LATE EVENING POST:  MAY 26,  2008

Posted at 10:41 p.m. ET

WARNING ON IRAN

This is the kind of story, critically important in itself, that can have an impact on our presidential campaign.  The International Atomic Energy Agency, usually a soft touch for rogue regimes, has issued an unusually harsh report on Iran:

The International Atomic Energy Agency, in an unusually blunt and detailed report, said Monday that Iran’s suspected research into the development of nuclear weapons remained “a matter of serious concern” and continued to need “substantial explanations.”

The nine-page report accused the Iranians of a willful lack of cooperation, particularly in answering allegations that its nuclear program may be pointed less at energy generation than at military use.

Part of the agency’s case hinges on 18 documents listed in the report and presented to Iran that, according to Western intelligence agencies, indicate the Iranians have ventured into explosives, uranium processing and a missile warhead design — activities that ordinarily would be associated with constructing nuclear weapons.

And...

“The Iranians are certainly being confronted with some pretty strong evidence of a nuclear weapons program, and they are being petulant and defensive,” said David Albright, a former weapons inspector who now runs the Institute for Science and International Security. “The report lays out what the agency knows, and it is very damning. I’ve never seen it laid out quite like this.”

But do not be alarmed.  Pay no attention to those expressing concern.  Saint Barack of Obama is on the case.  It's a simple matter of meeting with Iranian leaders, engaging in the laying on of hands, and announcing that we are the change Iranians can believe in.  Everything will be solved.

No it won't.  Our own government disgraced itself in December by releasing a deceptively written National Intelligence Estimate that seemed to ease fears about an Iranian nuclear program.  The usual suspects in journalism rushed forward to describe everything we'd heard from the Bush administration up to that point as a false alarm.  Now even an international body known for its softness issues a sharp warning. 

Is anyone in Washington listening?  Does anyone still care?  Remember, the next thing you'll be told is that we can't take any strong action against Iran because it might drive oil prices up even further.  And it might.  We are in a fix.

May 26, 2008.      Permalink               

EVENING POST:  MAY 26,  2008

Posted at 8:14 p.m. ET

DEMOCRATIC COMBAT

A friend alerted me to this remarkable piece by Sean Wilentz on The Huffington Post, an inadequate website I generally don't patronize. Wilentz is a very liberal professor at Princeton, and I would have expected him, by default to be an Obaman.  But, no, he's a Clinton supporter and a very angry man at the moment.  He notes Clinton's recent victories and her anticipated win in Puerto Rico, and says:

Under those pressures, the Barack Obama campaign and its sympathizers have begun to articulate much more clearly what they mean by their vague slogan of "change" - nothing less than usurping the historic Democratic Party, dating back to the age of Andrew Jackson, by rejecting its historic electoral core: white workers and rural dwellers in the Middle Atlantic and border states.

Without a majority of those voters, the Democrats have, since the party's inception in the 1820s, been incapable of winning the presidency. The Obama advocates declare, though, that we have entered an entirely new political era. It is not only possible but also desirable, they say, for Democrats to win by turning away from those whom "progressive" pundits and bloggers disdain variously as "Nascar man," "uneducated," "low information" whites, "rubes, fools, and hate-mongers" who live in the nation's "shitholes."

Having attempted, with the aid of a complicit news media, to brand Hillary Clinton as a racist -- by flinging charges that, as the historian Michael Lind has shown, belong "in black helicopter/grassy knoll territory," Obama's supporters now fiercely claim that Clinton's white working class following is also essentially racist. Favoring the buzzword language of the academic left, tinged by persistent, discredited New Left and black nationalist theories about working-class "white skin privilege," a vote against Obama has become, according to his fervent followers, "a vote for whiteness."

Talk about transformative post-racial politics.

Well, I must say!  Does Princeton know about this fellow?  Will they let him back in for the fall term?  Will the other professors eat with him?  These are serious questions. 

Wilentz concludes:

In every presidential election they have won, the Democrats have solidified their historic link to white workers, not dismissed them. Obama and the champions of a new party coalition appear to think that everything has suddenly changed, simply because of the force of their own desires. In any event, Obama had shown no ability thus far to attract the one constituency that has always spelled the difference between victory and defeat for the Democratic Party. The party must now decide whether to go along with Obama and renounce its own heritage -- and tempt the political fates.

This is a very worthwhile piece.  I also love to see Democrats argue.

May 26, 2008.      Permalink          

AFTERNOON POST:  MAY 26,  2008

Posted at 4:02 p.m. ET

POLLS

Only one new tracking poll has been published today.  Rasmussen has McCain and Obama tied for the general election.

Rasmussen has Clinton up two over Obama.

Once again, if only by a small amount, Clinton outpolls Obama.  Obama clearly has work to do in expanding his base.  But McCain, in a Democratic year, should take no comfort from these results.  It will be an uphill climb for any Republican this year. 

May 26, 2008.      Permalink            

MONDAY:  MAY 26,  2008

Posted at 6:29 a.m. ET

WOUNDED FAMILIES

On this Memorial Day there is a group we should remember, one that very rarely receives the credit it is due.  There are thousands of American parents today taking care of of their children, wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Surely more can be done by the nation to help them.  Please read their story:

At that moment, Cynthia became one of a growing number of parents who are, by necessity, stepping back into the role of caregiver for their children who are returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with debilitating and often long-term injuries. According to officials from three national organizations—the Wounded Warrior Project, The Military Family Network,, and the Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes— an estimated 10,000 recent veterans of these conflicts now depend on their parents for their care. Working unheralded, these parents have quit jobs, shelved retirement plans, and relocated so they can be with their injured sons and daughters. Many have become warriors themselves, fighting to make sure this new wave of injured veterans gets the medical care and rehabilitation it needs.

These parent caregivers, many of them boomers and some older, face a 21st-century challenge: their children are coming home in unprecedented numbers with injuries that would have been fatal during earlier conflicts. “This is a war of disability, not a war of deaths,” says former Army physician Ronald Glasser, M.D., author of Wounded: Vietnam to Iraq (George Braziller, 2006). “Its legacy is the orthopedics and neurology wards, not the cemetery.” Not only have better helmets and body armor saved lives, but battlefield medicine now borders on miraculous. Someone arriving at the Air Force Theater Hospital in Balad, Iraq, has a 96 percent chance of survival. He or she can sometimes be stateside within 36 hours of the injury. As a result, there are just 6 deaths for every 100 injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan, compared with 28 deaths per 100 in Vietnam, and 38 in World War II, according to Linda Bilmes, a researcher at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Please read the whole thing.

May 26, 2008.      Permalink          

ERNIE PYLE

On Memorial Day it's appropriate to recall the great writing of the World War II reporter, Ernie Pyle, who was killed on the island of Ie Shima, off the coast of Okinawa, on April 18, 1945.  Ernie Pyle didn't write about the generals or the so-called "big picture."  He wrote about the ordinary soldiers from ordinary towns doing extraordinary things.  One of his most famous pieces is about the death of an Army captain, and the respect that his men had for him.  If you've never read it, today is the day to do so:

ERNIE PYLE:

The Death of Captain Waskow

AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944 - In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas.

Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had led his company since long before it left the States. He was very young, only in his middle twenties, but he carried in him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him.

"After my own father, he came next," a sergeant told me.

"He always looked after us," a soldier said. "He'd go to bat for us every time."

"I've never knowed him to do anything unfair," another one said.

I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought Capt. Waskow's body down. The moon was nearly full at the time, and you could see far up the trail, and even part way across the valley below. Soldiers made shadows in the moonlight as they walked.

Dead men had been coming down the mountain all evening, lashed onto the backs of mules. They came lying belly-down across the wooden pack-saddles, their heads hanging down on the left side of the mule, their stiffened legs sticking out awkwardly from the other side, bobbing up and down as the mule walked.

The Italian mule-skinners were afraid to walk beside dead men, so Americans had to lead the mules down that night. Even the Americans were reluctant to unlash and lift off the bodies at the bottom, so an officer had to do it himself, and ask others to help.

The first one came early in the morning. They slid him down from the mule and stood him on his feet for a moment, while they got a new grip. In the half light he might have been merely a sick man standing there, leaning on the others. Then they laid him on the ground in the shadow of the low stone wall alongside the road.

I don't know who that first one was. You feel small in the presence of dead men, and ashamed at being alive, and you don't ask silly questions.

We left him there beside the road, that first one, and we all went back into the cowshed and sat on water cans or lay on the straw, waiting for the next batch of mules.

Somebody said the dead soldier had been dead for four days, and then nobody said anything more about it. We talked soldier talk for an hour or more. The dead man lay all alone outside in the shadow of the low stone wall.

Then a soldier came into the cowshed and said there were some more bodies outside. We went out into the road. Four mules stood there, in the moonlight, in the road where the trail came down off the mountain. The soldiers who led them stood there waiting. "This one is Captain Waskow," one of them said quietly.

Two men unlashed his body from the mule and lifted it off and laid it in the shadow beside the low stone wall. Other men took the other bodies off. Finally there were five lying end to end in a long row, alongside the road. You don't cover up dead men in the combat zone. They just lie there in the shadows until somebody else comes after them.

The unburdened mules moved off to their olive orchard. The men in the road seemed reluctant to leave. They stood around, and gradually one by one I could sense them moving close to Capt. Waskow's body. Not so much to look, I think, as to say something in finality to him, and to themselves. I stood close by and I could hear.

One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud, "God damn it." That's all he said, and then he walked away. Another one came. He said, "God damn it to hell anyway." He looked down for a few last moments, and then he turned and left.

Another man came; I think he was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the half light, for all were bearded and grimy dirty. The man looked down into the dead captain's face, and then he spoke directly to him, as though he were alive. He said: "I'm sorry, old man."

Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer, and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tenderly, and he said:

"I sure am sorry, sir."

Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the dead hand, and he sat there for a full five minutes, holding the dead hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face, and he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there.

And finally he put the hand down, and then reached up and gently straightened the points of the captain's shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the wound. And then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.

After that the rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving the five dead men lying in a line, end to end, in the shadow of the low stone wall. We lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and pretty soon we were all asleep.

Please compare that to the kind of "journalism" we're getting today.

May 26, 2008.      Permalink          

THE BEGINNING OF MEMORIAL DAY

There are many stories about how Memorial Day first started.  There were stories of women decorating the graves of Southern soldiers during the Civil War.  There were other stories of commemorations in small towns throughout the country.  Officially, though, Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, began on May 5, 1868, with a proclamation by General John A. Logan, commander of the Grand Army of the Republic.  I thought you'd be interested in the actual proclamation:

HEADQUARTERS GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC

General Orders No.11, WASHINGTON, D.C., May 5, 1868

The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet church-yard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.

We are organized, comrades, as our regulations tell us, for the purpose among other things, "of preserving and strengthening those kind and fraternal feelings which have bound together the soldiers, sailors, and marines who united to suppress the late rebellion." What can aid more to assure this result than cherishing tenderly the memory of our heroic dead, who made their breasts a barricade between our country and its foes? Their soldier lives were the reveille of freedom to a race in chains, and their deaths the tattoo of rebellious tyranny in arms. We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. All that the consecrated wealth and taste of the nation can add to their adornment and security is but a fitting tribute to the memory of her slain defenders. Let no wanton foot tread rudely on such hallowed grounds. Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.

If other eyes grow dull, other hands slack, and other hearts cold in the solemn trust, ours shall keep it well as long as the light and warmth of life remain to us.

Let us, then, at the time appointed gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with the choicest flowers of spring-time; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from dishonor; let us in this solemn presence renew our pledges to aid and assist those whom they have left among us a sacred charge upon a nation's gratitude, the soldier's and sailor's widow and orphan.

It is the purpose of the Commander-in-Chief to inaugurate this observance with the hope that it will be kept up from year to year, while a survivor of the war remains to honor the memory of his departed comrades. He earnestly desires the public press to lend its friendly aid in bringing to the notice of comrades in all parts of the country in time for simultaneous compliance therewith.

Department commanders will use efforts to make this order effective.

By order of

JOHN A. LOGAN,
Commander-in-Chief

N.P. CHIPMAN,
Adjutant General

Official:
WM. T. COLLINS, A.A.G.

The holiday originally honored only the dead of the Civil War, but became essentially a Northern holiday, honoring the Union dead.  The South refused to recognize the holiday until after World War I, when it became a day to honor all dead of all American wars.  Since 1971 it has been commemorated on the last Monday in May.

We'll be back later in the day with some regular news features.

May 26, 2008.      Permalink