EVENING UPDATE,  APRIL 10,  2008

Posted at 7:46 p.m. ET

THE OBAMA APPROACH - START WORRYING NOW

Mort Kondracke has an excellent analysis of the Obama style, on full display at the hearings featuring Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus.  And Kondracke exposes what's wrong with that style:

Judging by his agile performance at Tuesday's Iraq hearings, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) now is opting for the famous George Aiken formula from Vietnam days: Declare victory and get out.

And...

He also gave a bit of a hint of how he would practice his much-promised bipartisanship if he were elected president: He would coordinate and cooperate with Republicans when they agree with him.

And...

Allying himself with the argument that the U.S. is economically and militarily "overstretched" by Iraq, Obama cited Republican Sens. George Voinovich (Ohio), Dick Lugar (Ind.) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.).

My guess is this will be a pattern when a President Obama pushes his liberal agenda. Like Bush, he'll try to pick off as many votes in the other party as he needs -- as opposed to seeking broad bipartisan agreement.

Finally...

Obama's line of questioning seemed to suggest his thinking. He's for setting a timetable for withdrawal to pressure the Iraqis toward political settlement and for accepting "a messy, sloppy status quo" to justify sticking to the timetable.

That's the Aiken formula -- define success down so it's easy to justify retreat.

Crocker responded to Obama that, sure, "when Iraq gets to the point that it can carry forward its further development ... with still a lot of problems, but where they and we would have a fair certitude that they can drive it forward themselves without significant danger of having the whole thing slip away from them again, then clearly, our presence diminishes markedly.

"But," he said, "that's not where we are now." And that's right. The problem with the Aiken solution -- and Obama's -- is that to declare "victory" or "success" when it's not really there is to ensure defeat.

The issue here is that Obama is a Chicago politician, not a strategic thinker.  Eisenhower ended the Korean War by accepting an armistice agreement, and keeping American troops in South Korea as a stabilizing force, even though the political situation in South Korea was messy and sloppy.  But here's the difference between Obama and Eisenhower:  Obama 's approach leads from weakness.  We're tired, we've done enough, we're going.  Eisenhower led from strength.  To get the armistice he privately threatened to use the atomic bomb against North Korea.  So, once the war ended, the North Koreans knew that they were dealing with a military man who could unleash the sword at any moment.  They behaved.

That's all the difference in the world.

April 10, 2008      Permalink          

TODAY'S TRIVIA

I give this to you straight:

Randi Rhodes, the radio talk show host who was suspended last week from Air America after going on an obscenity-laced tirade against Hillary Clinton and one of her prominent supporters, has resigned.

Mark Green, president of Air America Media, told FOXNews.com that Rhodes terminated her contract Wednesday after she refused to apologize on air for her remarks.

May I have a show of hands of those who care? 

I see...hmm...one.  Okay, one.  Put your hand down, Randi.

They must be upset at Air America.  She was their entire audience.

April 10, 2008      Permalink          

OLYMPICS IN "CRISIS"

The folks at Olympic Central, or whatever they call their headquarters, are upset and almost weepy that those little Tibetan pandas are ruining their fun.  Can't they go back to their mountains, or something?  The nerve:

BEIJING - Crisis. Disarray. Sadness. Four months before the opening of what was supposed to be the grandest Olympics in history, the head of the International Olympic Committee is using words that convey anything but a sense of joyous enthusiasm.

The protest-marred Olympic torch relay and international criticism of China's policies on Tibet, Darfur and human rights have turned the Beijing Games into one of the most politically charged in recent history and presented the IOC with one of its toughest tests since the boycott era of the 1970s and '80s.

"It is a crisis, there is no doubt about that," IOC President Jacques Rogge said Thursday. "But the IOC has weathered many bigger storms."

At the same time, Rogge called on China to respect its "moral engagement" to improve human rights and to fulfill promises of greater media freedom. He also reaffirmed the right of free speech for athletes at the Beijing Games.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman responded that IOC officials support adhering to the Olympic Charter and "not bringing any irrelevant political factors into the Beijing Olympics."

You hold the Olympics in a dictatorship in 2008, that's is what you get.  There must be so much nostalgia at Olympic Central for 1936, when the games were held in Berlin in the presence of Adolf Hitler, and there were no messy protests.  The U.S. Olympic bosses even made sure their Hebrews did not participate, and all was well with the world.  Why, the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, even got the contract to build the new German embassy in Washington.  That's real  international harmony.  They did things so well back then. 

April 10, 2008      Permalink          

HOWARD DEAN, CALL YOUR POLLSTER

Howard Dean is screamin' again.  And again, he's out of synch with reality:

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Thursday that swing voters participating in focus groups commissioned by the D.N.C. bring up John McCain's age unprompted.

DNC Chairman Howard Dean told reporters Thursday that swing voters are worried about John McCain's health and "old-fashioned" views.

"We didn't bring it up, but they volunteered it," said Dean who explained that voters have two concerns about McCain's age. "One was a health concern, the other was, and this is really interesting . . . that his views are old-fashioned."

At the age of 72, McCain would be the oldest newly elected president in U.S. history if inaugurated in 2009.

As we reported earlier today, the newly released AP/Ipsos poll shows that McCain has come from behind and is now even with Obama in the general-election matchup.

Will someone tell Howie.

Be back tomorrow, or earlier if events warrant.

April 10, 2008      Permalink          

AFTERNOON POSTINGS,  APRIL 10, 2008

Posted at 4:16 p.m. ET

REMARKABLE POLLS

There are some remarkable poll results this afternoon.  First, the AP/Ipsos poll, which I've always felt tends to lean Democratic, now has McCain and Obama essentially tied:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Republican Sen. John McCain has erased Sen. Barack Obama's 10-point advantage in a head-to-head matchup, leaving him essentially tied with both Democratic candidates in an Associated Press-Ipsos national poll released Thursday.
The survey showed the extended Democratic primary campaign creating divisions among supporters of Obama and rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and suggests a tight race for the presidency in November no matter which Democrat becomes the nominee.

McCain is benefiting from a bounce since he clinched the GOP nomination a month ago. The four-term Arizona senator has moved up in matchups with each of the Democratic candidates, particularly Obama.

An AP-Ipsos poll taken in late February had Obama leading McCain 51-41 percent. The current survey, conducted April 7-9, had them at 45 percent each. McCain leads Obama among men, whites, Southerners, married women and independents.

Clinton led McCain, 48-43 percent, in February. The latest survey showed the New York senator with 48 percent support to McCain's 45 percent. Factoring in the poll's margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, Clinton and McCain are statistically tied.

The usual caution:  A poll is a snapshot.  Polls differ, one from the other.  But this one tends to confirm the daily tracking polls of Rasmussen and Gallup.  The race is tied.  That's not where the Dems wanted to be at this point.

Another caution:  The Dems haven't yet started a national campaign to define McCain and discredit him.  That's coming.  It will have its effect,

Other polling news, equally remarkable:  The respected Marist College poll shows McCain up two points over Obama in New York State, a Democratic bastion.  It also shows Clinton up only two in New York, and she's a New York senator. 

It's clear that McCain is benefiting from a residue of good will, and his stature in foreign- and defense policy.  But don't pop the cork just yet.  He's got to build on that good will, and he'll be fending off attacks once the Dem nominee is chosen.

Late Pennsylvania polls show Clinton holding onto a respectable, but less than spectacular lead.  Maybe five points.  Maybe a few more.  However, all she has to do is win in Pennsylvania to keep going.  The vote is a week from Tuesday.

April 10, 2008      Permalink          

THE SMEAR

I've learned that stuff is circulating among the Obama legions that accuses John McCain of being a racist, and making racist remarks.

Please note that John and Cindy McCain adopted a black child from Bangladesh, and have given that child a good life.

Some racist.

Don't try this, Democrats.

Be back later.

April 10, 2008      Permalink          

THURSDAY:  APRIL 10,  2008

Posted at 6:58 a.m. ET

THE FIGHT FOR McCAIN'S SOUL

Well, at least he has one, a rarity in politics.  The New York Times does a reasonable job of reporting the competition going on among foreign-policy advisers for John McCain's ear.  It's the usual battle between the so-called neo-cons and the so-called realists.  You get the feeling that the competition is somewhat exaggerated.  The story:

But now one component of the fractious Republican Party foreign policy establishment — the so-called pragmatists, some of whom have come to view the Iraq war or its execution as a mistake — is expressing concern that Mr. McCain might be coming under increased influence from a competing camp, the neoconservatives, whose thinking dominated President Bush’s first term and played a pivotal role in building the case for war.

The concerns have emerged in the weeks since Mr. McCain became his party’s presumptive nominee and began more formally assembling a list of foreign policy advisers. Among those on the list are several prominent neoconservatives, including Robert Kagan, an author who helped write much of the foreign policy speech that Mr. McCain delivered in Los Angeles on March 26, in which he described himself as “a realistic idealist.” Others include the security analyst Max Boot and a former United Nations ambassador, John R. Bolton.

But...

Conservatives around Mr. McCain counter that the other side’s concerns are groundless because Mr. McCain is hardly an empty vessel who might succumb to the views of one group or another.

“I would say his world view is so established that there is not a real battle going on,” said Mr. Kagan, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “A struggle over individual policies I could imagine, but the broad view, no. People would agree on what McCain thinks. This is not one of those situations like Bush all over again, with some titanic struggle going on between different factions.”

Kagan makes a good point.  McCain isn't a newcomer like Obama.  He's been involved with foreign policy for decades, and there is no evidence that he buys into any foreign-policy camp blindly.  I also believe that the so-called "realists," especially Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell, might proceed more modestly, considering their records in the Bush 41 administration, which kicked the can down the road on Iraq and left the problem standing.

Good piece, worth reading.

April 10, 2008      Permalink          

A LITTLE CORRECTION

One of the great pleasures of blogging is getting suggestions from readers.  Reader Ken Braithwaite alerts me to a bit of bother at the Los Angeles Times, which has had its rocky months in recent years.  It seems their "Caribbean Bureau Chief" - she must operate out of a cabana - wrote an article on the prison at Guantanamo.  You can read it here if you've got the time to waste.  What's really remarkable is the correction The Times was forced to publish, which has now been inserted into the online story itself.  The correction reads as follows.  Get this: 

Guantanamo Bay: An article March 28 in Section A about a typical day in the life of a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, as gleaned from reporting trips over the last three years, made several observations that Pentagon officials and officers of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo say are outdated or erroneous. The article said that reveille was at 5 a.m., when guards collect the bedsheet from each detainee. There is no reveille sounded at Guantanamo, and officials say the practice of collecting bedsheets ended in late 2006 for compliant detainees and last May for everyone else. The article said that lights were kept on in the cells 24 hours a day for security reasons, and that some prisoners grew their hair long to shield their eyes to sleep. Since September, all detainees have been issued sleep masks. The article said that detainees at Camps 5 and 6 could see each other only during prayer time when an aperture in their cell doors was opened. The prisoners can also see each other when being escorted to showers or interrogation, during recreation time and when the aperture is opened for meal delivery. The article referred to "the hour for rec time"; in fact, prisoners are allowed at least two hours of recreation daily. The article said the prison library had 2,000 books and magazines; it has 5,000, including multiple copies of many titles. The article said that once a prisoner had skipped nine meals he was considered to be on a hunger strike and taken to the medical center where he was force-fed. Medical officials say hunger strikers are force-fed only when their weight has fallen to 85% of their ideal body weight and a doctor recommends it. The article said that prisoners at Camp 4, a communal compound, were awaiting transfer home. Camp 4 holds prisoners judged to be compliant with camp rules.

Have you lost confidence in the mainstream media?  Do you think there might be a good reason?  You read a correction like that and wonder what's happening with other stories.

Of course, in 1968, in the greatest journalistic scandal of modern times, the American press reported the battle of Tet in Vietnam as a defeat for the United States and its allies, when in fact it was an enormous victory.  In 40 years not a single news operation has apologized.  So, considering the quality of the mentoring young reporters get, does that long correction surprise you?

April 10, 2008      Permalink          

ESTRICH, WHERE IS THY STING?

You may have noticed that there is, as they say, a lull in the fighting.  There hasn't been much big news in the last four or five days.  Even the Petraeus testimony on Capitol Hill didn't make great headlines.  But there's been some spirited debate in the blogosphere and even in the press, especially about the Democratic nomination.

Susan Estrich, the abrasive Clinton partisan, has written a defiant - I mean really defiant - piece for Fox News bluntly stating that the Clintonistas have no intention of leaving the Titanic, despite the iceberg.  I happen to like this piece because she knows what she's talking about, and it's nice to see someone willing to fight.  As follows:

Will Hillary win Pennsylvania?

Ask the people who told you she wouldn’t win New Hampshire and California and New Jersey and Ohio and Texas, and a few other places I’ve neglected to mention.

They’ll tell you she could lose, that Obama is gaining steam, that she’s run a horrible campaign, that her husband has hurt her, that it has to be over. They’ll talk about how Mark Penn has to go or will go or did go (I think he did, finally, sort of). There will be a million stories about Bill Clinton.

And then?

Then, my guess is, it won’t be over, or even close. They’ll turn a sure thing into a long shot into a comeback.

Then the same people will say, well, she should drop out anyway. Since when do people respond to winning by dropping out? Since when is quitting the response to a comeback? Since never.

And...

The chattering class, myself included, ultimately take our leads from the candidates. We may define the expectations, but they set the targets. Obama could have written off Pennsylvania in the expectations, but the truth is that he doesn’t have the delegates to win the nomination, and he won’t unless he picks up a sizable chunk in that delegate-rich state.

IF he were way ahead, he could just say, that’s Hillary-country, let her have it, I don’t need it. But he does need it, because he isn’t that far ahead, because this is still a contest where the conclusion is far from certain. That’s why we keep playing the same game.

Okay, keep playing.  Frankly, I hope the Democratic race goes on for a time, not because I think it helps McCain - it may or may not - but because it gives voters more of a chance to look at the candidates and decide.  It's also a great show.  Let's be frank about it:  We love the combat.

If Clinton does lose Pennsylvania, a week from Tuesday, it's all over.  But if she wins, especially if she wins by some respectable margin, she'll probably fight on through at least May 6th, when North Carolina and Indiana vote.  The key issue here is that she's run such a rotten campaign for the last month, a political soap opera written by stale writers.  She's got to give Pennsylvania a big, effective finish.

She's been looking tired recently.  Her voice is raspy.  She's been punched.  She sometimes looks like she's ready to sing, "Don't Cry for Me, Wellesley College."  Maybe a sympathy vote will help.

April 10, 2008      Permalink          

THE U.N. AT ITS WORST

Just when you thought the U.N. couldn't get much worse, it's gotten worse.  We're talking here about something called the U.N. Human Rights Council, a literal rogues' gallery of thugocracies talking about human rights.  It's a disgrace to humanity.

But there are political prostitutes willing to work with the Human Rights Council, to advance their own sick views.  Recently the Council appointed an investigator to probe Israel's so-called human rights violations.  There is no equivalent investigator to probe the Palestinians.  I guess it's because of their remarkable record of freedom and democracy.

Who was chosen by the U.N. for this admirable role?  Why, it's Richard Falk, a retired Princeton professor.  As soon as I read the name, I knew it.  Falk is an old leftist hand who rose to prominence for his role in the anti-war movement during Vietnam.  He has compared Israelis to Nazis, which apparently qualifies him for this new assignment.

But wait.  It gets more grim.  We now find out that the learned scholar has another identity - a 9-11 conspiracy theorist.  The New York Sun reports:

WASHINGTON — A new U.N. Human Rights Council official assigned to monitor Israel is calling for an official commission to study the role neoconservatives may have played in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

On March 26, Richard Falk, Milbank professor of international law emeritus at Princeton University, was named by unanimous vote to a newly created position to report on human rights in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. While Mr. Falk's specialty is human rights and international law, since the attacks in 2001, he has devoted some of his time to challenging what he calls the "9-11 official version."

On March 24 in an interview with a radio host and former University of Wisconsin instructor, Kevin Barrett, Mr. Falk said, "It is possibly true that especially the neoconservatives thought there was a situation in the country and in the world where something had to happen to wake up the American people. Whether they are innocent about the contention that they made that something happen or not, I don't think we can answer definitively at this point. All we can say is there is a lot of grounds for suspicion, there should be an official investigation of the sort the 9/11 commission did not engage in and that the failure to do these things is cheating the American people and in some sense the people of the world of a greater confidence in what really happened than they presently possess."

This is complete madness.  It is disgraceful.  Of course, it will be defended on grounds of "academic freedom" and "free speech."  Fine.  But we have a right to denounce and ridicule that speech.

By the way, I've read a number of stories about Falk's new role as Israel's tormentor.  Not one referred to his controversial, anti-American past.  The usual research by the usual media suspects.

The United States pays good money to the U.N. every year. 

Read the whole story.  It's bizarre.  It concludes with this:

In a February 16, 1979, op-ed for the New York Times, Mr. Falk praised Ayatollah Khomeini and bemoaned his ill treatment in the American press. He wrote, "The depiction of him as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false."Nearly nine months later, student followers of Khomeini invaded the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 diplomats hostage for the following 444 days.

This man was teaching our children.

April 10, 2008      Permalink