Top movies of 2005? Don't ask me.

Apparently, Hollywood and film critics didn't get the take-home message from the 2004 election.

I haven't seen the movie, but "Brokeback Mountain," is in the news. From the AP, December 12:

The New York Film Critics Circle became the latest group to name the cowboy romance “Brokeback Mountain” as the year’s top film...On Saturday, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association also chose “Brokeback Mountain” as its top film of 2005.

"The Boondocks" comic also had a fairly humorous take on this movie, from December 5-10.

Other IR bloggers are also weighing in...

Maybe I'll see it one day, but it's not on my "must see" list in the immediate future. I didn't find the highly touted period piece "Far From Heaven" (2002) all that entertaining, even if the acting, directing and writing were first rate.

So what do I want to see? Try these: "Walk the Line," "Syriana," "Good Night, and Good Luck," "A History of Violence," "Crash," "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "King Kong," "Munich," "Match Point," "Capote," "Broken Flowers," "Jarhead," and "March of the Penguins."

That gives you an idea of what I haven't seen, eh?

Here's my rough rank-order rundown of what I did see this past year. You'll note that it is heavily tilted toward "family friendly" movies. Indeed, I saw six of these movies in the theater with at least one of my daughters:

"Millions" (2004)
"The Upside of Anger"
"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"
"In Good Company" (2004)
"War of the Worlds"
"Mr. and Mrs. Smith"
"Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith"
"Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit"
"Sin City"
"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"
"Robots"

A couple of these movies were made in earlier years, but released in 2005. I don't know why "Sideways" is on the 2005 release list, I saw it last December...

Anyway, I scanned the top 150 grossing movies of 2005, and these were the only ones I saw.

I also scanned the movie critics lists of awards and nominations for 2005. Those lists gave me a better idea of what I've missed...not that there's anything wrong with the "Wedding Crashers" or "Batman Begins," which I also didn't see.

Like many people, I saw many of 2004's best films in early 2005. So I'll probably be watching my "must see" movies in the next few months.

Good news?

AP, December 8:

Speaking to the Kentucky Farm Bureau convention, [Senator Mitch] McConnell said the transition in Iraq has been "rather smooth" - noting that in less than three years Iraq went from the fall of Saddam Hussein to parliamentary elections planned for next week. By contrast, 11 years elapsed in the United States from the time of the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution, he said.

"I think that Iraq is already a success story, and I think it's going to end up being remembered by historians as a huge success story," he said...

McConnell, who has taken trips to Iraq, said all but three Iraqi provinces are "safe and stable" and that life is "dramatically better than it used to be."

..."Well the president does have a plan in Iraq, and the plan is as follows: We're going to stay and win, we're not going to cut and run," said McConnell, drawing applause.

McConnell added, losses have been "quite small" because of the "extraordinary effectiveness of our military."

Needless to say, while there is some good news in Iraq, it's difficult to point to Iraq as a success story. Thanks to the research of Michael O'Hanlon and colleagues, Brookings has all the numbers.

Here's what O'Hanlon wrote in The Washington Post, November 28:

Growing GDP is good for those with access to the twin golden rivers flowing through Iraq -- not the Tigris and Euphrates, but oil revenue and foreign aid. The rest of the economy is, on the whole, weak. Unemployment remains in the 30 to 40 percent range, and the psychologically most critical type of infrastructure -- electricity -- has barely improved since Saddam Hussein fell. Iraqi security forces are getting better, but they are also losing more than 200 men a month to the insurgency. Civilian casualties in Iraq from the war are as high as ever; combine that with the region's highest crime rates, and Iraq has clearly become a much more violent society since Hussein fell. Tactically, the resistance appears to be outmaneuvering the best military in the world in its use of improvised explosive devices. And politically, every move forward toward greater Sunni Arab participation in the political process seems to be accompanied by at least one step back.

Every number O'Hanlon provides is document in his reports and the overwhelming majority come straight from the US government.

By the way, O'Hanlon is about due for another update on the "State of Iraq." In his September article for The New York Times, O'Hanlon wrote "on balance the indicators are troubling."

Deep down, I think Senator McConnell knows that. He's not delusional.

Torture = bad intelligence

Douglas Jehl, in The New York Times, December 9, describes one case of interrogation under rendition:

The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials....

The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have resulted partly from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of Qaeda members and others detained as part of American counterterrorism efforts. The Bush administration used Mr. [Ibn al-Shaykh al-]Libi's accounts as the basis for its prewar claims, now discredited, that ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda included training in explosives and chemical weapons.

The fact that Mr. Libi recanted after the American invasion of Iraq and that intelligence based on his remarks was withdrawn by the C.I.A. in March 2004 has been public for more than a year.

By March 2004, of course, the US had already been in Iraq for a year, so it was a little late to recant his "intelligence."

It was pretty major stuff:

In statements before the war, and without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then the secretary of state, and other officials repeatedly cited the information provided by Mr. Libi as "credible" evidence that Iraq was training Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons. Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that "we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases."

All BS.

Oh, and DIA had concluded he was a probable fabricator in February 2002!

Incredible.

At the time of his capture, al-Libi was the top al Qaeda figure in US custody. Yet, the US handed him over to Egypt in January 2002.

January 2002! Why would the US hand over its top al-Qaeda captive just months after 9/11? Egypt conveniently gave him back to the US in February 2003, weeks before the war against Iraq began.

The US claims that it gained assurances from Egypt that al-Libi wouldn't be tortured.

Wink, wink.

Scowcroft and his best friend's son

I finally got around to reading the October 2005 piece on Brent Scowcroft in The New Yorker. Writer Jeffrey Goldberg clearly got former GHW Bush National Security Advisor Scowcroft to talk fairly openly about his very strong disagreements with the current Bush administration.

Scowcroft is a realist and thus makes arguments about Iraq that are like those made by academics Stephen Walt and John Mearshimer. Mearsheimer's last book was about the tragedy of international politics, and Scowcroft shares the same basic pessimism:

“I believe in the fallibility of human nature,” Scowcroft told me. “We continually step on our best aspirations. We’re humans. Given a chance to screw up, we will.”

Like academic realists, Scowcroft doesn't think much of Wilsonianism:

Scowcroft does not believe that the promotion of American-style democracy abroad is a sufficiently good reason to use force. “I thought we ought to make it our duty to help make the world friendlier for the growth of liberal regimes,” he said. “You encourage democracy over time, with assistance, and aid, the traditional way. Not how the neocons do it.”

Scowcroft says simply, "Iraq feeds terrorism."

People in the White House, like former protégé Condi Rice, feel betrayed by Scowcroft. It works both ways:

"She says we’re going to democratize Iraq, and I said, ‘Condi, you’re not going to democratize Iraq.’"

...

“What the realist fears is the consequences of idealism,” he said. “The reason I part with the neocons is that I don’t think in any reasonable time frame the objective of democratizing the Middle East can be successful. If you can do it, fine, but I don’t you think you can, and in the process of trying to do it you can make the Middle East a lot worse.” He added, “I’m a realist in the sense that I’m a cynic about human nature.”

Some insiders think the former General speaks for the elder Bush.

Indeed, other Bush I officials, like James Baker, are also prominent outsiders now. I guess that frees them to criticize:

“We always made sure the President was hearing all the possibilities,” John Sununu, who served as chief of staff to George H. W. Bush, said. “That’s one of the differences between the first Bush Administration and this Bush Administration.”

The article is filled with criticism of various players in the current administration.

Why the lead up to Iraq matters

Does it matter that Democrats seem infatuated with the lead up to war in Iraq -- but have no widely agreed plan to exit (or stay)?

Yes, it is easy to criticize the pre-war period. I do it often on this blog. The US botched the diplomacy, the intelligence was flawed and likely distorted for partisan reasons, and al Qaeda had no significant ties to Saddam Hussein.

Is this so much water under the bridge? Should we just forget the failures and "move on"?

No, and Professor Robert Jervis of Columbia reminds us why. The Bush administration's botching of the lead up to war will have long-term consequences that the US should be thinking about right now.

I recommend everyone read his fall 2005 article, "Why the Bush Doctrine Cannot Be Sustained."

The Bush administration has embraced a doctrine of "preemptive war." It declares that the US will launch Iraq-like wars again at other state targets -- whenever it deems such an attack necessary.

But Jervis explains why this is not really possible. The domestic public and longtime American allies won't support such wars, especially because the Bush adminstration has trashed traditional threat analysis dependent upon the "external environment." Instead, the US now says threats emerge from non-democratic regimes. This greatly lowers the threshold for launching a war, but vastly complicates the chances for success:

American vital interest requires not the maintenance of the status quo, but the transformation of world politics, and indeed, of the domestic systems of many countries. This project is more far-reaching than traditional empires that sought only to conquer. Although difficult to achieve, this could be accomplished by superior military power. For the transformation Bush has in mind, superior force is necessary but not sufficient; it can succeed only through the efforts of others. Furthermore, not only must the populations and elites in currently dictatorial regimes undergo democratic transformations, but America’s allies must work with it in a wide variety of projects to sustain the political and economic infrastructure of the new world. The unilateralist impulses in American policy are likely to inhibit such cooperation, however.

If the Bush administration overestimates the extent to which it can and needs to make the world democratic, it incorrectly assumes that the American domestic system will provide the steady support that the Doctrine requires. (p. 375)

Jervis explains that the Bush administration has staked US policy on the "giant gamble" of Iraqi democratization.

He's betting that they've lost. Iraq "is likely to end up being both authoritarian and anti-American" (p. 374).

Fish sale

The AP is reporting that the Florida Marlins are in the midst of a "fire sale," which in baseball is code for "they've given up because they cannot afford to compete."

Call me unconvinced.

First, keep in mind that the Florida Marlins have won two World Series titles in the past decade and they have some great young talent. Miguel Cabrera is one of the best hitters in the National League. He's 22 years old

Dontrelle Willis is one of the best pitchers in the NL. He's 23.

OF Jeremy Hermida (21) has enough talent to join Cabrera on many future All Star teams.

To date, the Marlins have primarily traded a bunch of players past their prime: 1B Carlos Delgado (33), 2B Luis Castillo (30), 3B Mike Lowell (31) and pitcher Guillermo Mota (32).

Delgado is the lone star on this list. Castillo has no power and his speed is going. Lowell had a horrible year. Mota failed as a closer after going to Florida from LA.

The only young, very talented player they've dumped is Josh Beckett (25), and he has a long history of injuries that have severely limited his innings pitched. Still, I could imagine him winning a Cy Young Award for the Red Sox. He's talented.

What did the Marlins receive in return? Well, a bunch of young players, including a few with genuine star potential:

For Castillo: The Minnesota Twins gave them pitchers Travis Bowyer (24) and Scott Tyler (23).

For Delgado: The New York Mets sent 1B Mike Jacobs (25), RHP Yusmeiro Petit (21) and INF Grant Psomas.

For Beckett, Lowell and Mota: acquired SS Hanley Ramirez (21), RHP Anibal Sanchez (21), RHP Harvey Garcia (21), and RHP Jesus Delgado (21) from the Boston Red Sox.

From that list, Petit and Ramirez are the big prizes, though Jacobs had quite a debut with the Mets last year after a great year at AA. 3B Posmas is at least a year away, but he had an outstanding 2005 at Hagerstown.

I expect Jacobs to start at first and Ramirez to start at short. Petit will likely join the rotation. Would that mean the Marlins have thrown in the towel?

Absolutely not. I think these deals make the Marlins competitive in 2006 and beyond. Their GM Larry Beinfest should be commended, not condemned. Hopefully, he can pull off a couple of more trades before people catch on that he's reloading the team. Apparently, they are trying to deal OF Juan Pierre (28) and C Paul Lo Duca (33). Great! Neither is likely to play on a playoff team if they remain in Florida. They aren't that good.

The pitchers, by the way, are harder to predict. Bowyers was very hard to hit in AAA, but was kind of wild. Sanchez had great strikeout to walk (k/bb) ratios at two levels and looks like a solid starting prospect. Garcia and Delgado did fairly well and are young. Of course TINSTAAPP.


Update: I've just learned that the Marlins dealt Lo Duca Sunday to the Mets for pitching prospect Gaby Hernandez (19). The kid is very hard to hit, had 3/1 k/bb ratios and gave up very few homers. Bingo!

Who said Moneyball was dead?

Failed state?

What would happen to Iraq if America withdrew almost immediately?

In other words, what would happen if Representative Murtha's proposal was implemented?

Gary Boatwright at Seeing the Forest is taking this question seriously -- as is Nir Rosen in The Atlantic Monthly.

The conventional wisdom, is that the violence would worsen as Iraq moves toward civil war. The Iraqi government would be unable to govern and Iraq might become a failed state. That's essentially the worst case scenario according to President Bush -- Iraq ends up replacing Afghanistan as the safe haven host state for international terror.

Is that realistic?

Well, consider the academic research on state failure. The Political Instability Task Force worked on the question of state failure for five years -- in response to "a request from senior US policymakers" during the late '90s:

State failure is a new label that encompasses a range of severe political conflicts and regime crises exemplified by macro-societal events such as those that occurred in Somalia, Bosnia, Liberia, and Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire) in the 1990s. This web site lists comparative information on cases of total and partial state failure that began between 1955 and 2001 in independent countries with populations greater than 500,000. The types of events included are revolutionary wars, ethnic wars, adverse regime changes, and genocides and politicides.

...

The list of state failure events (i.e., the State Failure "problem set") has been compiled from multiple sources by researchers at the Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM), University of Maryland, and is regularly updated and revised with input from area and subject-matter specialists.

That's pretty comprehensive, eh? By the way, Dan Drezner today has a short summary post about the latest Human Security Report on genocides, politicides, conflicts and wars.

The state failure research, as noted in the Phase III findings report:

sought to identify the underlying or structural conditions associated with the occurrence of state failure within the next two years. These conditions were first identified for a global model encompassing all countries and all types of state failures.

OK, so researchers undertook a comprehensive multi-year study seeking to explain the causes of state failure.

Their models,

when applied to historical data, correctly classified stable countries and countries headed for state failure with 70- to 80-percent accuracy.

Here's the key set of findings from the global model:

The strongest influence on the risk of state failure was regime type. All other things being equal, we found the odds of failure to be seven times as high for partial democracies as they were for full democracies and autocracies.

In addition, each of the following risk factors roughly doubled the odds of state failure:

• Low levels of material well-being, measured by infant mortality rates.
• Low trade openness, measured by imports plus exports as a percent of GDP.
• The presence of major civil conflicts in two or more bordering states.

This analysis also found that total population and population density had a moderate relationship to state failure. Countries with larger populations and higher population density had 30-percent and 40-percent greater odds of state failure, respectively.

No direct relationship to state failure was found for environmental factors, ethnic or religious discrimination, price inflation, government debt, or military spending. Nevertheless, such factors might have indirect effects on state failure, if they influence a country’s material well-being or its engagement in international trade.

So, now, what about Iraq?

If the US leaves, Iraq will at best be a "partial democracy." That's a very bad sign as many forces vie to return Iraq to autocracy. Of course, Iraq is only a partial democracy today and may not be able to emerge as a full democracy for a long, long time even with the US troop presence.

The CIA's World Factbook reports that Iraq's infant mortality rate is "50.25 deaths/1,000 live births." That ranks about 140-something in the world (of 208 states). Not good.

The CIA also estimates (in 2004) that Iraq had about $20 billion in trade (about half imports and half exports) in a $54.4 billion economy. I looked around the State Failure website for awhile and cannot determine whether 40% is a good or bad figure. Just eyeballing the data, it does not look to be good. Considering that Iraq was under international embargo for more than 12 years, I suspect this is a low rate among all nations.

Iraq is in a rough neighborhood, but I'm not sure if two of its bordering states suffer "major civil conflicts." Iraq's neighbors are Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran. None of them appears to be experiencing major episodes of political violence (in 2004), but Saudi Arabia and Turkey (as well as Iraq) appear on some lists of the "world's least secure countries."

In addition to the variables just named, note that the researchers also developed a Muslim world model. Essentially, they found that all the above relationships in the global model mattered, plus these:

Three new factors emerged as important in this model. First, countries with Islamic sects faced odds of failure three times as high as those lacking such sectarian activity. Second, the religious diversity of the population as a whole mattered. Countries with either unusually diverse or unusually homogeneous populations had odds of failure nearly three times as high as those with moderate religious diversity. This relationship may exist because the exclusivist claims of Islamic religion are pursued more vigorously if one group is highly dominant, or if none are, whereas societies that include several major religious groups may tend to habituate compromise or cooperation. Finally, membership in regional organizations was also found to have a stabilizing effect; countries with relatively few international memberships were almost twice as likely to experience state failure as those with many memberships.

...

Taken together, these findings suggest a broader conclusion regarding the role of religion in state failure in the Muslim world: although religion clearly is very salient to politics in many Muslim countries, the key drivers of state failure in the Muslim world are, in most respects, the same as those in the rest of the world.

This doesn't look good for Iraq, eh?

Iraq has two major sects, divided by ethnicity: Sunni Kurd (about 20%), Sunni Arab (about 15%) and Shi'a (60-65%). About 3% are Christian, Jew and some other faiths. I don't know if that counts as moderate diversity.

Iraq is a member of many international and regional organizations, though none seem able to address Iraq's ongoing conflict.

Based on this evidence, it does seem as if Iraq is at significant risk of state failure.

Of course, the key question is whether the US troop presence increases or reduces this risk. Unfortunately, none of the information I've gather in this post can answer that question definitively.

Global warming roundup

The parties to the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change are meeting in Montreal, Canada this week. Unsurprisingly, there is lots of disturbing news about global warming.

First, the volume of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is clearly higher than normal. This is from an AP story November 28:

A team of European researchers analyzed tiny air bubbles preserved in Antarctic ice for millennia and determined there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now than at any point during the last 650,000 years.

The study by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica, published Friday in the journal Science, promises to spur "dramatically improved understanding" of climate change, said geosciences specialist Edward Brook of Oregon State University.

Think about that again: highest level in 650,000 years.

2. Global warming isn't merely an hypothetical future problem. The effects may already be quite dramatic: Reuters, November 16

Whether it is an increase in poor health from diseases such as malaria or shrinking water supplies, nations in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and South America are vulnerable to the consequences of changes in global temperatures.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that climate change leads to more than 150,000 deaths every year and at least 5 million cases of illness.

150,000 deaths per year, now, according to the WHO!

3. Global warming isn't merely a problem faced by the developing world. Europe may, in fact, feel a "big chill" from melting polar ice caps and changed flow of the warming Gulf Stream. LA Times, December 1:

In the new study, published today in the journal Nature, a group of British oceanographers surveyed a section of the Atlantic Ocean stretching from Africa to the Bahamas that has been studied periodically since 1957. They found the overall movement of water had slowed 30% in the past five decades, particularly in the flow of cold water back to the south.

The findings are the first evidence of such a slowdown.

"The result is alarming," Detlef Quadfasel, a climate expert at the University of Hamburg, wrote in a commentary accompanying the research. The findings provide "worrying support for computer models" predicting that global warming could disrupt the way the planet regulates heat, he said.

Computer models have long predicted that warming of the oceans and "freshening" of the seas with water from melting glaciers and increased precipitation — all linked to warming of the Earth by greenhouse gases — could slow down the currents. But scientists did not expect to see such changes so soon.

Scientists differ on the potential effect. Some say weaker currents would cool Europe by several degrees, causing problems for agriculture and ecosystems and ushering in far more severe winters. Others say the cooling would probably balance out the effect of global warming in Europe, which is expected to raise temperatures globally by several degrees over the next century.

"My personal guess is there would be no overall cooling, just a slowdown of the warming," Quadfasel said in an interview.

It's a "large scale geophysical experiment" on the planet earth, as oceanographer Roger Revelle remarked in 1957.

4. China, surprisingly, has declared that it is reducing its production of greenhouse gases -- and criticized the American withdrawal from the Kyoto process. Japanese Mainichi Daily News, December 1:

The Chinese government said Wednesday that despite being one of the world's worst polluters, it was already cutting greenhouse gases and called on the United States to join the global community under the Kyoto Protocol to protect the earth's atmosphere....

"We really feel pity that the U.S. has not yet, and is not going to join the Kyoto Protocol, not only because of the size of its total emissions, but also because of its higher per capita emissions," said Sun [Guoshun, director of the Department of Treaty and Law at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs].

...He noted that China's annual production of carbon dioxide was 2.6 tons per 1,000 people, while the average was 19 tons per capita in the United States.

China has been exempt from Kyoto because it is a developing country, which means that per capita emissions are historically low.

Timetables and exit strategies

President Bush spoke at the US Naval academy today. His theme? Well, Bush wants to close off talk of troop withdrawal from Iraq:

These decisions about troop levels will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders -- not by artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington. (Applause.)

Some are calling for a deadline for withdrawal. Many advocating an artificial timetable for withdrawing our troops are sincere -- but I believe they're sincerely wrong. Pulling our troops out before they've achieved their purpose is not a plan for victory. As Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman said recently, setting an artificial timetable would "discourage our troops because it seems to be heading for the door. It will encourage the terrorists, it will confuse the Iraqi people."

Senator Lieberman is right. Setting an artificial deadline to withdraw would send a message across the world that America is a weak and an unreliable ally. Setting an artificial deadline to withdraw would send a signal to our enemies -- that if they wait long enough, America will cut and run and abandon its friends. And setting an artificial deadline to withdraw would vindicate the terrorists' tactics of beheadings and suicide bombings and mass murder -- and invite new attacks on America. To all who wear the uniform, I make you this pledge: America will not run in the face of car bombers and assassins so long as I am your Commander-in-Chief.

Is anyone really talking about an artificial deadline? What kind of withdrawal plan would NOT constitute "cutting and running"?

Since June, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) has been calling for a "flexible timeframe for the completion of the military mission in Iraq" and offered December 31, 2006, as a "target date." Feingold argues that US troops are fueling the insurgency and hurting the army. His proposed legislation, as the Senator pointed out today in a response to Bush, would require the administration to establish "clear and achievable benchmarks" for withdrawal.

On November 17, Representative John Murtha (D-PA) went even further than Feingold. Murtha called for immediate redeployment of US troops, based on his belief that the war is destroying the army, that American troops in Iraq are prolonging the violence, and that such a withdrawal would increase the security on the ground. Murtha is certainly no wimp and apparently has very close ties to the military that he once served. Many political analysts thus interpret his plan as the unofficial line of much of the US officer corps. This clearly worries the White House -- enough that lines about "cutting and running" are appearing in presidential rhetoric.

Did the President offer any "clear and achievable benchmarks? Well, Bush said this today:

I will settle for nothing less than complete victory. In World War II, victory came when the Empire of Japan surrendered on the deck of the USS Missouri. In Iraq, there will not be a signing ceremony on the deck of a battleship. Victory will come when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq's democracy, when the Iraqi security forces can provide for the safety of their own citizens, and when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot new attacks on our nation.

Once again, it appears as if the President is arguing against a strawman position and offering mere platitudes in a debate calling out for serious thinking.

If Bush thinks he is engaging Feingold or Murtha, then he needs to explain how their positions differ from his own -- in the 2000 campaign. At that time, Bush said that the US needed

"to be judicious as to how to use the military. It needs to be in our vital interest, the mission needs to be clear, and the exit strategy obvious."

That statement, by then-Governor George W. Bush, was offered in the second debate against Al Gore.

Bush liked this line so much that he used some version of it in many, many foreign policy speeches and in all three debates against Gore.

Note, by the way, that Governor George W. Bush probably would have opposed the mission to democratize Iraq:

I'm worried about overcommitting our military around the world. I want to be judicious in its use. You mentioned Haiti. I wouldn't have sent troops to Haiti. I didn't think it was a mission worthwhile. It was a nation building mission, and it was not very successful. It cost us billions, a couple billions of dollars, and I'm not so sure democracy is any better off in Haiti than it was before.

The White House continues to claim that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism, and says that those commiting violence are terrorists, but that doesn't mean we have to believe them.

In any event, it is absolutely 100% clear that the Powell Doctrine is dead.

First, do no harm

Fiona Terry, who currently works for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Myanmar, has won the 2006 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. The Louisville Courier-Journal has the story that will likely be picked up by Australian papers soon:

Although well-intentioned, humanitarian aid to Rwandan refugees in Zaire became the fuel for more repression and death, Fiona Terry says.

For analyzing how that occurred and urging international aid groups to understand that their actions can have unintended consequences, Terry was awarded the 2006 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order....

Terry, 38, is an Australian who worked for Medicins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) in camps in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

She wrote a book in 2002, "Condemned to Repeat? The Paradox of Humanitarian Action," about that tragedy and similar ones in refugee camps around the world.

"Not enough organizations look into the political side of their aid, what they're contributing to," Terry said. "They turn a blind eye to it."

The award is a $200,000 prize. Terry's book was published by Cornell University Press and is available in paperback.

Dr. Terry provided the newspaper with quite a bit of detail about the Zaire case:

In Zaire, Terry said she saw how the assistance that nations, including the United States, were sending was being diverted to illegitimate purposes.

"The aid was helping the refugees," Terry said, "but the refugees were being controlled completely by the same people who had committed genocide in Rwanda."

The majority Hutus had directed a bloodbath against the minority Tutsis, resulting in up to a million deaths and a mass exodus of Tutsis and moderate Hutus to neighboring countries.

As the Tutsis wrested power from the Hutus in Rwanda, many of those responsible for the mass killings ended up in the camps as well. They "were stealing the food and preventing the refugees from going home," Terry said.

Eventually, the French section of Medicins sans Frontieres, including Terry, pulled out of Zaire.

"We have an obligation to say no sometimes -- 'This is unacceptable,' " Terry said.

The Hutu militia used the camps as bases to attack Rwanda, and in 1996 Rwanda attacked and destroyed the camps.

"Up to 200,000 people went missing from the camps," Terry said. "It was really a slaughter."

Terry also claims that aid to Afghan refugees in Pakistan gave birth to the Taliban.

I'm looking forward to meeting Terry in April when she visits Louisville. Full disclosure: I have been the chair of the Grawemeyer World Order committee for more than a decade.

Suspicious Minds

Today, the AP reported this unfortunate news about a Republican member of Congress, forced to resign because of his illegal links to a defense contractor:

Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy and tax charges and tearfully resigned from office, admitting he took $2.4 million in bribes to steer defense contracts to co-conspirators....

Cunningham answered "yes, Your Honor" when asked by U.S. District Judge Larry Burns if he had accepted bribes from someone in exchange for his performance of official duties.

Cunningham pled guilty to a variety of charges, including conspiracy to commit bribery, mail fraud and wire fraud, and tax evasion. Cunningham, in a related statement, admitted to receipt of $2.4 million in bribes, including $1 million in cash.

Cunningham was apparently paid by defense contractor Mitchell Wade of MZM Inc., which provides various battlefield intelligence support to the Pentagon worth tens of millions of dollars.

The Defense budget is enormous -- perhaps as much as one-third of the federal budget if every defense-related expenditure is included. The amount is a staggering $840 billion!

Frankly, academics pay too little attention to the political power of the so-called "military-industrial complex." The kind of evidence revealed in the Cunningham case is only too rarely made public and academics need empirical evidence to fuel their theoretical musings.

Of course, the implications of the oversight are enormous.

Cunningham, a decorated Vietnam pilot, served as chair of the House Intelligence subcommittee on terrorism and human intelligence. Did he ever make statements that inflated threats posed by terrorists or rogue states? Should his loyalty to the Bush administration's "war on terror" be viewed cynically? He obviously gained personally and sold out his office. How many votes and voters did a hero like Cunningham influence?

And Cunningham is certainly not alone even in the current investigation. Florida Senate candidate and current House member Katherine Harris has also received lots of suspicious campaign donations from MZM employees. Likewise, Republican Representative Virgil Goode of Virginia received "bundled" MZM employee contributions that may prove to be illegal.

And this is just related to one relatively minor defense contractor -- not a giant like Lockheed Martin ($30 billion in 2003), Boeing ($27 B), Northrop Grumman ($18.7 B), BAE Systems ($17 B), Raytheon ($16.9 B), etc.

Is it naive to think that many members of the Congress -- and perhaps officials in the executive branch as well -- are "bought off" by campaign donations and other perks from these companies?

Thomas Jefferson wanted to prohibit a standing army in the Bill of Rights because he worried about democracy's ability to work under such a strain.

Former five-star general and President Dwight D. Eisenhower, explicitly warned against the dangers posed by the "military-industrial complex" in his "Farewell Address," January 17, 1961:

...now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

The "iron triangle" linking the Pentagon, the Congress, and defense contractors is potentially quite dangerous. The machine needs the continual infusion of cash to churn out weapons, whether those arms are needed for war or not.

Sometimes, of course, it is easier to convince the public of the need for weapons if they are frightened.

Don't get fooled again

It's the standard fallback position. "Things may be going to hell in Iraq, but...

...the intelligence about WMD was completely wrong, but...

...democracy is hard work, but..."

Blah, blah, blah.

The punchline is often the same: "At least Saddam Hussein is gone."

Remember Dick Cheney's frequent punchline from the 2004 campaign?

Had the decision belonged to Senator Kerry, Saddam Hussein would still be in power, today, in Iraq.

Well, to quote Pete Townsend, "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss."

BBC, November 27, 2005:

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has said that human rights abuses in Iraq today are as bad as those during the rule of Saddam Hussein.

In an interview with the UK's Observer newspaper, Mr Allawi said that Iraqis were being tortured and killed by secret police in secret bunkers....

"People are doing the same as (in) Saddam Hussein's time and worse," Mr Allawi told the newspaper.

"It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam.

"These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam Hussein, and now we are seeing the same things."

You may have missed the news earlier this week, but US troops found a secret prison inside an Iraqi interior ministry department. They found 170 "apparently abused captives."

Line: "At least Saddam is gone."

Response: "Don't get fooled again."