I also read The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot, And Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It, by John Miller and Michael Stone. Just read it. I don't know why we bothered with a 9/11 commission, the whole story is right there.

So I couldn't stand dialup, so I am now on T-Mobile Hotspot. Goes on my cellphone bill so my company pays it. But I am still going to read!

Looks like Patrick Ruffini is on top of the rapid response for the web with the Bush campaign. Instapundit links to a David Warren column, which asks:

The question on my mind is thus, will the Americans funk out? And the only thing I can say for sure, is that if they do, it will be an unparalleled disaster. For 9/11 itself was the payback for the last U.S. funk-out from its responsibilities as a superpower.

In my post below, I point out that President Bush is shown to be full of resolve in Woodward's Bush at War. He won't funk out. But back to Patrick. He let's us know that the President's resolve is not flagging - from a speech today at the American Legion:

The work of our coalition in Iraq goes on because that country is now a point of testing in the war on terror. The remnants of Saddam's regime are still dangerous, and terrorists are gathering in Iraq to undermine the advance of freedom. Al Qaeda and the other global terror networks recognize that the defeat of Saddam Hussein's regime is a defeat for them. They know that a democratic Iraq in the heart of the Middle East would be a further defeat for their ideology of terror. They know that the spread of peace and hope in the Middle East would undermine the appeal of bitterness, resentment, and violence. And the more progress we make in Iraq, the more desperate the terrorists will become. Freedom is a threat to their way of life. (Applause.)

They have sabotaged water mains and oil pipelines, and attacked local police. Last week, they killed aid workers bringing food and medicine to the country. The terrorists have killed innocent Iraqis and Americans and U.N. officials from many nations. They have declared war on the entire civilized world, and the civilized world will not be intimidated. (Applause.)

Retreat in the face of terror would only invite further and bolder attacks. There will be no retreat. (Applause.)

Warren also makes this note - "the Bush administration has decided to leave the whole month to its enemies." At least Patrick is on the case. Now if he can only get the message to the rest of the message crew in the Bush adminstration, we might have actually heard some of that speech. (Read the whole thing, as they say.)

UPDATE: Only Patrick Ruffini's work in a roundabout way. Actually, the word went out from blogsforbush.com, which has a placeholder website that is chock full of the blog goodies that Patrick provided through GeorgeWBush.com.

I hate it. I hate blogging on it. But, it has kept me out of blogworld and into some offline stuff. That's one problem with the blogosphere, if you can't link to it, it doesn't exist.

So some stuff I read that I can't excerpt or link to. First of all, from the print Wall Street Journal. A story on the self-imposed exile of 11 Democrat Texas state senators to thwart a vote on redistricting. Some interesting tidbits popped up. Like the cost of the hotel rooms that these senators are lodged in is coming out of their own pocket. Or out of campaign funds. That hardly seems fair. Why should a politician get to pay for a hotel room for their own personal use, not for campaign use, out of campaign funds? I know that sometimes politicians use campaign funds to pay off women who accuse them of things, or to pay for lawyers to defend against those accusations - again, that hardly seems fair. Why doesn't campaign finance reform restrict use of campaign funds to, oh, I don't know, campaigns? And why, if the people who give the money have to be disclosed, doesn't the campaign spending also have to be disclosed?

Also, the taxpayers of New Mexico are bearing some expense for this, too. New Mexico, solidly Democrat (Bill Richardson is governor), has assigned a State Trooper to guard these errant senators full-time in case the Texas Rangers attempted to come get them to attend their session.

Next off-line resource. I just finished Bob Woodward's Bush at War, which focuses on the War in Afghanistan. This is a must read. Okay, its Woodward, and I probably have to agree with a review I read, don't remember where, that Woodward is kind to those who are more willing sources, and unkind to those who are less willing. Supposedly, Colin Powell and George Tenet were the most cooperative with this book, and if kindness of treatment is a measure, then so was Condoleeza Rice. Rumsfeld was obviously less cooperative. Same with Cheney.

I don't know if the following would be considered spoilers, because it is a kind of contemporaneous history book, and the history has passed. But here's my take on it, too informal to be a review. First, there are some bits that seem to be fed to Woodward to counter some specific criticisms. More than once, Tenet is praised for having done considerable investment in HUMINT (human intelligence), which is often something that the CIA is criticized for not having enough of. More than once, Colin Powell is seen as the cool head who suggests something once, twice, and third time around, everyone else comes around to see the wisdom of his ways. The press is vindicated in its assessment of the war in Afghanistan as a quagmire because it was a quagmire.

Could be all true, I guess, but at the beginning of the book, Woodward does say he attributes thoughts to people that he may not have gotten directly from them. Tenet is the real designer of the Afghan war, and Rumsfeld reluctant or wishy-washy.

And then it all comes to a close, surprising everyone. Except for a guy named Cofer Black, who, if Woodward records him correctly, is on my hero list.

Someone who is treated ambivalently by Woodward is the President, who agreed to 2 separate interviews with Woodward, and who had evidently authorized his participation in the documentation of these events. There a couple of questions where Woodward is pointedly hostile to the President while questioning him. But one thing is eminently clear - this war was fought the way it was, and won the way it was, because of George W. Bush. It might have been Tenet's (or Black's) plan, and executed by the agencies and the men and women on the ground and in the air, but quite clearly, the driving force, and force for success, is President Bush. You can see the same determination there foreshadowed for Iraq.

"We shall not tire, we shall not falter, we shall not fail" is not mere rhetoric for the President. And we should be thankful for that.

I hear at times that it didn't matter who was President on 9/11, that anyone in that office would react the same way. I agree that any President would have to react in the defense of the US after such an attack. But I think anyone who thinks that the person doesn't matter should read this book. I don't think they will continue to believe it.

There is some talk that in coming days GEN Clark is going to become the tenth Democratic candidate. I am predicting right now that he won't.

There are all the practical reasons - he's a political newcomer, doesn't have a team, and would be behind even Carol-Moseley Braun in fundraising. But the real reason that I am predicting that he won't is that he renounced, or "clarified," his statement that people from, or "around" the White House had pressured him to finger Iraq in 9/11. That could have been a pretty powerful arrow in his quiver - they wanted me to lie, but I wouldn't. Instead he decided to own up to the truth himself.

Kinda. Here is what he said on Meet the Press:

CLARK: "There was a concerted effort during the fall of 2001, starting immediately after 9/11, to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein."

RUSSERT: "By who? Who did that?"

CLARK: "Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over. I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.' I said, 'But--I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence."

And this is how he clarifies it:

I would like to correct any possible misunderstanding of my remarks on ''Meet the Press,'' quoted in Paul Krugman's July 15 column, about ''people around the White House'' seeking to link Sept. 11 to Saddam Hussein.

I received a call from a Middle East think tank outside the country, asking me to link 9/11 to Saddam Hussein. No one from the White House asked me to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11. Subsequently, I learned that there was much discussion inside the administration in the days immediately after Sept. 11 trying to use 9/11 to go after Saddam Hussein.

Perfectly Clintonian. But I think he (and his backers) are fanning the flames now in order to prepare for something in the future.

Travelling for the next couple of weeks. Right now posting from a dialup connection on a P133 with Windows 95 and IE 4.0. I forgot how badly 95 sucked. Sitemeter locks up IE, and the machine has to be rebooted. But I still like Microsoft, and it still isn't my virus, for all you Googler's who have shown up at my door.

Anyway, interesting to me that the UN gets blown up, and the question isn't "what did they do to deserve it," but rather, "wow, there are bad people in Iraq."

There's an NYT article today (may require registration) about Rummy's plans to get more troops in the business of terrorist killing.

John Geoghan, pedophile, killed in prison. I think some bishops and cardinals are going to be worried. Better go state's evidence, cut a deal to keep you out of the big house.

Boston's Big Dig. What a boondoggle. When they hold the Democratic convention here, they should make all of the delegates and politicians drive around the city once or twice, and put up billboards reading "Brought to you by the Ted Kennedy and the unions."

One might think some of this would have made news. It's a must read. Transcript of Rumsfeld and Abizaid press conference.

If you ever wondered what happened to Patrick Ruffini, he seems to have landed a paying job working on GeorgeWBush.com He promises some blogofabulous features in the near future. Here's a start - news feeds.

Patrick was a frequent linker to Blaster's Blog, so I don't mind doing him a favor by mentioning this new work. Psst - Patrick, read the item below, too.

UPDATE: I see that Jane Galt has seen this in the Washington Post.

The blackouts didn't extend down where I was, but I thought it was kind of weird to see television broadcasting from where there was no power. I just hope the hospitals have as much backup as the cable channels.

But now that we are in the recrimination phase, and the people in power are out of town, the out of power people get the mike. Two mornings in a row I have listened to Imus in the Morning and heard an interview about the power outage with a Democrat. I guess all the Republicans are unavailable.

Yesterday it was Gov Richardson of New Mexico, and today Thomas Oliphant of the Boston Globe. I guess the talking points are out. The fact that President Bush's energy bill, stalled in Congress for 2 years due to Democrat obstruction, addresses the issues of the grid, makes for a nice omelet on the faces of the Democrats. So they are blaming President Bush, of course, of tying these grid issues up, which of course everyone agrees on, with the other parts of the bill, like drilling in ANWR.

So their recommendation is to jettison all the provisions that the Democrats disagree with, and then getting the electrical grid out of being a hostage to those.

Of course, if they really wanted to get those electrical provisions in place, they could just vote for the bill, too. Not sure why a blackout means that the Democrats should get their way.

If the Democrats had stopped their obstructionist tactics, then perhaps this blackout might have been avoided altogether.

Republicans need to get their vacation team out to hammer this on every cable channel and radio show, instead of letting the Democrats ride herd on the news cycle for the next week or so.

But I see from Instapundit that Ralph Peters beat me to it.

Our enemies are frantically trying to prove to the people of Iraq and the world that they remain powerful and viable. But they aren't powerful or viable: They're reduced to a faltering program of assassinations, blowing up aid workers and infrastructure attacks that will alienate the people of Iraq. Any support they gain through such actions will be negligible, while the anger they have rekindled can only harm their cause.

When they attack our guys, they find they are armored and armed. If these guys are trying to prove how tough they are, blowing up the UN isn't going to impress anyone.

They are losing, and what's more, I think they know it.

In the comments to my post about a Krugman column below, "Cliff" writes:

So, I guess you may or may not have been right thinking that ordering fire extinguishers 6 years in advance was silly, and you may or may not be right that our military logistics are good, bad, or the best.

But you failed to make a good argument.

I responded in the comments. But I thought of another rejoinder today as I was flipping channels, and A& had on John Wayne's The Green Berets. And one of the characters was "the scrounger," who is standard fare for Hollywood movie depictions of military life. Not just Viet Nam, but WWII, too, with movies like Operation Petticoat. The scrounger is the guy who knows how to work the system, or around the system, and get the stuff the commander really needs. This isn't just Hollywood making something up from whole cloth - a good supply sergeant in the Army is worth his (or her) weight in gold. Because the logistics system tends to get a little fuzzy at the end of the line.

I am not trying to run down the military to score points on Krugman. Actually, in the grander scheme of things, the military logistics system is superb. Superb at getting lots of stuff from one end of the world to the other. Think about the fact that we have 150,000 troops 8,000 miles away, with thousands of vehicles, armored and otherwise. That is pretty impressive. But it doesn't make much difference to the guy in the chow line that his food came all of that way if it doesn't taste good.

And that is what Krugman misses - that you can't measure the superbness of the logistic system by asking a guy in the chow hall how good the food is. If he were home he would tell you it was bad. It will always seem screwed up at the end of the logistics chain.

I mean, think about my fire extinguishers (and other items) - the Army couldn't get them to me for 5 years into the future, but less than a year later, put a half million soldiers and their equipment into Saudi Arabia.

When my friends wrote me from the desert then, guess what - they said the chow sucked.

Another guest on F&F was suggesting that we need more capacity, and that we ought to build more power plants, even nuclear power plants. Which is simply not going to happen.

There are currently zero nuclear plants under construction in the United States right now. And that has been the case since 1995. The last one that we were building was stopped before it was finished. The TVA decided it wasn't economically feasible due to all the legal wrangling involved in building a plant.

Nuclear plants operate on a 40 year license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The oldest commerical nuclear plants are in the Northeast, because that is where they started building them. Rather than face the cost of relicensing, these plants are being decommissioned.

Some people are glad that this is happening. Besides, don't we have nice clean, renewable, hydro energy to replace it? Well, at least until we breach the dams.

UPDATE: Another guest just came on and said that states Attorneys General have used the Clean Air Act against power companies that wanted to upgrade the grid.

Watching Fox & Friends this morning and they are reporting on the blackouts. One of the hosts (the replacement guy) was asking a guest whether people should be more prepared, that he probably had one candle and maybe a bottle of water at his house.

People laughed at Tom Ridge and Ready.gov, but they have been recommending preparing an emergency kit for your home. If you had one, you would have been, you know, ready, for this event.

Here's what's in my kit.

Had a 3 and a half hour drive today, listened to Rush a little, thought some. Hearing how cagily Rush is couching his not critique, but analysis (that's how he is spinning it) of Arnold Schwarzenegger, I realized that one thing he does well is generate ratings. His critique, I mean analysis, of Arnold has gotten him a lot of attention lately. On TV and in print.

But the blogosphere doesn't talk about Rush much. Until now. Again, his comments can be spun out of - he was quoting what someone else said. And the blogosphere is suddenly talking about Rush Limbaugh.

And we fell for it.

The fact that GEN Clark is working for Jackson Stephens got me thinking. Of course the whole Arkansas factor is there, but it seems to me that it means that the Clinton machine really is working to help W out in 2004 so that Hillary can run in 2008. It is way too late in the money game for Clark to enter the race for President this year, but the fact his name has been spoken in those rarified spaces gives him political credibility.

So the ticket for 2008 is Hillary-Clark. You get your geographic diversity, and your military credibility with that package. And Stephens is keeping Clark well compensated (not that a retired 4-star Rhodes scholar would be hurting for work) so that he can be financially prepared, as generals aren't necessarily rich. I guess the next thing to check to see if T-Bone is his wife's financial advisor."

Jackson Stephens. Mochtar Riady. Bill Clinton.

And Wesley Clark.

I got to this Krugman thing from Phil Carter via Instapundit, and if you ever wanted any proof that Paul Krugman knows absolutely nothing, this one sentence should do it:

The U.S. military has always had superb logistics.

That just elicits from me a big BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Can he possibly be serious? It's ludicrous.

War story time. I was the Property Book Officer (PBO) for my unit in Athens, Greece. You have everything on your inventory in there, and if you don't have an item, you have the acquisition status on it. I had stuff in my property book in 1989 with "DUE IN" status dates in 1995. Almost 6 years in the future. Imagine that at any civilian company, requisitions that would be fulfilled 5 years in the future. That was just crazy. In the civilian world, I've had requests denied, or put off for a quarter or two, but no manager in the real world would attempt to manage to acquisitions a half decade out. Especially for little crap like fire extiguishers.

During Desert Storm, I knew people who had supply sergeants simply order 5 of anything they might need when they were deploying in hopes that they might get one on the other side.

I think it says a lot about the Bush haters that they will go out of their way to praise military supply as a model of efficiency as a basis for whacking Bush.

Phil Carter thinks Krugman's problem is that he is listening to Hackworth. That is pretty charitable, in my opinion.

But lots of people like to quote Hack because he is critical of the military. I'd love to see one of Hack's fawners ask him why he "lived the ex-pat's life in Australia" for so long.

My search engine hits are up! But no, I have nothing here about the Blaster virus. And no, it isn't me! I like Microsoft! Really!

On the radio right now, endorsing him in the strongest terms.

Rich Galen has an interesting take on Rush bashing Shwarzenegger:

Arnold Schwarzenegger can't be labeled (as Gray Davis and his eight remaining Democratic supporters in California would like to do) as a "right-wing extremist" because Rush Limbaugh has said that Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't a Conservative at all.

If one were to believe in the vast right wing conspiracy, then maybe Rush is doing this on purpose to help Schwarzenegger out. Because being called a liberal by Rush has got to be worth some points in California.

We are losing Iraq! Pepsi is more popular than Coke!

Listening to his radio show (don't worry, this is probably the second time I have ever listened. It is on as background noise.) and he is dumping on Schwarzenegger, too. No wonder the Republicans have lost California.

Much is being made of the recent article in the Hill regarding blogging and Rush Limbaugh, and his response to it. This is another thing I think Rush is wrong on. I mean, I don't have a journalism degree, I have an engineering degree. Whatever. But other radio people are getting the blog thing. There is the Lileks-Hugh Hewitt thing, and if you have listened to G. Gordon Liddy lately, I would say that most of his commentary now references blogs. I have heard Liddy reference Rachel Lucas, Matthew Hoy, Instapundit, and Lileks in just the past week.

For an issue oriented show, seems like blogs would be an important tool for research. Rush uses items from Drudge and Best of the Web and Inside the Beltway and Inside Politics a lot, so obviously he thinks compilers are useful. And even 2 years ago, if you used those sources for the radio, you could be way ahead, and different, than the mainstream. But the daily afternoon publishing schedule of BotW cannot keep up with the blogosphere. Instapundit is instant - if he hasn't found an item himself, people have gotten it to him for posting. Glenn Reynolds has displaced Matt Drudge to me as the clearinghouse for news, fast.

Haven't seen these all in one place, so I'll do it. From Instapundit:

A HIGH-RANKING al-Qaeda operative in custody disclosed that Iraq supplied the Islamist militant group with material to build chemical and biological weapons, the White House said today.

"A senior al-Qaeda terrorist, now detained, who had been responsible for al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, reports that al-Qaeda was intent on obtaining (weapons of mass destruction) assistance from Iraq," the White House said in a report.

The 25 page document was released as US President George W Bush holidayed at his Texas ranch.

From Drudge:

WASHINGTON -- Former international weapons inspector David Kay, now seeking Iraqi weapons of mass destruction for the Pentagon, has privately reported successes that are planned to be revealed to the public in mid-September.

Kay has told his superiors he has found substantial evidence of biological weapons in Iraq, plus considerable missile development. He has been less successful in locating chemical weapons, and has not yet begun a substantial effort to locate progress toward nuclear arms.

Senior officials in the Bush administration believe Kay's weapons discoveries should have been revealed as they were made. However, a decision, approved by President Bush, was made to wait until more was discovered and then announce it -- probably in September.

LONDON (AFP) - The British government is soon to present new evidence that Iraq (news - web sites) had produced biological weapons, it was reported.

Intelligence officials were producing another dossier on Iraqi arms, and "there is said to be hard evidence of cover-up programmes designed to conceal weapons of mass destruction", the British magazine "The Economist" said in its latest issue.

"We would hope to be able to demonstrate in the fullness of time that almost all the information in the dossier (published by the government last September) was accurate", a government insider told the magazine.

Government sources "say that several new bits of information will emerge including evidence based on interviews with Iraqi scientists that biological weapons had been produced in quantity", the Economist said.

I've said it before, Dean had a good idea on Liberia. The world knows that if there is real trouble somewhere, the only way to get something done is to have the US do it:

A spokesman for Mr. Annan said today that in a conversation this morning with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, he reiterated his request for a more sizable role for United States forces. "The secretary general's expectation is that the president will make the right decision and that U.S. forces in the region will play a constructive role," said Fred Eckhard, Mr. Annan's spokesman. The main American forces in the region are 2,300 marines in three Navy ships in the eastern Atlantic.

Dean's idea was that we should go, but use that as leverage to get some cooperation on Iraq. And it is still a good idea. I don't see any way that we can avoid involvement in Liberia, so we might as well get something for it.

Seems there was a good bit of Monday morning quarterbacking going on about Uday and Qusay, people saying that we should have taken them alive. Evidently the military had already weighed the options:

According to a commander with the 101st Airborne Division, Uday was still alive when a Delta Force commando stormed the bathroom where the brothers had barricaded themselves. Following Delta Force's standard procedure, the soldier immediately pumped two bullets into Uday's mouth, to ensure his death. The resulting injuries prompted speculation that Uday had committed suicide. Mustafa, 14, was the last to fall, firing from under a bed until he was shot dead.

From Time.

If you go to FreeMikeHawash.org now, they seem chastened. But not apologetic. ANd certainly not offering to return money.

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh during lunch today, and he did a spectacular hit piece on Arnold Schwarzenegger today. He was trying to make it sound like he was making fun of the negativity of Katie Couric on him, but he piled right on with his own comments. He bashed Schwarzenegger for not being a Republican, but, really, his critique was that he wasn't conservative enough.

This brings to light something that was the focus of an editorial from the Wall Street Journal (looking for a link) a few weeks ago, that Republicanism is not conservatism, and the point then was spending under President Bush with a Republican Congress.

I've always held a practical definition of conservatism, that a conservative is someone who holds conservative positions, and that there is a scale like the American Conservative Union uses to rate candidates that can measure that. One doesn't have to agree with every conservative position to be conservative, just like you don't have to buy into every lberal position to be a liberal (see Howard Dean on gun control).

Rudy Giuliani was a Republican who didn't hold every conservative position, but Republicans had no problem with him campaigning for candidates in 2002, and he is credited with putting a few over the top. Why wasn't Limbaugh bashing his non-conservative positions? There are plenty of other Republicans who could be opposed by conservatives (cough)Arlen Specter(cough) that are not in that spotlight.

I thought Rush was disgraceful, and he was violating Ron's 11th Commandment, though I guess his out is that Arnold is not really a Republican.

But Rush doesn't get to make the call of who is Republican and who is not. Schwarzenegger has chosen to identify himself as a Republican for a long time. He could easily, in Hollywood, choose the other way. But he didn't. I think that says something by itself.

I think what is in play is a tactical move to keep a Democrat as governor of California. I've read that some Republicans think that recalling Davis gets him "off the hook," and then a Republican has deal with the very large, very real problems California has. They think if a Republican is there and is facing the same problems, it hurts the President's chances there in 2004.

Which I also think is disgraceful. It is essentially wishing ill on California to help a political position for the future, and that is just wrong. Californians may deserve their political ills, but if they can be rescued, they should be. And it would be great if the person who does that is a Republican, even if that Republican doesn't score 100 with the ACU. In the Army, we called a really tough job like that "an opportunity to excel." Because if you fail, well, everyone knew you had a tough job, but if you can do well, then you have really done something.

Plus I think these tacticians are wrong. W doesn't have a chance in California with Gray Davis in charge, no matter how much the people dislike Davis. But if they like, or love, Schwarzenegger, he can help, a lot, just like Rudy Giuliani.

Despite this being his first political campaign (as a candidate, anyway), Schwarzenegger may be quite effective. He may be able to use his immense public persona to break up the logjam in the California legislature. As a Republican, he can get movement where Davis couldn't with Republican members, and able to challenge the Democrats where Davis won't.

And as for Maria Shriver being First Lady, I remember seeing an interview with Arnold and Maria years ago, soon after their marriage. The interviewer asked Arnold about the fact that he was Republican and his wife was a Kennedy, and how that worked out. Arnold answered, <Ah-nuld voice>Whenever Maria and I disagree, I just pick her up and throw her in the pool.</Ah-nuld voice>

Mike Hawash pleads guilty. I bet these guys feel silly.

Yep, those are scare quotes. Since we are talking about Democrats, I thought I would share something about Dean and the internet. Much has been made that he "get's it," and he has a blog, and bloggers are going to rally to his aid. Bloggers like the Dean Defense Forces.

What is truly funny is the amount of spin on that site in defense of a candidate who has "straight talk" as a strong point.

Like on taxes - they want to say that Dean is not for raising taxes. But if he believes cutting taxes was wrong, why won't he say that he will raise them back up? Come on, give us some straight talk - tell us you think that George W. Bush is wrong in thinking that it is our money, and that the govenrment needs it more than we do. Americans are made of strong stuff, we can take it.

Also, the various bloggers are also at odds trying to prove just how "conservative" Dean is or how "liberal" he is.

If his strongest internet supporters cannot agree on that, then how is anyone else supposed to have an understanding of where the guy comes from?

Not to mention that a lot of wind will leave his sails once the evidence of WMD hits the streets....

Democrats showing once again why we cannot trust them with our security. The "serious" candidate on defense, John Kerry (he's a Vietnam veteran, you know), is criticizing the Bush administration for failing to appease North Korea. We know how well that works. Vodkapundit does a fisky-style takedown at his place.

But one thing Stephen misses is this precious line from Senator Kerry:

But the administration's erratic handling of the North Korean nuclear crisis over the past year leaves it little room for error.

The Bush administration is erratic in this matter? North Korea denied violating the Agreed Framework, then admitted to it, then said they had nuclear weapons, then they didn't, then they did again, then they were going to process plutonium, then they already had, they threatened to withdraw from the armistice with South Korea, they insisted on talks with the US alone, they agreed to talk with other countries, then abruptly pulled out of those talks, and are now going to talk multilaterally again, but won't allow US Undersecretary John Bolton to participate because he is "human scum and a bloodsucker" - this for stating that Kim Jong-Il is a tyrannical dictator.

And Bush is erratic.

Democrats are going to lose, and lose big.

Jonah takes off on the Arab League.

I'm not a political scientist, but it seems to me that if "representative government" is your thing, then a government ruled by a religious minority that brutally represses the majority denomination - Shiites - is not your bag.

Saddam's henchmen made Shiites lie down in the road only to have hot asphalt poured on them and then be flattened by a steamroller. I don't have the Federalist Papers committed to memory, but I'm sure that's not in there.

Secretary Rumsfeld called a General back from retirement to take over as Army Chief of Staff, now the dead wood is getting sent to the chipper:

In a move widely seen within the Pentagon as a purge, a dozen or more Army generals are being ushered into retirement as the Army’s new chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, takes over.

Shape up or ship out should be a familiar term to these generals. I've said it before - the Army leadership needs to internalize the same level of change that the Air Force and Navy already have.