Clarke Bashes Bush

Richard A. Clarke is a career bureaucrat, serving Presidents Reagan through Bush II. Most recently, he spent a decade directing the federal government's counterterror efforts. He left that post 13 months ago...just before the US attacked Iraq.

Oh, and he has been a registered Republican, at least as recently as the 2000 presidential election, and is hawkish on terrorism.

In his brand new book, Clarke says Bush was soft on terror before 9/11 and has been horrible for the past 18 months because of his decision to focus on Iraq instead of al Qaida.

Clarke has been giving a number of interviews, most prominently on CBS television's "60 minutes" program and will undoubtedly be in the press for the foreseeable future. Here are some choice words from tomorrow morning's Washington Post story:

The president, he said, "failed to act prior to September 11 on the threat from al Qaeda despite repeated warnings and then harvested a political windfall for taking obvious yet insufficient steps after the attacks." The rapid shift of focus to Saddam Hussein, Clarke writes, "launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq that strengthened the fundamentalist, radical Islamic terrorist movement worldwide."

Among the motives for the war, Clarke argues, were the politics of the 2002 midterm election. "The crisis was manufactured, and Bush political adviser Karl Rove was telling Republicans to 'run on the war,' " Clarke writes.

"I'm sure I'll be criticized for lots of things, and I'm sure they'll launch their dogs on me," Clarke told CBS's "60 Minutes" in an interview broadcast last night. "But frankly I find it outrageous that the president is running for reelection on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism."

Essentially, this is the same argument that Democratic hawks like Wesley Clark have been making for many months.

Clarke says the administration completely missed the boat on the threat from al Qaida -- and bought Laurie Mylroie's wacky theories that Iraq was behind all the major terror of the 1990s.

Like former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill, who spoke out in January, Clarke said some of Bush's leading advisers arrived in office determined to make war on Iraq. Nearly all of them, he said, believed Clinton had been "overly obsessed with al Qaeda."

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Clarke wrote, scowled and asked, "why we are beginning by talking about this one man, bin Laden." When Clarke told him no foe but al Qaeda "poses an immediate and serious threat to the United States," Wolfowitz is said to have replied that Iraqi terrorism posed "at least as much" of a danger. FBI and CIA representatives backed Clarke in saying they had no such evidence.

"I could hardly believe," Clarke writes, that Wolfowitz pressed the "totally discredited" theory that Iraq was behind the 1993 truck bomb at the World Trade Center, "a theory that had been investigated for years and found to be totally untrue."

I've blogged about this repeatedly.

Clarke also echoes many others who say that DoD leaders Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were itching for a fight against Iraq from the moment the World Trade Center was attacked.

In the first minutes after hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, Rice placed Clarke in her chair in the Situation Room and asked him to direct the government's crisis response. The next day, Clarke returned to find the subject changed to Iraq.

"I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that [Defense Secretary Donald H.] Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq," he writes.

In discussions of military strikes, "Secretary Rumsfeld complained that there were no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan" -- where al Qaeda was based under protection of the Taliban -- "and that we should consider bombing Iraq."

Ouch.

Worse, Bush bought it hook, line and sinker:

"Any leader whom one can imagine as president on September 11 would have declared a 'war on terrorism' and would have ended the Afghan sanctuary [for al Qaeda] by invading," Clarke writes. "What was unique about George Bush's reaction" was the additional choice to invade "not a country that had been engaging in anti-U.S. terrorism but one that had not been, Iraq." In so doing, he estranged allies, enraged potential friends in the Arab and Islamic worlds, and produced "more terrorists than we jail or shoot."

"It was as if Osama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush, chanting 'invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq,' " Clarke writes.

Republicans spent much of the 1990s arguing that using military force to topple dictators didn't automatically improve American security. Bush campaigned on that topic in 2000.

Now, however, we're expected to believe that toppling Saddam improved US security even though it meant shifting the war on terrorism. Lots of special units and other real military assets were moved from Afghanistan to the Iraq diversion.

And now, we have 130,000 American troops bogged down with no draw-down date in sight. Even more forces are training for Iraq or recovering from recent deployments.

Montreal ISA: Day Four

I'm back home, but this morning I had a panel on "Assessing the 'American Imperium': Historical and Analytical Perspectives." I primarily focused on the limits of the Bush Doctrine -- the US is very unlikely to launch another preventive war any time soon.

On that note, Don Daniel, Pete Dombrowski and I just learned that our piece, "The Bush Doctrine: Rest in Peace" will appear in June's Defence Studies. Since not many will see it there, I thought I'd mention it on the blog. I should have a copy of the manuscript on my academic website next week.

The other panelists included Dan Nexon (he organized it), Alex Cooley, Paul MacDonald and Torbjørn L. Knutsen.

Each panelist presented interesting arguments, though I cannot readily recount them here right now. I especially enjoyed the Q&A time after the presentations, when panelists focused on land versus sea empires, contemporary policy implications and other interesting topics.

One Year Anniversary: US Friends Still Angry

The US started its latest war against Iraq one year ago today. In this morning's Global and Mail, which bills itself as "Canada's national newspaper," former Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations Paul Heinbecker has an op-ed piece explaining his country's opposition to the war.

Heinbecker stepped down as UN Ambassador January 2004, so his perspective is truly first hand. He led a last ditch effort to find a compromise between the US and most of the rest of the world at the United Nations. The Canadian proposal would have set some specific tests and deadlines for Iraq to meet. He failed to convince the US to go along.

In any event, Heinbecker argued that Canada's refusal to join the war effort has been "quickly and thoroughly vindicated." Actually, he says a lot of stuff that fairly implicitly supports John Kerry's recent claim that much of the world would like to see him beat George W. Bush in November. Here are some highlights:

No weapons of mass destruction have been found, despite the best efforts of more than a thousand American weapons inspectors with free rein. No connection to al-Qaeda has been established. No persuasive argument endures about the urgency of the U.S. need to act.

Most, including me, disbelieved the allegations emanating from the White House about Iraqi nuclear weapons. Few were persuaded by the "intelligence" presented to the UN Security Council and to the world by the U.S. Secretary of State and the director of the CIA.

The most obvious consequence is that the United States and its posse are caught in a morass. They cannot end the occupation precipitously without triggering a civil war and undoing the good they have done in removing Saddam Hussein. They cannot stay in Iraq without losing more soldiers and more money. Echoes of Vietnam. Meanwhile, the Iraqi toll also rises. As one Arab ambassador at the United Nations put it, the Americans have swallowed a razor and nothing they do now will be painless or cost-free.

Heinbecker references the recent Pew Research Center study on the rise of anti-Americanism around the world -- especially in the Arab/Muslim countries -- as well as a report by the US Advisory Group on on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World.

Two-third of Canadians believe that President Bush "knowlingly lied to the world" about Iraq, according to a Global and Mail/CTV News poll!

At the end of the piece, Heinbecker describes some lessons for Canadian foreign policy. The third is perhaps the most interesting:

the Iraq war demonstrates the limits of intelligence. The U.S. administration and others made intelligence pivotal to their decision-making. The Canadian government used it as one input among many. One government is embarrassed and the other is not. Time, and enquiries, will tell whether the intelligence in the United States and Britain was just catastrophically bad, politically manipulated or both. The Canadian analysis was better.

Some of the neocons similarly argue that intelligence information should not carry the day because of the "big picture" issues.

Of course, absent threats confirmed by intelligence, wars become matters of choice and the US public (and Congress) probably would not have supported the Iraq war.

Keep this in mind next time some Bush official says that had the US listened to the rest of the world, Saddam Hussein would still be in power. Absent the urgency, pro-war neocon chickenhawks supported war to topple Hussein in 1991, in 1998, in 2002, and on most dates in between. What did the US lose by waiting? What has it gained by attacking?

Montreal: Snow, not spring is in the air

Montreal, day 2: I firmly wish that I had remembered Chapstick and a hat. It has been cold, with an icy wind, and this morning it was snowing. Great. It's really hard to plan an on-line fantasy baseball draft under these conditions.

The NCAA tournament has started and I'm glad Maryland (PhD '89) has a win already. Kansas, my undergrad school ('83), plays Friday against University of Illinois, Chicago. Louisville plays Xavier at just about the same time and I don't yet know if either game is going to be televised in upstate NY (Montreal cable systems receive those broadcasts).

I reluctantly went with Duke in my pool. After I decided Kansas could beat Kentucky, it was easy to put them in the Final Four -- but I have them losing to Oklahoma State. I have Stanford (CISAC Fellow 1987-88) losing to Duke in the other bracket. Most of the people in my "office" pool picked Kentucky to win it all.

Ha! They'll all look bad once the Jayhawks prevail in that game!

Most unusual pick: one guy in my pool named Wisconsin the eventual national champion!

Montreal: Day one

This morning's panel went fine. I found a few things to talk about -- and disclosed to the audience of maybe 15 academics that I blog.

Nobody really reacted to that -- of course, I was the discussant.

Later, I hit the book room, picked up a free copy of the Carnegie Report on WMD, and headed to some panels and poster sessions in the afternoon. Somehow, I forgot to each lunch. That never happens with me.

Tomorrow, late morning, I deliver my paper on "Neorealists and Foreign Policy Debate: The Disconnect Between Theory and Practice." For anyone really bored by their own lives, I recommend my ISA paper (warning: pdf file)

Feedback is welcome.

Montreal

I'm in Montreal, attending the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association. At 8:30 tomorrow morning, I'm the discussant on a panel featuring a number of specialists on international ethics and political philosophy: James Bohman, Molly Cochran, Nayef Samhat and Martin Weber.

The papers mostly focus on the development of a transnational public sphere, with some leaning to a Habermasian perspective and others to Dewey's pragmatism.

Let's hope I have something interesting to say about their papers.

Montreal is a great locale to talk about transnational identity and communication. And one of the papers discusses the role of the internet in fostering deliberative democracy.

Unfortunately, to fly to Montreal, I had to land in Cleveland.

Actually, I've got nothing against Cleveland, it's just that the weather caused our little regional jet to sit on the runway for 90 minutes, return to the terminal for fuel, and then undergo a second round of de-icing. We were on the plane for four hours, even though the flight itself was only about 60 or 70 minutes.

My hotel has free high speed internet access, though it isn't the fastest connection I've ever had. Still, I should be able to do some blogging over the next few days.

Stay tuned for ISA updates!

Land Mine Ban Update

Blogger Mark Kleiman recently argued that the Bush administration's Land Mine policy revision is good -- not a setback, as I previously reported.

In support of his position, Kleiman references an authority. Weapons expert Richard L. Garwin had a piece in the LA Times arguing in support of the US technological solution, which mandates use of self destructing land mines. Thanks to a timing mechanism that has worked extraordinarily well in testing, the US will be able to clear both anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines quickly after a conflict ends.

The Mine Ban Treaty Bans only the former type of mine. Thus, Garwin reasons that the US has the morally superior position.

There are several problems with this analysis.

First, other than the US, what states will have the technology to use self-destructive mines? In the Mine Ban Treaty, 141 states have agreed to ban mines. Another 9 have signed, but not ratified. Given the US past record of keeping relatively advanced defense technology to itself for some years of exclusive use, I doubt the US is about to share this techology with the rest of the world any time soon.

Second, when would mines be removed via self-destruction? Most "wars" these days are civil conflicts, not traditional interstate wars. Mines are thus not used for traditional military reasons. States and opponents alike use mines in order to terrorize and separate civilians -- the mission is not really military. The US technological solution might work just fine if an advancing army puts down mines and then blows them up soon afterwards. But when will any party in a civil war decide that his or her own side is sufficiently safe that it won't need mines?

Mine expert Ken Rutherford told me two weeks ago that ethnic "borders" are demarcated throughout the former Yugoslavia with land mines. The parties there have no interest in de-mining those lines.

Of course, the current anti-personnel Mine Ban Treaty strictly limits the global supply of mines. Many states that might otherwise sell them are now obliged not to participate in the global marketplace. If the US is selling mines, of whatever technical capability, the market is going to be open. Both Russia and China refuse to join the Mine Ban Treaty in part because the US will not.

To tie this to my first point, how long will it be before Russia or China have self-destructive mines?

Third, what happens until 2010? The US is still using the traditional type of land mine in Korea. Since it is not a member of the Treaty, the US could simply reverse current policy pronouncements and use old-fashioned mines wherever it wants. The US could decide tomorrow to deploy mines in Iraq, for example. This would set a terrible example for a world moving toward an outright ban based on the immorality of the weapon.

Garwin doesn't devote space to explain why the US actually might need mines for traditional security reasons. As I said before, quoting Rutherford, the overwhelming majority of victims of mines are civilians, not soldiers, and they occur after the war, not during the fighting.

Why are these land mines needed, whether low or high tech?

Would Kleiman and Garwin alternatively support an additional treaty banning anti-vehicular mines? Would the US?

Perhaps that is the morally superior position.

Spain: March Madness

Every now and then, some conspiracy-minded blogger (or commenter) worries that Bush can win the 2004 presidential election thanks to an "October surprise."

After Saddam Hussein was arrested in December, Bush's poll ratings went up for a brief period -- perhaps just enough in a close election to make a meaningful difference. Thus, one worry is that the administration might "find" Osama bin Laden just before the election.

Another concern is that the US might suffer another homeland terrorist attack just before the election, causing nervous voters to "rally 'round" the President.

Well, Spain just had a major terrorist attack, then an election just a few days later -- and the voters unexpectedly ousted the government that had backed Bush in Iraq.

The Washington Post has this on Monday's front page:"Spanish Socialists Oust Party of U.S. War Ally."

Spaniards voted Sunday to remove the party of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar from power, apparently blaming his staunch support of the U.S.-led war in Iraq for the bombing attacks that killed 200 people in Madrid on Thursday.

While opinion polls taken before the bombings had given Aznar's Popular Party a comfortable lead, voters overwhelmingly endorsed candidates from the opposition Socialist Party, whose leader, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has promised to immediately withdraw Spain's 1,300 troops from Iraq, redirect Spain's foreign policy away from the United States and restore good relations with such European allies as France and Germany that had opposed the Iraq war.

The evidence more-and-more suggests the terrorism was the work of al Qaida, and voters appeared to reject the conservative government because it had made Spain a target of terrorists.

Finally!

After a very long wait, State University of New York Press has published Democratizing Global Politics; Discourse Norms, International Regimes, and Political Community, by Rodger A. Payne and Nayef H. Samhat.

Amazon has it for sale, though as a hardback, it is a bit pricey.

This is from the back cover:

Historically, international institutions have been secretive and not particularly democratic. They have typically excluded almost all interested parties except the representatives of the most powerful nations. Because of this "deficit of democracy" international organizations and regimes have found themselves the target of protest movements and lobbying campaigns. Democratizing Global Politics finds that, in response to this mounting legitimacy crisis, international organizations and regimes are beginning to embrace new norms of participation and transparency, opening the decision-making process to additional political and social actors and creating opportunities for meaningful external scrutiny. Two case studies examine the construction of such "discourse norms" in the Global Environmental Facility and the World Trade Organization. The authors conclude that these normative changes not only legitimize international institutions-they also promote the development of political community on a global scale.

I wish I knew how to include the book cover photo.

So, readers, two technical questions. First, any idea how I can include a photo on a basic blog? Second, completely unrelated to that, anyone know if google changed something that made my search box ineffective? I cannot seem to search my own archives anymore. And that's frustrating.

Update: Hey, someone actually reads this blog! Thanks, Micah, for telling me how to do this:

New Visuals

The Presidential race is heating up early this cycle. President Bush has already made the news twice this past week for his controversial advertisements -- one using images of 9/11 (including actors as firemen) and one featuring an apparent Arab terrorist.

Billmon calls the man in the ads "Muhammad Horton" since the image echoes Bush Senior's famous Willie Horton ad. Actually, Atrios uses this tag too...

In any case, Digby points to a website that has a great archive of presidential ads. View some of the old ones to get a good idea of whether this year's efforts are any better or worse.

I watched several of the 1988 Bush-Dukakis ads (you know, a Bush versus a guy from Massachusetts...and a Bush won) to get a feel for what this year's campaign season might be like.

Check it out.

Oh, speaking of visuals, someone with photoshop has been reworking the President's image. I realize that men and women react differently to the two major parties (the "gender gap" has been real for many elections now), but this is ridiculous. I got the link from Mark Kleiman.

Empire

I've got to go to Lexington this afternoon to give a talk on American primacy and empire. It's for a "Worldview" conference, co-sponsored by the Rotary and University of Kentucky Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce.

President Bush says the US is not pursuing empire:

We have no territorial ambitions, we don't seek an empire. Our nation is committed to freedom for ourselves and for others. We and our allies have fought evil regimes and left in their place self-governing and prosperous nations.

And in every conflict, the character of our nation has been demonstrated in the conduct of the United States military. Where they have served, America's veterans are remembered by civilians with affection, not fear.

One veteran recalls the closing days of the second world war. In the spring of 1945, he said, "around the world, the sight of a 12-man squad of teenage boys armed in uniform brought terror to people's hearts. But there was an exception: a squad of GIs, a sight that brought the biggest smiles you ever saw to people's lips, and joy to their hearts. GIs meant candy and cigarettes, C-rations and freedom." "America," he said, "has sent the best of her young men around the world, not to conquer, but to liberate; not to terrorize, but to help."

I plan to take the President seriously and argue against the idea even of American primacy. The US should work with its allies to resolve common problems, whether they are nuclear proliferation, global terror or global warming.

Apparently, I speak right after Tom Donnelly, a neo-conservative from the American Enterprise Institute. He recently wrote an op-ed piece on American primacy, but part of it is heavily dependent upon a piece written by someone I've known since we both spent a year at Stanford back in 1987-88, Bill Wohlforth.

In any case, Donnelly argues that September 11 awakened a sleeping giant, American primacy contributes to the creation of a durable peace, and coalitions among states are of limited utility. Since the Bush adminstration apparently recognizes these facts, Donnelly reckons this is all good news for democracy (in places like the Middle East) and bad news for China, which has long been a neo-con concern:

Still, the decision to remove Saddam Hussein and to build something more decent and democratic in the regime's place does mark a new, third epoch in the "unipolar era." Moreover, this break has been reinforced by President Bush's recent speeches vowing to "transform" the politics of the greater Middle East and questioning the United States' previous willingness to tolerate a variety of autocratic local allies in the name of narrow "stability" or Cold War, balance-of-power habit. What has begun is the real test of the Pax Americana-the active employment of American power to promulgate liberal political principles and thereby fashion an enduring peace...

This final point seems as obvious today as in 1999; yes, Chinese economic and military strength has continued to grow. And, especially in the particular case of a decapitating strike on Taiwan, the People's Liberation Army can make a U.S. response very challenging. But the overall strategic balance between the United States and China is probably shifting away from Beijing. In a "globalized" world, the distinction between regional and global power is increasingly illusory, making it difficult for Beijing to maintain its own private sphere of influence independent from the overarching Pax Americana.

More on my response when I get back.

Tenet rebuts Cheney

Yesterday, CIA Director George Tenet testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. When responding to questions from some Democratic Senators, Tenet acknowledged that the White House had mischaracterized intelligence evidence about Iraq WMD and/or links to terrorism and that he had privately corrected them.

Jonathan Landay filed the story for Knight-Ridder newspapers.

CIA Director George Tenet on Tuesday rejected recent assertions by Vice President Dick Cheney that Iraq cooperated with the al-Qaida terrorist network and that the administration had proof of an illicit Iraqi biological warfare program....

"I'm not going to sit here and tell you what my interaction was ... and what I did and didn't do, except that you have to have confidence to know that when I believed that somebody was misconstruing intelligence, I said something about it," Tenet said. "I don't stand up publicly and do it."

Tenet admitted to Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee's senior Democrat, that he had told Cheney that the vice president was wrong in saying that two truck trailers recovered in Iraq were "conclusive evidence" that Saddam had a biological weapons program.

Cheney made the assertion in a Jan. 22 interview with National Public Radio.

Tenet said that U.S. intelligence agencies still disagree on the purpose of the trailers. Some analysts believe they were mobile biological-weapons facilities; others think they may have been for making hydrogen gas for weather balloons.

That's good stuff -- though it is kind of late. This has all been public knowledge for some time.

Tenet also shot down the material compiled by Doug Feith, leaked to The Weekly Standard and previously disavowed by the Pentagon:

Levin also questioned Tenet about a Jan. 9 interview with the Rocky Mountain News, in which Cheney cited a November article in the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, as "the best source of information" on cooperation between Saddam and al-Qaida.

The article was based on a leaked top-secret memorandum. It purportedly set out evidence, compiled by a special Pentagon intelligence cell, that Saddam was in league with al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. It was written by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, the third-highest Pentagon official and a key proponent of the war.

"Did the CIA agree with the contents of the Feith document?" asked Levin.

"Senator, we did not clear the document," replied Tenet. "We did not agree with the way the data was characterized in that document."

Tenet, who pointed out that the Pentagon, too, had disavowed the document, said he learned of the article Monday night, and he planned to speak with Cheney about the CIA's view of the Feith document.

Finally, Landay also brings in the role of Iraqi defectors in fostering intelligence falsehoods:

Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the military's main intelligence arm, said that "some" information provided by defectors had checked out, but that they also gave material that was "fabricated or embellished."

Previously, I noted that the Pentagon found major problems with the overwhelming majority of evidence provided by the defectors -- especially on WMD.

Florida: for Kerry?

A recent poll showed John Kerry leading George W. Bush in Florida and a lot of bloggers have been discussing this the past couple of days. Josh Marshall, for instance, says that Bush will likely lose the entire election if he loses Florida, while Kerry can win without it -- by winning Ohio, for example.

The New Yorker has an article that addresses this topic, called "The Cuban Strategy, Can Jeb Bush deliver the Florida vote in November?" by William Finnegan.Finnegan argues that Jeb Bush is very popular among Cubans (and other Latinos), but that his brother might not get the full benefit.

On-line, the New Yorker also has an interesting interview with Finnegan. He was asked: Is Florida up for grabs?

It does seem to be. Jeb Bush won reëlection as governor fairly easily in 2002, but he is popular among a number of groups that aren’t nearly as fond of his brother. Non-Cuban Latinos, for instance, tend in Florida (as elsewhere) to be Democrats. There are more than a million of them in the state—Dominicans, Mexicans, Nicaraguans, and, most numerously, Puerto Ricans. Jeb and his family have a strong cross-party appeal among these folks—Jeb’s wife, Columba, is from a small town in Mexico, and their son, George P., is a talented, attractive campaigner. Then, there’s Jeb’s fluent Spanish. But the war in Iraq has not been popular among these voters. Nor have the President’s tax policies or his economic management. Other groups who have tended to vote for Jeb, such as white veterans in the Panhandle (most of whom are registered Democrats), may vote for Kerry. Meanwhile, traditionally Democratic voters who still feel that the 2000 election was decided unfairly will be strongly motivated to go to the polls this year.

Finally, there are the Cubans, who are unlikely to vote for Kerry in very large numbers but who may not turn out heavily for Bush, either. Any significant incursion made on their support by the Democrats can certainly swing the election—when Bill Clinton got more than thirty per cent of the Cuban vote in 1996, he won Florida. There are more registered Democrats than Republicans in Florida, but that gap is narrowing. This election should be close.

The Democratic groups who might be especially motivated include African Americans (many were purged wrongly from voting rolls or intimidated by dubious election-day practices, and Palm Beach residents -- remember the butterfly ballot?). That last link is to a pdf file.

Al-Qaida-Iraq Link Further Debunked

Friday, I found an excellent article by Warren P. Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott of Knight-Ridder that pretty thoroughly debunks the links between Iraq, 9/11 and al Qaida. It is devastating:

Nearly a year after U.S. and British troops invaded Iraq, no evidence has turned up to verify allegations of Saddam's links with al-Qaida, and several key parts of the administration's case have either proved false or seem increasingly doubtful.

Senior U.S. officials now say there never was any evidence that Saddam's secular police state and Osama bin Laden's Islamic terrorism network were in league. At most, there were occasional meetings.

Moreover, the U.S. intelligence community never concluded that those meetings produced an operational relationship, American officials said. That verdict was in a secret report by the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence that was updated in January 2003, on the eve of the war.

"We could find no provable connection between Saddam and al-Qaida," a senior U.S. official acknowledged. He and others spoke on condition of anonymity because the information involved is classified and could prove embarrassing to the White House.

Here's the bottom line, which should be no surprise to regular readers of this blog:

A Knight Ridder review of the Bush administration statements on Iraq's ties to terrorism and what's now known about the classified intelligence has found that administration advocates of a pre-emptive invasion frequently hyped sketchy and sometimes false information to help make their case. On two occasions, they neglected to report information that painted a less sinister picture.

The story goes on to discuss a variety of specific claims made by administration officials that apparently linked Iraq and al Qaida.

Tim Dunlop of The Road To Surfdom used the information in the story to focus on the alleged terror camp at Salman Pak (in Iraq), which has not received much attention lately. Dunlop references his own pre-war blogging that thoroughly discussed the camp and other evidence.

Surely everyone remembers this camp? It is the place in Iraq allegedly hosting the fuselage of a Boeing 707 where Saddam supposedly allowed terrorists to train for potential hijackings.

Of course, Laurie Mylroie and other Iraq war hawks made a big deal about this facility.

Yet, Strobel, Landay and Walcott talked to a lot of senior people in the intelligence community. They were told this: "The U.S. military has found no evidence of such a facility."

The facility didn't exist!

As Dunlop points out, this is a particularly egregious finding, first because DoD still lists the capture of the camp as one of its war accomplishments and second because the current head of the Iraq Survey Group (Charles Duelfer, who took over from David Kay) claimed that he saw the camps when he was a UN weapons inspector. Dunlop points out that no such claim is reported in the UN reports about Iraqi weapons.

The media could play a central role in assuring public accountability. Dunlop notes that someone should ask Duelfer about Salman Pak.

Good idea.

Private censorship of political speech

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell works against limits on campaign spending and often argues that this is a first amendment issue. Individuals, groups, and candidates ought to be able to spend money to disseminate political views.

What happens if (a) media oligopoly reduces the number of channels for distributing political views; and (b) media corporate policy aligns with one political party or faction in head-to-head conflict with another party?

I'm still in Missouri, and an old friend told me today about Viacom blocking access to Missouri Democrats who wanted to place political ads on billboards!

I found the story on the St. Louis Post Dispatch website:

The Missouri Democratic Party is sparring with one of the state's biggest billboard owners, who rejected the party's plan to erect an anti-Republican message on billboards in predominantly African-American areas in St. Louis and Kansas City.

Viacom Outdoor turned down the Democratic ad, which features the face of an African-American man next to the words, "Missouri Republicans Have A Plan. You Are Not Part Of It."

Like the CBS decision not to broadcast the MoveOn ads during the Super Bowl, this is a large media corporation limiting the dissemination of political speech.

Like the decision by Clear Channel this past week to fire Howard Stern, it also looks like the media corporation is claiming to impose decency standards to cover its censorship:

Carl Folta, a spokesman for Viacom Outdoor, disagreed and called the ad "deceptive" and "not in good taste." Among other things, he said the firm took exception to the use of a black person in the ad.

[Missouri state Democratic Party chairwoman May Scheve] Reardon noted that other local Viacom billboards promote gambling, beer and sex.

I guess skimpy bikini ads for beer are in good taste?

Update: Viacom, of course, owns CBS -- so this corporation seems to be making it very difficult for those from one political party to voice political opinions through its media outlets. Do you suppose Fox is worried about the competition?

Crony Capitalism Opportunity

Oops, I forgot to add the Halliburton angle to the last post.

Yes, the US leads the world in spending cash for land mine de-mining purposes.

Ken Rutherford said today that there are perhaps as many as 100 million land mines in the world. It costs $300 to $1000 to take out a single mine.

Do the math.

That's $30 to $100 billion that needs to be spent de-mining the world.

Increasingly, private corporate entities are moving into the de-mining business.

Suddenly, the US motives look less humanitarian.

Land Mines and Human Security

I presented my talk on "Human Security and American Foreign Policy" this morning about 9:30 am. It went fine, but the real highlight of the day was listening to the story of Ken Rutherford. His talk immediately followed mine and was quite engrossing.

Rutherford lost both of his legs from a land mine in Somalia (where he was doing humanitarian work) and in 1995 he helped co-found the Landmines Survivors Network. The group played a key role in the global campaign to ban landmines because they presented human faces to go along with the statistics.

And the statistics are frightening. Landmines kill far more children after wars than they do soldiers during wars. Over 20,000 people a year are injured by mines and over half of them die from their injuries. More than 90% of the victims from mines are innocent civilians.

Rutherford has traveled all over the world telling his story. On the web, I found a picture of him sitting with Princess Diana, who was a proponent of the Mine Ban Treaty. He knows all the key figures from the campaign and still travels extensively giving talks. Sir Paul McCartney will attend the signing of his new co-edited book in LA in April. Monday, he is speaking to 20 soldiers about to head off to Iraq, who will be engaged in de-mining.

If you don't know much about the Mine Ban Treaty, it was concluded quite quickly in 1997 after years of effort by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy was the central hero of Rutherford's talk, as he took Canadian foreign policy in an unprecedented diplomatic direction.

The US, of course, is one of the key states that is not a party to the treaty (more than 140 states now are) and my paper argued that America's focus on traditional national security conflicts with the Canadian vision of "human security."

On the other hand, the US pays for more de-mining than all of the treaty members combined and hasn't used mines in war for years. Rutherford theorizes that the US refuses to join the treaty because the Pentagon doesn't want international lawyers scutinizing the non-humanitarian effects of its weapons systems.

Rutherford got his PhD from Georgetown University and now teaches at Southwest Missouri State in Springfield. He has written a number of academic articles (including one for the prestigious academic outlet World Politics) and has a couple of edited books on the topic. His own book is apparently about to be picked up by MIT Press.

Good News

I have frequently used this space to complain about things that bother me -- the Bush administration, stupid baseball management decisions, SUVs, etc. The list could go on and on.

As I prepare to head to Missouri to give my "Human Security and American Foreign Policy" paper in the morning, I'll simply use today's short blog entry to congratulate Marc Lynch, a political scientist at
Williams College, who was recently granted tenure! He often reads this space.

Here's the scoop:

Lynch studies the role of deliberation and public spheres in international relations, focusing on the Middle East. His most recent article, “Taking Arabs Seriously” was published in Foreign Affairs, one of the most influential foreign policy journals in the world. Lynch is the author of State Interests and Public Spheres: The International Politics of Jordan’s Identity. Another book, Iraq and the New Arab Public Sphere, is forthcoming. Lynch received his B.A. in political science from Duke University in 1990 and his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1997.

As a Jayhawk basketball fan, that Duke part is hard to take. Actually, I've noticed in my travels around the country that virtually everyone who likes college hoops hates Duke, whether from UNC or other ACC schools, Kentucky, etc.).

Since I'll be gone for a few days, expect light blogging.

Blogging in the News

Today's front page of my local newspaper, the Louisville Courier Journal, included a fairly long story about political blogging. You can read it on their official webpage.

The writer focuses a great deal of attention on the political blog written by Justin Walker, a Louisvillian who attends Duke University -- and who has been hitting the campaign trail this year. The webpage has a picture of him interviewing Dennis Kucinich.

In other words, the traditional media outlet focused on a blog that is much like the traditional media. Walker's blog seems to be published on the official Duke website and includes reports from all over the country. His most recent entry is from Minnesota (which votes today) and discusses how he spent the day as part of the "official press corps" traveling with the Edwards campaign.

The story includes a sidebar that links to a number of blogs -- including several major ones I read regularly (Atrios, Daily Kos, Josh Marshall, and Calpundit), some I don't (Andrew Sullivan and Instapundit) and the official campaign blogs of the remaining major Democratic candidates (Kerry and Edwards) and Bush.

Yawn.

At least the story briefly mentions the way the Dean campaign was fueled by bloggers, quotes Josh Marshall, and notes the cash Ben Chandler raised from blog ads.

If I were doing a story on blogging, I'd additionally read some smaller blogs to get a feel for the great diversity in the blogosphere.

It might turn out that that some halfway decent ones are local.

Human Security Update

I'm about to go to a conference on Human Security in the New Millennium at the University of Missouri. Note: I've been working hard to finish my paper, which partially explains the light blogging over the past few days (plus it was a beautiful weekend and I rode my new bike a couple of times).

My paper focuses on the apparent US antipathy towards human security -- and the potential implications for the "western security community." Does it matter that long-time friends and allies disagree so fundamentally about threats and solutions to those threats? How does it affect the international normative structure?

Finding: Do a google search for "human security" on the White House webpage. I got ZERO hits. For "national security," I got more than 20,000! Canada, by contrast, has all kinds of human security material on their DFAIT webpage.

A major topic at the conference is likely to be the global movement against land mines. Canada and other states interested in human security point to the Mine Ban Treaty as one of their major successes. Ken Rutherford, a genuine expert on that topic, will be there talking about the movement to ban mines.

While researching for updates on the Mine Ban treaty, I found a recent Washington Post story on the latest Bush administration policy on mines. That link is gone, but the Boston Globe had the same story. The US has now moved ever further away from the world, in some ways, but is trying to frame its position consistent with their concerns:

The new policy, to be announced today, represents a departure from the previous US goal of banning all land mines designed to kill troops. That plan, established by President Bill Clinton, set a target of 2006 for giving up antipersonnel mines, depending on the success of Pentagon efforts to develop alternatives.

Bush, however, has decided to impose no limits on the use of "smart" land mines, which have timing devices to automatically defuse the explosives within hours or days, officials said.

The US plans to use dumb bombs only in South Korea and hasn't used any in war since the first Persian Gulf war in 1991.

A senior State Department official, who disclosed Bush's decision on condition he not be named, said the new policy aims at striking a balance between the Pentagon's desire to retain effective weapons and humanitarian concerns about civilian casualties caused by unexploded bombs, which can remain hidden long after combat ends and battlefields return to peaceful use.

The safety problem stems from dumb bombs, which kill as many as 10,000 civilians a year, the official said. Smart bombs, he added, "are not contributors to this humanitarian crisis."

NGOs, who are also hot on this idea, are not happy about the Bush move:

Bush's decision drew expressions of outrage and surprise from representatives of humanitarian organizations that have pressed for a more comprehensive US ban on land mines. They say the danger to civilians and allied soldiers during and after a war outweighs the benefits of such weapons. They also dispute the contention that unexploded smart mines are safe, saying there isn't enough evidence.

"We expected we wouldn't be pleased by the president's decision, but we hadn't expected a complete rejection of what has been US policy for the past 10 years," said Steve Goose, who heads the arms division of Human Rights Watch.

"It looks like a victory for those in the Pentagon who want to cling to outmoded weapons, and a failure of political leadership on the part of the White House. And it is stunningly at odds with what's happening in the rest of the world, where governments and armies are giving up these weapons."

The US funds more de-mining activing than any other state and the Bush budget calls for a 50% increase in support for it.

Bottom line: the US explicitly rejects the international normative standard (the Mine Ban Treaty), arguing that it needs mines to protect South Korea. But, it embraces the humanitarian claim and funds lots of de-mining.

There are similar human security-related disputes over the ICC, the CTBT, even Kyoto. That's what I'm exploring in my paper.

Political Unrest in the Red States

Apparently, the University of Kentucky Student Government Association has narrowly passed what Beth Wilson, Executive Director of the Kentucky ACLU, called a "strongly worded resolution against the USA PATRIOT Act." That pointer is to the text of the proposed resolution -- not to a story about its passing. I do not know if it was amended. Supposedly the website is going to be updated very soon.

I searched Google News for the "Patriot Act" resolution and learned that similar resolutions are being debated and passed all over the US -- including in many Bush Red states.

Elko County Nevada unanimously passed a resolution opposing any parts of the act that are unconstitutional.

Kansas City's Council voted 11-1 for a resolution that "warns against violating civil liberties and discriminating against racial or ethnic groups in the process."

Dallas County, Texas approved a resolution denouncing the Act. According to the story from the Star-Telegram, 3 states and 225 local governments (I've read that it is actually 250 now) have taken stands against the Act. The Austin City council is apparently one of them, though Austin is a left-leaning island in a sea of conservatism.

The Bill of Rights Defense Committee has a full list, and as of February 25, 2004, the 257 "local resolutions, ordinances and ballot initiatives" cover 44.8 million people. Cleveland Heights, Ohio, is another Red state area that has recently acted on this issue. Page down the list and some areas stand out because of their size (LA, NY, King County, WA, which is where Seattle is located), many college communities, and some typically conservative areas. In addition to the ones I mentioned above, I note Durham, NC, Boise, ID, Dillon, MT, Tucson, AZ, the entire state of Alaska (plus many local areas)...check out the list (pdf file).

The other 2 states are Vermont and Hawaii.

Update: The daily independent student newspaper of the University of Kentucky (the KY Kernel), confirms that the SGA did pass the resolution by a single vote after an hour-long debate.

The Bill of Right Defense Committee has a separate webpage listing student resolutions.

Oh, and the ACLU has an interesting map identifying areas of the country covered by anti-Patriot Act resolutions. Note the large chunks of Wyoming, Idaho and Arizona. Libertarians are not happy.

Kerry on terror

Today, John Kerry outlined his anti-terror plan in a speech out in LA. I guess I was out in front of the candidate yesterday.

I do not fault George Bush for doing too much in the War on Terror; I believe he’s done too little.

Where he’s acted, his doctrine of unilateral preemption has driven away our allies and cost us the support of other nations. Iraq is in disarray, with American troops still bogged down in a deadly guerrilla war with no exit in sight. In Afghanistan, the area outside Kabul is sliding back into the hands of a resurgent Taliban and emboldened warlords.

In other areas, the Administration has done nothing or been too little and too late. The Mideast Peace process disdained for 14 months by the Bush Administration is paralyzed. North Korea and Iran continue their quest for nuclear weapons – weapons which one day could land in the hands of terrorists. And as Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld has admitted, the Administration is still searching for an effective plan to drain the swamps of terrorist recruitment. The President’s budget for the National Endowment for Democracy’s efforts around the world, including the entire Islamic world, is less than three percent of what this Administration gives Halliburton – hardly a way to win the contest of ideas.

Finally, by virtually every measure, we still have a homeland security strategy that falls far short of the vulnerabilities we have and the threats we face.

Kerry's vision is more multilateral and less military than Bush's:

We cannot win the War on Terror through military power alone. If I am President, I will be prepared to use military force to protect our security, our people, and our vital interests.

But the fight requires us to use every tool at our disposal. Not only a strong military – but renewed alliances, vigorous law enforcement, reliable intelligence, and unremitting effort to shut down the flow of terrorist funds.

To do all this, and to do our best, demands that we work with other countries instead of walking alone. For today the agents of terrorism work and lurk in the shadows of 60 nations on every continent. In this entangled world, we need to build real and enduring alliances.

Allies give us more hands in the struggle, but no President would ever let them tie our hands and prevent us from doing what must be done. As President, I will not wait for a green light from abroad when our safety is at stake. But I will not push away those who can and should share the burden.

And like I said yesterday, Kerry's nonproliferation policy emphasizes Nunn-Lugar:

Fourth, because finding and defeating terrorist groups is a long-term effort, we must act immediately to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. I propose to appoint a high-level Presidential envoy empowered to bring other nations together to secure and stop the spread of these weapons. We must develop common standards to make sure dangerous materials and armaments are tracked, accounted for, and secured. Today, parts of Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal are easy prey for those offering cash to scientists and security forces who too often are under-employed and under-paid. If I am President, I will expand the Nunn/Lugar program to buy up and destroy the loose nuclear materials of the former Soviet Union and to ensure that all of Russia’s nuclear weapons and materials are out of the reach of terrorists and off the black market.

I'm not going to reprint the entire speech, but he calls for more police and firefighters, alternative energy (he wants energy independence from the Middle East within a decade), and greater port security. All this is part of improving homeland security, which he says Bush has failed to fund adequately.

Kerry also offered plans for winning the war of ideas -- "we need an international effort to compete with radical Madrassas." The speech details some plans for exactly that.

All in all, it offers a realistic Democratic alternative to all-war, all-the-time.

Is Kerry soft on terror?

Yesterday, I looked at the National Security Blog and discovered a post entitled "ElBaradei's Warning: We Can't Sit Idly By." After running a long quote noting the importance of the threat from nuclear proliferation, the blogger, John Little, then refers readers to a recent quote by John Kerry claiming that the threat of terrorism had been overstated by the Bush administration. Poke around the website and you know Little is not making this contrast because he agrees with Kerry.

Little implies that even UN-types like ElBaradei agree that nuclear proliferation is a great threat, while Kerry disagrees.

This is a misleading argument on many levels.

First, I'm sure ElBaradei and Kerry would agree that the world is not sitting idly by on the proliferation question. Indeed, both would agree that the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and IAEA are important norms and institutions that need to be strengthened. Both support ongoing work by the international community to engage potential proliferants in meaningful dialogue about their programs, inspect their facilities, and disarm them via arms control. Sanctions have been used to great affect against many worrisome states.

This was the pathway used effectively against Iraq and is in various stages in Libya, North Korea and Iran. By contrast, of course, the Bush administration quickly reversed sanctions against Pakistan in fall 2001, imposed because of their nuclear tests in 1998. They wanted Pakistan's help against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and decided the near-term anti-terror policies were more important than the long-term non-proliferation policies.

Moreover, it was the Bush administration who didn't trust the IAEA's March 2003 finding that Iraq had no nuclear weapon. As I noted recently, Cheney basically accused the IAEA of being fools.

All of these decisions are debatable, but it is obviously false to portray one's political opponents as weak on a particular type of threat just because they feel that it might deserve greater or lesser attention. Kerry clearly supports numerous anti-terror and nonproliferation efforts.

Second, Kerry was talking about terrorism and not proliferation per se, which the Bush administration has linked since the "axis of evil" reference in the State of the Union address in January 2002.

Sure, there's a risk that terrorists could obtain nuclear material, and ElBaradei acknowledges that, but Kerry was talking about the threats I was discussing in multiple posts yesterday. Edwards and Dean, for example, explicitly discussed September 11 in response to the same question.

Bush's blurring of these threats conveniently occurred after its policy reversal on Pakistan (and India, I might add). This blurring has not served the US well in Iraq. After all, the administration's hand-picked hawkish arms inspector, David Kay, himself declared the preemption policy DOA. This is the primary new policy option the administration has announced to address proliferation threats. The Iraq war weakened the US posture.

Third, Kerry and other Democrats have been proposing all sorts of policies to fight terror and work against proliferation (like spending a lot more money on Nunn-Lugar to protect former Soviet arms stocks). They oppose the unilateralist and inflammatory policy pursued by the Bush administration.

In other words, Democrats primarily disagree with the administration about the means to fight the war on terror, not so much about the ends. It is absolutely false to try to frame the national security debate as if Democrats don't care about these issues. They do care a great deal, but they often have different tools in mind.

Of course, many Democrats, including Kerry, think the administration has exaggerated the threats to build public support for its "war on terror." It's pretty clear that the threat from Iraq was exaggerated, including the alleged link to al Qaeda.

Numerous people in the national security establishment (the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies, the think tanks) essentially agree with Kerry about the Bush administration's views of many of these threats. Indeed, the Wesley Clark/James Webb view might represent a plurality opinion -- Iraq was a distraction from the real war on terror.

That doesn't mean that everyone doesn't also agree with ElBaradei about the importance of proliferation.

In sum, neither the Kerry position on the war nor his position on terror are inconsistent. Terrorism and proliferation are worrisome, but other issues matter too and the administration has inflated threats (and arguably had political reasons for doing so). Kerry and the Democrats have advanced many worthwhile ideas about strengthening multilateral cooperation and targeting higher priority concerns.

By way of contrast, do the Republicans have careful plans to insure the 40 million who lack health insurance? Do they have an economic idea other than making permanent the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans?

More on "the threat"

I'm still pondering the "threat."

Thanks to a faithful reader, I just finished reading a book review by Pat Buchanan at the American Conservative website. While discussing An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror by David Frum and Richard Perle, Buchanan writes this:

In the worst of terror attacks, we lost 3,000 people. Horrific. But at Antietam Creek, we lost 7,000 in a day’s battle in a nation that was one-ninth as populous. Three thousand men and boys perished every week for 200 weeks of that Civil War. We Americans did not curl up and die. We did not come all this way because we are made of sugar candy.

Germany and Japan suffered 3,000 dead every day in the last two years of World War II, with every city flattened and two blackened by atom bombs. Both came back in a decade. Is al-Qaeda capable of this sort of devastation when they are recruiting such scrub stock as Jose Padilla and the shoe bomber?

In the war we are in, our enemies are weak. That is why they resort to the weapon of the weak—terror. And, as in the Cold War, time is on America’s side. Perseverance and patience are called for, not this panic.

More than one lefty blogger has said this lately, but it feels odd agreeing so openly with Buchanan.

And he has more good stuff:

In 25 years, militant Islam has seized three countries: Iran, Sudan, and Afghanistan. We toppled the Taliban almost without losing a man. Sudan is a failed state. In Iran, a generation has grown up that knows nothing of Savak or the Great Satan but enough about the mullahs to have rejected them in back-to-back landslides. The Iranian Revolution has reached Thermidor. Wherever Islamism takes power, it fails. Like Marxism, it does not work.

Yet, assume it makes a comeback. So what? Taken together, all 22 Arab nations do not have the GDP of Spain. Without oil, their exports are the size of Finland’s. Not one Arab nation can stand up to Israel, let alone the United States.

Buchanan even quotes FDR, approvingly! "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

Incidentally, the Frum-Perle book is apparently pretty scary -- calling for a sequence of wars with a variety of enemies: North Korea, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran!

Buchanan writes a scathing and intelligent review. He's clearly neither a neo-con nor a progressive internationalist!

Heck, read the entire review.

Are you ready to be scared to death?

I don't usually read the Fox News website, nor do I much admire the political acumen of Dick Morris (famous for helping Clinton with the "triangulation" strategy that pitted the Democratic President against his own fellow party members in Congress).

Nonetheless, I think the latest offering by Morris on Fox is an accurate view of the 2004 presidential race.

The latest Fox poll reveals that President Bush is deadlocked with potential challenger Senator John Kerry 45-45, which Morris says is big trouble for Bush because undecideds often vote against incumbents.

More importantly, Morris points out that the President/Republicans trail Kerry/Democrats on almost every important potential campaign issue: most notably, on the economy, health care, and education. The spreads are not especially close either, ranging from 11 to 21 percent.

The only issues Bush and the Republicans win are fighting terrorism and handling the situation in Iraq. The spreads are 23 and 14 percent on these issues.

Unfortunately for Bush and company, Americans say that the three most important issues in this year's election are the economy, health care (or Medicare) and education. That's a bit misleading because 8 % said homeland secuirty and 6% said terrorism, which adds to 14% and puts it above education as an issue.

In any case, Morris says Bush has been so successful fighting terror that Americans are now (erroneously) "taking safety for granted." As a result, they are free to focus on what are to his mind relatively less important issues like health care and jobs.

To me, this is the dumbest comment in the entire piece:

Americans are wrong to see terrorism as a fourth-place issue. Education or the economy or health care won't knock down buildings and kill 3,000 people. Terrorism will.

This is precisely the view that devastated Democrats in the 2002 midterm congressional elections.

Lack of health care does kill Americans. How many premature deaths result when 43 million people are uninsured and tens of millions more are underinsured? The Institute of Medicine estimates 18,000! TV doesn't have a spectacular fireball to run and rerun, but the consequences for individuals are every bit as cataclysmic. In human terms, that is six September 11 events every year.

Joblessness too can be devastating. I found this evidence on the Applied Research Bulletin webpage of the Canadian government's website, from 1996:

The ARB analysis reviews several studies with different approaches to better understand the impact that unemployment may have on people's physical and mental health and to determine the social costs it entails for individuals and society. Some of the studies seek to assess the psychological impact of unemployment. Others attempt to determine the effects of unemployment-related stress or shock on the incidence of various illnesses or on mortality. These two types of studies are generally based on assessments conducted among laid-off unemployed workers or studies of the unemployed. They show that the unemployed visit doctors much more frequently than workers and are more often admitted to hospital. These studies, however, are not able to establish a systematic relationship between the incidence of use of hospital services and an increase in unemployment.

Studies conducted by Dr. M. Harvey Brenner in the United States, however, are among the few that establish a direct link between unemployment and social pathologies. In the research he conducted for the U.S. Congress in 1984, Brenner estimated the direct relationship between the increase in the U.S. unemployment rate and the occurrence of several social pathologies, including the mortality rate, cardio-vascular or cirrhoses deaths, the homicide and suicide rates, admissions to psychiatric hospitals and arrests and incarcerations. For example, Brenner estimates that a 10 percent increase in the unemployment rate would have the direct effect of increasing the mortality rate by 1.2 percent, the suicide rate by 0.7 percent, and the rate of incarcerations by six percent. Serious studies like Brenner's indicate that social problems are attributable to unemployment.

About 2.4 million people per year die in the US, so a 1.2% increase is 28,800. If one extrapolates, that means a 1% increase in unemployment directly increases mortality by 2,800 people.

Nearly a September 11 for every 1% increase in unemployment.

Morris would have the President emphasize the prospect of WMD terrorism rather than other very real problems of Americans. Expect the President to scare us between now and November:

The more Americans think he has succeeded in mitigating the terrorist threat, the more they vote for Kerry. The more they feel that terrorism is still at our doorstep - as it is - the more they back Bush as the better wartime leader.

The traditional incumbent recipe of claiming success backfires here. Bush must make clear to us all the threats that remain, not try to take credit for the end of the terror danger. He must make the most of what he has yet to achieve, rather than try to sell his successes.

Success extinguishes his mandate. Tasks t