a case of entrapment.

But the allegations are profoundly disturbing.

At best, two men — one of whom had professed to a local paper that he "dreamed of coming to this great land" — are alleged to have willingly cooperated with what they thought was a plan to commit a murderous act of terrorism.

For personal profit?

Or was there more to it?

Thus we return to the presence of Aref's name — that is, "The Commander's" name — in the Ansar al-Islam address book.

Maybe there is a reasonable explanation for it being there.

If not, it means that an officer in the terrorist army now killing American GIs in Iraq was living under cover with a pizza baker in the capital city of New York state.

But to what purpose?

To blow up infidels. And I'm sure Michael Moore, Howard Dean, maybe even John F*n Kerry himself, will find some delusional way to blame George W Bush for it all.

Charles Krauthammer on Kerry's bounceless convention. Excerpt:

No bounce for Kerry. The Democrats and their pollsters will tell you this is because the electorate has already made up its mind. But if that is the case, why are they campaigning? Why have a convention in the first place? In reality, at least 10 percent of the population is undecided, and Kerry's convention appears to have gotten none of them.

The other explanation is stylistic. Kerry rushed his speech, stepping on his applause lines. Then there was the sweat on brow and chin, not quite Nixonian lip sweat, but enough to distract.

Hardly. The explanation that respects the intelligence of the American people is that Kerry had nothing to say. Well, one thing: Vietnam. His entire speech, the entire convention, was a celebration of his military service. The salute. The band of brothers. The Swift boat metaphors. The attribution of everything -- from religious values to foreign policy wisdom -- to Kerry's four-month stint 35 years ago.

The problem is that the association of fitness for the presidency with military experience does not withstand five minutes of reflection. If that were the case, Lincoln would have failed as commander in chief in the Civil War, and FDR would have failed as commander in chief in World War II. By that logic, Ulysses S. Grant should have been -- as Douglas MacArthur would have been -- a great president.

And, for that matter, Bob Dole. The most cynical moment of the four days was provided, naturally, by Bill Clinton, who reproached himself for having sat out the Vietnam War, a smug self-congratulatory way of attacking Bush and Cheney for sharing his dishonor. It was sheer Clintonian shamelessness. After all, in the 1992 campaign, he adamantly denied that he dodged the draft. And according to what Clinton says now about the centrality of military service, the 1996 election should have logically and honorably gone to Bob Dole, the Max Cleland of his time

Daniel Henninger gets into the act in trying to find out what John Kerry's foreign policy will look like.

The 9/11 report is a reality check for any who take time to read it. It moves mainstream thinking toward a more activist response than our political elites would allow before the morning of September 11. (It pointedly cites the example of Pearl Harbor.) The report is most certainly not suggesting that we postpone acting until after another attack such as September 11.

"Once the danger has fully materialized, evident to all, mobilizing action is easier--but then it may be too late," the report says. Those last words are the new conventional wisdom: Waiting is deadly.

A cautionary tale follows of how we responded to the known threat in Afghanistan from bin Laden and the Taliban: "The warning [an implicit threat of U.S. military action] had been given in 1998, again in late 1999, once more in the fall of 2000, and again in the summer of 2001. Delivering it repeatedly did not make it more effective." Translation: Empty threats are passé. Elsewhere the report says our "strategy should include offensive operations to counter terrorism." The report's first listed recommendation: Pursue potential terrorist sanctuaries "using all elements of national power."

The "P" word appears nowhere, but clearly the idea of pre-emptive attack, in some form, is what this commission is talking about. If you don't want to pre-empt, ever, than you don't want to fight the global war on terror as described by the 9/11 commission. The question before us is, where is John Kerry? What would Mr. Kerry do as president if presented with a clear and persuasive argument for pre-emptive military action?

Immediately following his "let there be no mistake" declaration on force, Mr. Kerry told his convention: "Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response." Big deal. Even President Sharpton would respond to an attack. The more "complex" issue the commission has on the table is whether he would use force to forestall an attack, not respond to one. There is nothing on that issue in Mr. Kerry's acceptance. A fair reading would be that he requires irrefutable evidence to ever use force. Indeed his assertion--"You will never be asked to fight a war without a plan to win the peace"--is arguably a case for never going to war.

The commission report is a 567-page treatise on the nonexistence of any such paint-by-numbers world today. John Lewis Gaddis, the noted foreign-policy historian, said several months ago that any Democratic nominee should acknowledge "that pre-emption does have a place in American foreign policy. . . . Pre-emption is out there now for discussion and debate as a legitimate instrument of foreign policy, in a way that it certainly wasn't before September 11."

The Kerry campaign recently directed voters to the new Kerry-Edwards book, "Our Plan for America: Stronger at Home, Respected in the World." The book's main text has one reference to pre-emption: "And his doctrine of unilateral pre-emption has driven away our allies and cost us the support of other nations." It sounds like a Barbra Streisand song: I want to be loved by you, just you, nobody but you.

North Korea? The book says, "We will work toward negotiating a comprehensive agreement. . . ." And: "Continue the current six-nation negotiations with North Korea, but be prepared to engage in direct U.S. bilateral negotiations." Iran? "We will join our European allies to offer Iran a simple deal. . . ." Why is this not an outdated re-run of the arms-control and perpetual negotiation strategy of the Cold War?

Can the Democratic Party modernize? Reading through the commission's long account (including the footnotes) of how Osama bin Laden was handled through the '90s, one finds the same ambivalence in the Clinton years--public acknowledgment of the threat and aggressive plans to deal with it, which then get shelved or down-shifted at the moment of decision.

John Kerry is the leader of a Democratic Party whose largest voting blocs haven't yet arrived at even the lowest common denominator of reality expressed by this bipartisan commission. Sen. Joe Lieberman, the one candidate in the primaries who came close to the foreign-policy upgrade suggested by John Lewis Gaddis, got virtually no votes from this party.

Mr. Kerry is now attempting the trick of holding his constituencies in place while appealing to the broader public's obviously greater willingness to wage war against this new enemy. The result was Mr. Kerry's weirdly abstract acceptance speech, steroidal with patriotism but unconnected to anything specific that would require a tough, unpopular call on national security.

Mr. Kerry publicly embraced all the report's recommendations the moment they appeared. My reading is that for reasons of party politics and foreign-policy breeding, a Kerry Oval Office would instinctively seek reasons to ratchet back from the level of aggression suggested by this bipartisan commission. Mr. Kerry's supporters may disagree, but I don't see that the candidate has made a case yet for believing otherwise.

From Robert Kagan in the Washington Post:

Someday, when the passions of this election have subsided, historians and analysts of American foreign policy may fasten on a remarkable passage in John Kerry's nomination speech. "As president," Kerry declared, "I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: The United States of America never goes to war because we want to; we only go to war because we have to. That is the standard of our nation." The statement received thunderous applause at the convention and, no doubt, the nodding approval of many Americans of all political leanings who watched on television.

Only American diplomatic historians may have contemplated suicide as they reflected on their failure to have the smallest influence on Americans' understanding of their own nation's history. And perhaps foreign audiences tuning in may have paused in their exultation over a possible Kerry victory in November to reflect with wonder on the incurable self-righteousness and nationalist innocence the Democratic candidate displayed. Who but an American politician, they might ask, could look back across the past 200 years and insist that the United States had never gone to war except when it "had to"?

The United States has sent forces into combat dozens of times over the past century and a half, and only twice, in World War II and in Afghanistan, has it arguably done so because it "had to." It certainly did not "have to" go to war against Spain in 1898 (or Mexico in 1846.) It did not "have to" send the Marines to Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Nicaragua in the first three decades of the 20th century, nor fight a lengthy war against insurgents in the Philippines. The necessity of Woodrow Wilson's intervention in World War I remains a hot topic for debate among historians.

Read more!

Recently, House Speaker Dennis Hastert raised some eyebrows when he proposed doing away with the IRS. The Wall Street Journal has some suggestions for him:

House Speaker Denny Hastert is drawing attention for floating the idea in his new autobiography ("Speaker") that we should abolish the Internal Revenue Service. He recently came into our offices to elaborate, and it turns out that what he'd really like is major tax reform.

We're all for that, too, though the Speaker's ideas could stand a little refining. He told us he'd like to replace the income tax with a national sales tax or some kind of European-style value-added tax (VAT). As a tax on consumption, his thinking goes, these would be less destructive of economic incentives than the current income tax.

If we were designing a tax code from scratch, we'd agree that a consumption tax is preferable. But until someone abolishes the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, we're not likely to end up with a sales tax replacing the income tax. Instead we'll get both, if not at first then eventually. We also dislike the VAT, because it is applied at every stage of business production and is thus a stealth tax that raises huge amounts of revenue but shows up only in higher prices for consumers. The VAT is one reason the government swallows such a large chunk of GDP in Europe. It's silent but deadly.

A fundamental rule of any reform should be the old Ronald Reagan proposition that taxes must be felt. That is, people ought to see and feel what the cost of their government really is. In that spirit, we've long thought that the most useful reform Republicans could promote would be to abolish income tax withholding. Make taxpayers write one big check to Uncle Sam every year, and the IRS will matter much less because voters will insist that taxes be lower.

Yesterday, John Kerry declared he would prosecute a "more sensitive war on terror". One could take that as a trial balloon that he will pick Joycelyn Elders as his SecDef (remember her safer guns, safer bullets comment?). Heck if I know what it really means but Jonah Goldberg (and by proxy Peter Beinart) seems to think it is tied to Kerry's quest for multilateralism. Excerpt:

his is all consistent with liberal rhetoric for the last three years. How many times have we been told that George W. Bush "squandered" the good will of the world "community" after 9/11? The assumption behind all of this seemed to be that anything which cost America the support of allies like France or Germany was, in effect, too costly. In other words, the means — "strong alliances" — are more important than the ends — winning the war on terror, toppling Saddam, and so forth. Listening to these folks, one gets the sense that America's greatest foreign-policy triumph was to get sucker-punched on 9/11 because it resulted in sympathetic newspaper headlines in Paris and Berlin.

Consider Kerry's seemingly final explanation for why he voted for a war he now condemns Bush for waging. He says he wanted Bush to have the authority to go to war in order to build up a mighty coalition to oust Saddam. But he says he didn't think Bush should actually go to war without such a coalition. Now that we know there weren't any obvious, imminently usable stockpiles of WMDs, that case looks better today than it did then. But Kerry deserves little credit on that score, since he too was certain that Saddam had such weapons.

Still, I agree that a mightier coalition than the one we had would have been nice. Indeed, if President Bush could have enlisted that indestructible ghost army from the third Lord of the Rings movie to do our fighting for us, that would have been really great. But, in the real world, Kerry's position puts the cart before the horse. Was the goal to topple Saddam and secure the WMDs, or was the goal to get a bunch of folks to do it with us? Indeed, Kerry thought the first Gulf War Coalition couldn't meet Kerry's standard.

Victor Davis Hanson Friday. He doesn't disappoint today (excerpt) :

Why do we embrace these flawed concepts and exhibit such wild swings of mood and logic?

In a word, we have devolved into an infantile society in which our technological successes have wrongly suggested that we can alter the nature of man to our whims and pleasures — just like a child who expects instant gratification from his parents. In a culture where affluence and leisure are seen as birthrights, war, sacrifice, or even the mental fatigue about worrying over such things wear on us. So we construct, in a deductive and anti-empirical way, a play universe that better suits us.

In that regard, for the moment George Bush is a godsend. His drawl, Christianity, tough talk, ramrod straight strut — all that and more become the locus of our fears: French and Germans on the warpath? They must have been Bushwhacked, not angry that their subsidized utopia — from a short work week, looming pension catastrophe, and no national defense — is eroding.

Bombs going off in Manhattan or stuck in a tunnel while cops search every truck? Either way, Bush is the problem. Either he foolishly went into Iraq and let down our guard, or he is trying to scare us into believing that a nonexistent terrorist is under every bed. The television still blares about suicide bombers and repugnant thugs tormenting bound hostages? Surely Bush set them off. The proper response? Presto! Elect a less confrontational John Kerry, and thus cease a long, difficult war to defeat and to discredit all who would embrace such odious ideas.

Liberal civilizations often tire of eternal vigilance and in the midst of peacetime affluence work themselves into mass hysteria when challenged. Such is the picture we receive of the Athenian assembly around 340 B.C. when Demosthenes desperately warned that Philip was not a national liberator. Few thought Hannibal really would cross the Ebro. Churchill in the 1930s wasn't listened to very much — after the Somme, who wanted lectures about deterrence? Ronald Reagan's earlier prescience about the Soviet threat in the post-Vietnam era prompted Hollywood to turn out cheap TV movies warning of Reagan-inspired nuclear winters.

We too are reverting to our childhood and thus are in the same weird mood preferring fantasies and stories to reality. The Democrats know it. And so the unifying theme of their otherwise contradictory messages is that we can return to the infantile delusions of September 10, and not the crisis-filled adult world of post-September 11 that now confronts George W. Bush

I haven't blogged anything to date regarding the charges by Swiftboat vets versus John Kerry. For reasons too numberous to get into on a Friday, the story is one I've chosen to leave to other bloggers (Captains Quarters, Donald Sensing, Powerline and Hugh Hewitt). I think James Lileks expresses my reasons for sitting out this one pretty well today:

Revisiting Vietnam in 2004 seems about as useful as debating the Phillippines war while the troop ships are sending Doughboys to the trenches in France. We have more pressing issues, I think. The news today noted that the men arrested at the Albany mosque were fingered by some documents found at Al-Ansar sites in Iraq, of all places. Iraq! Imagine that. I would sleep better if I could snort sure, it’s a plant and tell myself that it’s all made up, it’s all a joke, a phony show designed to make us look the other way while a cackling cabal of Masons and Zionists figure out how much arsenic they can put in the water next year. (Arsenic: the fluoride of the left.) But no. I am one of those sad little pinheads who think it’s really one war, one foe, with a thousand fronts. And I want us to win.

If you bridle at the terms “us” and “win” you really are reading the wrong website.

So I don’t want to spend 9000 words on the Swift Boat vets right now. There are two tales here: the story, and how the story will be played in the dino media. I have nothing to add to the first and it’s too early to comment on the latter. This is not about Vietnam. This is about character, and this is about spin. Over the next week there’s going to be a lot of discussion in newsrooms about what this story means, and how the mainstream media’s handling of the charges will affect their image. They can tear the story down to the foundation and root for the truth, or they can hide behind he-said-they-said reportage. It’s their Waterloo. We’ll see.

John Kerry was interviewed on NPR today:

John Kerry has finally revealed his secret plan for ending U.S. involvement in Iraq, telling National Public Radio in an interview broadcast Friday morning that he'll cut and run within one year.

"I believe that within a year from now we can significantly reduce American forces in Iraq," Kerry told NPR's Steve Inskeep.

Kerry running mate John Edwards, also appearing on NPR, explained that he saw the pullout plan as an opportunity for "fresh start" that has the capacity "to convert this from an American occupation to an international presence helping the Iraqis provide for their own security."

"This president rushed to war without a plan to win the peace," Kerry added. "He pushed our allies aside. We've lost our credibility with the world. We need to restore that."

"Win the peace" has become the Kerry mantra. After 9/11 peace is not paramount, victory is paramount. That is not to say peace is not desired but it can only come after victory is achieved. John Kerry's entire life paints the picture of a man consumed by the achievement of peace and not victory. Peace in Vietnam and not victory, peace with the Soviets and not victory, peace with Saddam in the first Gulf War and not victory. Now he is running for President promising the peace in Iraq but not victory. Does Kerry want victoryy, yes I believe he does. But I also believe he seeks peace over victory.

We have a clear choice in November: a President who seeks peace or a President who seeks victory.

John Kerry continues to make the campaign promise that he will cut middle class taxes. Wondering what Kerry's tax plan might be I checked out his website for details. There are no details. Just a brief, vague promise to cut taxes. Here is what his campaign site states

Cut Middle-Class Taxes to Raise Middle-Class Incomes

John Kerry Will Cut Taxes for 98 Percent of American Families and 99 Percent of Businesses. In addition, he will:

Propose At Least $250 Billion In Tax Cuts For Health Care, Child Care, and Education - Without Increasing the Deficit By One Dime. As president, John Kerry will close corporate tax loopholes and use some of the money gained from repealing Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans - families making over $200,000 a year - to pay for tax credits without increasing the deficit by one dime. The Kerry-Edwards tax cuts include:
A tax credit on up to $4,000 of college tuition
A tax credit to help small businesses and vulnerable workers pay for health care and buy into John Kerry's new Congressional Health Plan.
A tax credit on $5,000 of child care expenses

I find it interesting that he takes the time to detail tax credits, very limited tax credits, but he does not detail how much he will cut taxes for the middle class.

That’s because John Kerry has ZERO intention of cutting taxes. His promise is a farce.

Heather Mac Donald explains how "privacy" advocates, or privocrats, are endangering Americans:

Even as the Bush administration warns of an imminent terror attack, it is again allowing the "rights" brigades to dictate the parameters of national defense. The administration just cancelled a passenger screening system designed to keep terrorists off planes, acceding to the demands of "privacy" advocates. The implications of this for airline safety are bad enough. But the program's demise also signals a return to a pre-9/11 mentality, when pressure from the rights lobbies trumped security common sense.

The now-defunct program, the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or Capps II, sought to make sure that air passengers are flying under their own identity and are not wanted as a terror suspect. It would have asked passengers to provide four pieces of information--name, address, phone number and birth date--when they make their reservation. That information would've been run against commercial records, to see if it matches up, then checked against government intelligence files to determine whether a passenger has possible terror connections. Depending on the outcome of those two checks, a passenger could have been screened more closely at the airport, or perhaps--if government intelligence on him raised alarms--not allowed to board.

Privacy advocates on both the right and the left attacked Capps II from the moment it was announced. They called it an eruption of a police state, and envisioned a gallimaufry of bizarre hidden agendas--from a pretext for oppressing evangelical Christians and gun owners, to a blank check for discriminating against blacks.

One thing is for sure, if another attack occurs in the United States, these privocrats will be our shrillest critics of our government for not doing enough to protect travelers.

Ilan Berman of the American Foreign Policy Council has penned an excellent article on Iran discussing its current strategic ambitions and what options the United States in dealing with the regime. Mr. Berman concludes that in the end, the US must seek regime change, not behavioral change. Excerpt:

The United States has been guilty of sending mixed signals to Iran over the past few years. Most significantly, it has apologized for the Central Intelligence Agency's role in the coup of 1953—an early case of regime change—and it has declared its goal in Iran to be behavior modification rather than regime change. The mixing of signals simply reflects a confusion of policy—a confusion that has become positively dangerous, both to U.S. interests and the security of Iran's neighbors.

In fact, the U.S. objective in Iran is closer to the regime change it imposed on Iraq than to the behavioral change it brought about in Libya. The Iranian regime is not one mercurial man, whose behavior can be reversed by determined action. Iran has a ruling elite with many members, a shared sense of history, and a consistency of purpose that has been tested in revolution and war. This regime will not change, which is why the ultimate objective of U.S. policy must be to change it. That should not be forgotten, even if regime change in Iran cannot be pursued by the military means used in Iraq.

Short of military intervention, the United States needs a comprehensive strategy to block Iran's nuclear progress, check Iran's adventurism in the Persian Gulf and the Caucasus, and give encouragement to the Islamic Republic's nascent domestic opposition. Through a strategy that bolsters Iran's vulnerable regional neighbors, rolls back its military advances, and assists internal political alternatives, Washington can blunt the threat now posed by Tehran—and set the stage for the later pursuit of its ultimate objective.

Michael Rubin warns that we must worry and do something about the Kurdish terrorist group Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan (PKK). Excerpt:

The continued PKK presence in northern Iraq is an embarrassment to the United States. Under terms of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1483, the United States assumed legal responsibility as occupying power for the territory of Iraq. While our legal responsibility ended with the June 28, 2004, transfer of authority, moral responsibility continues. That a terrorist group--listed as such by the State Department since such designations were first made--operated with impunity from an area under U.S. responsibility undercuts the moral authority of the White House in waging the global war on terrorism.


The Bush administration's failure to address the PKK presence in Iraq creates a dangerous precedent. It legitimizes the Lebanese government's decision to allow Hezbollah to conduct terrorist operations with impunity, for example, despite Lebanon's responsibilities under terms of U.N. Security Council Resolution 425.

U.S. toleration of the PKK threatens to emerge as a hot issue in coming weeks. Since the PKK ended its ceasefire on June 1, southeastern Turkey has suffered a renewed wave of roadside bombs and assassinations. On July 27, PKK fighters killed a Turkish policeman and a soldier in the southeastern province of Bingol. On August 2, Turkish soldiers and PKK fighters clashed in southeastern Turkey. Those incidents that Turkish newspapers report may be the tip of the iceberg. In Konya and Kayseri, Turkish students spoke of a recent PKK execution of three Turkish conscripts along the Iranian border.

Turks contrast Washington's foot-dragging with positive noises coming from Iran, long a sponsor and facilitator of PKK terrorism. On July 28, following a meeting with Iranian Vice President Muhammad Reza Arif, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Iran would declare the PKK a terrorist organization and shut them down. The Iranian pledge may be insincere--previous Iranian promises to crack down on the PKK and al Qaeda were empty--but the perception of the Turkish public matters, especially as terrorism-related casualties rise.

Thomas Donnelly notes that in addition to properly naming the enemy the 9/11 Commission supports the Bush Doctrine. Excerpt:

“The enemy is not just ‘terrorism,’ some generic evil,” the report says, observing that such “vagueness blurs strategy.” Rather, the “catastrophic threat” is more specific: it is “Islamist terrorism”--the italics are the commissioners’.

This is to call the enemy by its true name, something that politically correct Americans have trouble facing. The panel does not mean that Muslims are the enemy, but that the Islamic world faces a political crisis, a civil war.

The report argues forcefully that there are “few tolerant or secular Muslim democracies [to] provide alternative models for the future,” and that Osama bin Laden is the face of a radical response to that failure of political legitimacy.

This is an enemy “that is gathering, and will menace Americans and American interests long after Usama bin Laden and his cohorts are killed and captured.”

Having correctly identified the problem, the commissioners propose an answer that sounds remarkably like the so-called Bush Doctrine.

Although the report is full of recommendations about how to better defend America at home, its discussion of strategy makes clear that the decisive theater of operations is the greater Middle East. In other words, defense must be complemented by essentially offensive operations.
Militarily, this means denying sanctuary to the terrorists, building upon successes, particularly in Pakistan, but continuing elsewhere.

Indeed, the report almost perfectly outlines the battlefield: the border regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Arabian Peninsula and the nearby Horn of Africa, Southeast Asia, West Africa and--perhaps, the most important sanctuary of all--“European cities with expatriate Muslim communities, especially cities in central and eastern Europe where security forces and
border controls are less effective.”

As the panel notes quite well in several extended passages and details, the September 11 plotters exploited “relatively lax internal security environments” in Western countries, and especially in Germany.

At the same time, the report is curiously mute in making military recommendations. Patrolling, even in a limited way, such a vast swath of the planet--let alone creating the plans and ability to respond in a crisis--is a task well beyond the current American armed forces. They are simply too small and lack many of the necessary capabilities.

Ideological and Tactical Challenges

The commissioners rightly stress that the political challenges--and, first and foremost, the ideological challenge--of winning this war are even greater. One of the report’s keenest insights is that we must “defend our ideals abroad vigorously. . . . If the United States does not act aggressively to define itself in the Islamic world, the extremists will gladly do the job for us.”

This imperative leads the commission to a strongly worded defense of the Bush Doctrine’s insistence on liberalizing and democratizing the region: “Where Muslim governments, even those who are friends, do not respect these principles, the United States must stand for a better future.” We must prefer freedom to a false stability.

Nor does the panel obfuscate what this means for even our closest “friends” in the Middle East. For example, the report states directly that the problematic relationship with Saudi Arabia “must be confronted openly” and must be “a relationship about more than oil.” It should include a shared commitment to political reform, something that makes the Saudi royal family very nervous.

John Kerry now publicly agrees with at least one charge made in Michael Moore's Fahrenhype 9/11: the President didn't act quickly enough on September 11th. From MSNBC:

On another topic, Kerry said he would have reacted much more quickly than President Bush did on Sept. 11, 2001, when he learned of terrorist attacks.

The president spent seven minutes reading to Florida elementary school children after learning that hijacked planes had been flown into the World Trade Center in New York.

“Had I been reading to children and had my top aide whisper in my ear that America is under attack, I would have told those kids very nicely and politely that the president of the United States has something that he needs to attend to,” Kerry said.

This is one of the great specious arguments of our day. How would have reacting more quickly helped the situation or the nation? What was the President supposed to have done in those seven minutes that would have had a substantive impact? John Kerry should be asked when he makes that claim, ‘what would you have done, Senator’?

----UPDATE----
The Kerry Sport quotes former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as responding:

"John Kerry must be frustrated in his campaign if he is armchair quarterbacking based on cues from Michael Moore. John Kerry is an indecisive candidate who has demonstrated an inconsistent position on the War on Terror, who voted against funding for our troops at war and who cannot give a clear answer on his position concerning the decision to remove Saddam Hussein."

Suzanne Fields explains why George Bush will get better Jewish support in the upcoming election (excerpt) :

Ed Koch, like a growing number of his co-religionists, doesn't think a President Kerry could withstand the pressures from the left-wing radicals of his party, no matter how hard they bit their tongues in Boston. These lefties are hostile to Israel, and cultivate strong links to anti-American partisans in Europe, especially in France and Britain.

John Kerry tells Jewish audiences what they want to hear, and when he imagines he's safely out of their sight, flip-flops. During the primaries, in a speech to the Arab-American Institute, he denounced the fence Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was building on the West Bank. "We don't need another barrier to peace," he said.

Eight months later, with the Democratic nomination safely tucked away, he sang a different tune: "The security fence is a legitimate act of self-defense erected in response to the wave of terror attacks against Israeli citizens."

He suggested that he might send Jimmy Carter, the rare evangelical Christian who is not a friend of Israel, to work on Middle East peace negotiations. When that idea bombed, he blamed the "mistake" on his speechwriters. It's not clear whether John Kerry would encourage negotiations with Yasser Arafat, whom he described as a "role model" and "statesman" after the signing of the Oslo accord. How he really feels apparently depends on where he is, and who's listening.

The Republicans count on Jews in America to spot the Kerry weakness as it affects Jewish and Israeli interests. They are actively courting the 500,000 Jews who live in Florida, where a small shift could make a big difference.

Only one in 10 Jews in Florida are thought to have voted for George W. in 2000, but that was before Sept. 11. A spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign does the math. "Without Joe Lieberman on the ticket we get a jump," he told the St. Petersburg Times. "Then you add in the president's Israel policies and our grassroots effort . and you can't help but get a big jump."

Many Jews agree with Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who calls President Bush "the best friend Israel ever had." In January, 31 percent of the Jews surveyed in a major poll said they would vote for the president's re-election. The perils of Middle Eastern politics and worldwide terrorism trump everything else.

The Wall Street Journal has an update on the asbestos scam:

These columns have been describing the ways in which asbestos litigation is corrupting our courts. Now comes a major new study showing how some physicians have also put their ethics on hold in order to share in the lucre from this legal scandal.

The study appears in Academic Radiology, one of the top peer-reviewed radiology journals. Led by Joseph Gitlin, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins, the study delves into the tawdry world of asbestos X-rays. A crucial part of any asbestos lawsuit are the "expert witness" physicians who make a living interpreting chest X-rays and telling juries that plaintiffs have suffered asbestos-related injuries. But as the new study shows, "expert" doesn't mean what it used to.

Mr. Gitlin obtained 492 X-rays that had been examined by doctors retained by plaintiffs' lawyers and entered as evidence in asbestos lawsuits. These X-ray readers had claimed to find evidence of possible asbestos-related lung damage in 96% of the cases. The researchers then had the same X-rays reinterpreted by six independent radiologists who didn't know either the original findings or that the X-rays were part of court cases. The independent radiologists found abnormalities in a mere 4.5% of the cases. So, 96% vs. 4.5% -- this would seem to be outside the margin of scientific error.

The obvious implication is that the asbestos blob has been compromising the ethics not just of lawyers but of doctors too. Some radiologists have clearly been willing to betray their profession's scientific and ethical standards in pursuit of large expert-witness paydays.

An accompanying editorial in Academic Radiology by two noted radiologists -- including the former chairman of the ethics committee for the American College of Radiology -- notes that the "radiologic community itself clearly has an obligation to conduct further investigations" and if necessary to take steps to "restore integrity" to its profession. That's for sure, but then again the asbestos blob seems to corrupt everything it touches.