Bush is soft on crime

I've been interested in Scooter Libby's role in "Plamegate" since 2003. Ultimately, Libby was convicted of perjury, not leaking classified information, and sentenced to 30 months in jail, a $250,000 fine and 2 years probation.

Today, an appeals court ruled that Libby would have to start serving his jail time. Then, hours later, President Bush commuted that part of his sentence:

I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.

My decision to commute his prison sentence leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby. The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged. His wife and young children have also suffered immensely. He will remain on probation. The significant fines imposed by the judge will remain in effect. The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long-lasting.

Given that Libby supporters have contributed $3 million to his legal defense, it seems hard to believe that a $250,000 fine is all that onerous.

My guess is that he'll get that back in a book advance and speaking fees.

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, by the way, was not pleased::

“In this case an experienced federal judge considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws,” Mr. Fitzgerald said in a statement. “It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals.”

The President seemingly agrees, as he declared on 6-6-06:

As Americans, we revere freedom and equality, the rights and dignity of every individual, and the supremacy of the rule of law.

Ah, hypocrisy.

Happy fourth of July everyone.


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Hypocrisy watch update: April 2007

President George W. Bush, at a press conference on Friday, April 28:

I want to thank the [Japanese] Prime Minister [Shinzo Abe] for being a strong advocate of sending a clear message to the North Korean leader that there's a better way forward than to defy the world.

On all issues, there is a --- whether it's this issue or any other issue, is that we will work with our partners to determine how long.

In fall 2002, that same man kept repeating lines like these:

So this is a chance for the United Nations to show some backbone and resolve, as we confront the true challenges of the 21st century. It's a chance for the United Nations to show its relevance, and that's why I gave the speech I gave. But make no mistake about it, if we have to deal with the problem, we'll deal with it.

And this, in March 2003:

I think the threat is real. And so do a lot of other people in my government. And since I believe the threat is real, and since my most important job is to protect the security of the American people, that's precisely what we'll do.

Our demands are that Saddam Hussein disarm. We hope he does. We have worked with the international community to convince him to disarm. If he doesn't disarm, we'll disarm him.

Maybe the President is learning?


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Hypocrisy watch: 2007

What does it say about a country if Russia and China criticize your human rights record?

And you concede their argument?

From The Moscow Times, March 12:

"Washington has long practiced double standards in the sphere of human rights, depending on whether one state or another acts in accordance with [U.S.] political interests," the statement said.

These standards are particularly clearly visible against the background of what is happening now in Iraq, Afghanistan and at the military base in Guantanamo with the participation of the U.S. armed forces," the statement said.

At home, the statement said, "the United States, under various pretexts, limits democratic freedoms, interferes in the personal lives of its own people, effectively carries out censorship of the media and sends minors to the electric chair."

Russia was firing back at the US for its 2006 State Department Report.

The Shanghai Daily, March 10, included a discussion of China's retort: Human Rights Record of US 2006:

The document says the United States has a flagrant record of violating the Geneva Convention in systematically abusing prisoners during the Iraqi War and the War in Afghanistan.

In the United States, human rights violations committed by law enforcement and judicial departments are also common.

...In recent years, American citizens have suffered increasing civil rights infringements, as the US government has put average Americans under intense surveillance as part of terrorism investigations since the 9-11 attack

It goes on like that.

One thing the US has over Russia and China: self criticism. The BBC, March 9:

The FBI has been illegally obtaining information on the US public, a report by the justice department's inspector general has said.

The FBI used the Patriot Act, passed after the 11 September 2001 attacks, to compel the release of information illegally or improperly, it said...

"We believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities," it concluded.

Then again, this admission more-or-less confirms one of the Russian and Chinese criticisms.

The FBI has filed about 45,000 national security letter requests annually since 2003.


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Hypocrisy watch: Dubai edition

February 27, George W. Bush told America's governors that he was worried about foreign control of oil:

Dependence on foreign sources of oil creates a national security problem. You hear parts of the world where there is disruption in oil supply as a result of local politics, for example, it affects the United States of America.

I spend a lot of time worrying about disruption of energy because of politics or civil strife in other countries -- because tyrants control the spigots. And it's in our national interest that we become less dependent on oil.

That's a nice phrase, "tyrants control the spigots." Hat tip: link via Dan Froomkin.

The natural question: Which oil-rich states are led by tyrants? These are the opening sentences to the U.A.E. section from the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 2004 edition, which was released in February 2005 (a new one must be due soon):

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a federation of seven semi-autonomous emirates. Traditional rule in the emirates generally is patriarchal, with political allegiance defined in terms of loyalty to the tribal leaders, to the leaders of the individual emirates, and to the leaders of the federation. There are no democratically elected institutions or political parties.

Dubai is one of the seven emirates. The Report highlighted Dubai's ban on flogging (ah, progress!) and the existence of some private co-ed universities, but noted problems of prison overcrowding, lack of judicial review, state ownership of domestic media, serious labor law violations, governmental approval over preachers in Dubai's private mosques, and perhaps most troubling, an "increasing number of media reports during the year of trafficking in women and girls to the country."

The White House likes to pretend that Dubai Ports World is a private company, and that the recent proposed port contract is a private transaction, but the company is wholly owned by the government -- even the "swift boat" crowd knows this simple fact:

Dubai Ports World's chairman is Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, who was educated at Temple University in Philadelphia. He is a top adviser to the emir of Dubai, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who controls the company through the state-owned Ports, Customs and Free Zones Authority of Dubai.

Since the US government has to approve the contract, this transaction might even fall under the field of "international relations."

In any case, despite tyrannical rule in U.A.E. and Dubai, the President spoke reassuringly on February 21 about the proposed port contracts for Dubai Ports World.

The transaction should go forward, in my judgment. If there was any chance that this transaction would jeopardize the security of the United States, it would not go forward. The company has been cooperative with the United States government. The company will not manage port security. The security of our ports will be -- continue to be managed by the Coast Guard and Customs. The company is from a country [Dubai] that has been cooperative in the war on terror, been an ally in the war on terror. The company operates ports in different countries around the world, ports from which cargo has been sent to the United States on a regular basis.

Interesting, eh?

Tyrant's hands + oil spigots = bad for U.S. security

Tyrant's hands + America's ports = no threat to U.S. security

If those formulas seem too complicated, CBS News provides the mathematical answer.




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Filed as: Dubai Ports

Turnabout is fair play

Apparently, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knows hypocrisy when he sees it. From an AP story:

Iran's president said Monday that his country supports calls for making the Middle East a nuclear arms-free zone, but he also urged the United States and Russia to give up all their atomic weapons as a threat to the region's stability.

I've mentioned this before, but this is Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty:

Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

How's that working out?

Hidden realism?

University of Chicago political scientist John J. Mearsheimer often argues that liberal political rhetoric is used to sell foreign policies that might otherwise be unpalatable. States, especially great powers like the US, pursue policies that are consistent with realism. They are self-interested and especially concerned about the distribution of power.

So what do we make of last Thursday's Inaugural address, which seemed to be about "freedom" and "liberty"? Plenty of analysts say this was Bush channeling Woodrow Wilson -- and Ronald Reagan. And they very strongly imply that Bush meant every word. Some are even calling it a new (or perhaps revised) "Bush doctrine of liberty."

White House spinners insist that the speech wasn't merely about ideas, but rather was a fusion of ideas and power politics. In The Washington Post, January 22, 2005, Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei talked to Presidential speechwriter Michael J. Gerson who emphasized that the US intends to use its power to achieve its ideals:

Bush's speech appeared to put the United States on a course in which moralism and idealism, rather than realpolitik, form the philosophical foundations of foreign policy. But White House officials said that is a misreading of how Bush operates. "His goals are deeply idealistic," Gerson said. "His methods are deeply realistic. In fact, that was one of the themes of the speech, that this traditional divide between realism and idealism is no longer adequate for the conduct of American foreign policy."

Condi Rice has previously talked (quite often, actually) about the marriage between material power and values.

There is an old argument between the so-called "realistic" school of foreign affairs and the "idealistic" school. To oversimplify, realists downplay the importance of values and the internal structures of states, emphasizing instead the balance of power as the key to stability and peace. Idealists emphasize the primacy of values, such as freedom and democracy and human rights in ensuring that just political order is obtained. As a professor, I recognize that this debate has won tenure for and sustained the careers of many generations of scholars. As a policymaker, I can tell you that these categories obscure reality.

In real life, power and values are married completely. Power matters in the conduct of world affairs. Great powers matter a great deal -- they have the ability to influence the lives of millions and change history. And the values of great powers matter as well.

From there, it's only a hop, skip and a jump to the Orwellian phrase used in NSS 2002, "a balance of power that favors freedom."

I'm not 100% sure whether to side with Mearsheimer or Gerson and Rice in this discussion, but Fareed Zakaria offers a very interesting point:

Bush has also pushed higher on the agenda the question of American hypocrisy....

The chasm between rhetoric and reality, while inevitable, is striking. The Bush administration has not been particularly vociferous in holding dictators to account—no more or less, really, than other recent administrations. Vladimir Putin has presided over the most significant reversal of freedoms across the globe, only to be praised by Bush as a soulmate. More scandalously, the president has sided with Putin in his interpretation of the Chechen war as a defensive action against terrorists....

...when democratic Taiwan stood up to communist China last year, Bush publicly admonished it, siding with Beijing. When brave dissidents in Saudi Arabia were jailed for proposing the possibility of a constitutional monarchy in that country, the administration barely mentioned it. Crown Prince Abdullah, who rules one of the eight most repressive countries in the world (according to Freedom House), is one of a handful of leaders to have been invited to the president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. (The elected leaders of, say, India, France, Turkey and Indonesia have never been accorded this courtesy.) The president has met with and given aid to Islam Karimov, the dictator of Uzbekistan, who presides over one of the nastiest regimes in the world today, far more repressive than Iran’s, to take just one example.

Zakaria's article is very good and well worth reading in its entirety. I'd like to think that it ties in nicely with my previous blog entries about American hypocrisy.

Orwell would have loved US Foreign Policy

I am teaching two sections of American Foreign Policy this semester and it can be challenging to explain the nuance.

For example, it is common to begin by explaining that powerful states like the US are typically said to have essentially the same interests in international politics. The most important interest is the preservation of national security, assured primarily by maintaining great power status.

It takes many class periods to sort through this simple claim...

1. For rather obvious reasons, great powers like the US worry that other major powers pose the largest threats to their security and survival. Throughout history, the story of international politics has been about great power rivalries and the attempts to balance power.

Then again, the US views almost all the other great powers in the world today as friends, allies, or, at the very least, trading partners. The US has more power than any of these states, so it does not have to worry about balancing any of them -- and none of those states seem to be excessively worried about balancing the US.

Well, maybe France worries about the US. However, President Bush didn't seem too concerned about France earlier this summer when sharing a microphone with French President Jacques Chirac:

Our two nations are working together to bring peace and security to other parts of the globe. We're in Haiti together; we're in Afghanistan together. We're working to ensure that Iran meets its commitments to the IAEA, and does not develop nuclear weapons. The President talked about our mutual concerns on the continent of Africa. We're proud countries with deep traditions rooted in freedom and equality and justice. These common values enable us to work together for the good of world peace.

Chirac said something quite similar on that day.

So, is great power rivalry obsolete? If so, what threats should give foreign policymakers the greatest concern?

2. Weak and poor states have traditionally been viewed as relatively unimportant players on the global chessboard. The US might toss them some aid, and perhaps worried a bit if their rebel groups took assistance from the Soviet Union during the cold war, but their status has traditionally had very little to do with the security of the US.

Then again, we've all heard that "September 11 changed everything" and the US now says that weak and failed states can pose the greatest threat to American security. President Bush:

The events of September 11, 2001, taught us that weak states, like Afghanistan, can pose as great a danger to our national interests as strong states. Poverty does not make poor people into terrorists and murderers. Yet poverty, weak institutions, and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels within their borders.

However, the Afghan and Iraq wars are demonstrating that it is far easier to create a failed state than it is to fix one.

Lesson? Some might be thinking that it might be best to allow tyrants to continue governing weak states. The US might be better off living with that arrangement than bogging down its military against new insurgencies (of "terrorists") that did not exist before tyrants were toppled.

Even weak states with their own "weapons of mass destruction" have long been deterred from using those weapons by the threat of US retaliation.

3. Yet, the lesson about authoritarian weak states would be hard to swallow. After all, American political leaders often claim that the US is "exceptional" and thus has a unique set of global interests based on its desire, if not obligation, to spread freedom and democracy around the world. Toppling tyrants empowers millions of oppressed peoples, right?

Then again, during the cold war and during the "war on terror," pragmatic concerns about threats leave the US little choice but to align with various dictators and authoritarians. This explains why the US remains friendly with horrific regimes in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, etc.

4. So, how to deal with these authoritarian regimes? American political leaders believe that free trade fosters democracy and thus should be encouraged in virtually all circumstances. As the September 2002 National Security Strategy document claims:

Economic growth supported by free trade and free markets creates new jobs and higher incomes. It allows people to lift their lives out of poverty, spurs economic and legal reform, and the fight against corruption, and it reinforces the habits of liberty.

This is no partisan matter; it reflects the so-called "Washington consensus" pushed by the US since the early 1980s.

Apparently, American policymakers think that even states like China will one day democratize as a result of their failure to match economic successes with political legitimacy. President Bush again:

Our commitment to democracy is tested in China. That nation now has a sliver, a fragment of liberty. Yet, China's people will eventually want their liberty pure and whole. China has discovered that economic freedom leads to national wealth. China's leaders will also discover that freedom is indivisible -- that social and religious freedom is also essential to national greatness and national dignity. Eventually, men and women who are allowed to control their own wealth will insist on controlling their own lives and their own country.

That guy is a dreamer, isn't he?

Then again, the US policy towards Cuba looks like China policy circa 1965. The trade embargo, it is argued, puts pressure on the regime and signals strong US resolve. Or something like that. For Cuba, the US promise is to provide trade after the government agrees to democratize. Seriously:

Last year in Miami, I offered Cuba's government a way forward -- a way forward toward democracy and hope and better relations with the United States. I pledged to work with our Congress to ease bans on trade and travel between our two countries if -- and only if -- the Cuban government held free and fair elections, allowed the Cuban people to organize, assemble and to speak freely, and ease the stranglehold on private enterprise.

That was President Bush yet again, of course.

How should the US foster democracy? War? Hmmm, that is hard work.

Trade. Does enriching authoritarians really make them vulnerable to political change?

Sanctions? Those haven't really worked too well against Cuba or Iran.

5. Of course, the answer is multilateralism. The US sanctions against Cuba and Iran fail because Canada and the European states continue to trade with them.

We'll set aside the question of why they do that. Maybe policymakers in those countries read too many American press releases about the virtues of trade with China and became confused.

Still, multilateral sanctions might actually work, right? South Africa's apartheid regime was toppled. Iraq's WMD programs were stopped...

Then again, multilateral sanctions hurt innocent people. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children under age 5 died as a result of sanctions. Plus, didn't the sanctions help make Iraq a weak state and thus a threat to America?

Moreover, this kind of multilateralism probably means working with the United Nations, doesn't it? How else could multilateral sanctions be implemented?

Didn't the President warn the UN it would be "irrelevant" if it didn't see fit to support war against Iraq? Wouldn't this make US foreign policy vulnerable to the whims of other states, who would have to agree to act with the US?

Leaders of the major US political parties have made it quite clear that they won't leave American security in the hands of other states. Is multilateralism for "girly-men"?

6. Wait, before answering, note that the US retains a veto in the United Nations, controls more votes than anyone else in institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and is often able to build winning majorities in many cases by working with likeminded friends, allies and partners.

In other words, the other great powers often actually agree with the US about some clear foreign policy concerns. After September 11, the world seemed to genuinely agree with many US ideas about countering world terrorism.

Then again, it is quite clear that the alignment was temporary, as the US is now isolated from many of its friends and has truly ticked off the Muslim and Arab worlds.

7. Aack; it is now time for the midterm and all this nuance has only fostered confusion.

Should the US be most concerned about strong states, or weak ones?

If the US fears the strong, then why does it mostly build alliances, trade partnerships and "coalitions of the willing" with this group of states?

If the US fears the weak, should it invade these countries, even though it promotes disorder? Should it trade with them, or sanction them?

If sanctions are the answer, why do they so often fail?

If sanctions fail because they are merely unilateral, how can they be made multilateral?

If multilateral sanctions are too risky, what can the US do for itself?

If I were writing an essay about these concerns, I would be tempted to argue that the US is strong enough that it really doesn't have to worry too much about other states. Most are friendly already and the threatening ones can be deterred by the fact of tremendous American military superiority. Forget nuclear retaliation, if you must; who wants to face a wave of cruise missiles armed with conventional bombs?

Moreover, virtually every other state in the world has good reason to be concerned about networks of terrorists who aim to topple governments and build transnational movements of radicalism. Virtually no state wants to see these transnational radicals armed with weapons of mass destruction. Russia's WMD materials need to be secured, as do borders and ports. To avoid hypocrisy, the US should abandon its "mad scientist" plans to create new burrowing nuclear weapons.

Iraq is now a mess, but even states who opposed the war agree that the country cannot be allowed to become another Afghanistan. If the US owns up to its mistakes and seeks help, other countries have strong interests in promoting order, if not democracy. Nearly all would oppose theocracy.

The Orwellian Bush administration prioritizes just about everything I think should be rejected and rejects or dismisses everything I believe should be done.


Update: Kevin Drum discusses the Orwellian Bush administration today too.

Proliferation of Hypocrisy

Friday, I blogged about the Proliferation Security Initiative.

Clearly, since 9/11, administration figures have worried openly about "mushroom clouds" emanating from Iraq, Iran's nuclear status, etc.

Yet, despite its rhetoric, the Bush administration's actions on nuclear proliferation are quite hypocritical.

For example, consider an essay web-published today by Scott Lynch, communications director for Peace Action, "Bush's Nuclear Hypocrisy Encourages Proliferation." In his piece, Lynch writes that the Bush administration is pursuing a "do as I say, not as I do" nuclear weapons policy that means the US is "ramped-up for a nuke building bender."

The US is seeking so-called bunker busters and low-yield nuclear weapons that will be more "usable" and task-oriented. Bush is also pushing legislation that would reduce the preparation time required for the US to again conduct nuclear tests from 36 months to 18 months.

Back in February, Robert Jensen of the University of Texas wrote a piece with a similar title, "Bush’s nuclear hypocrisy." As I have before, Jensen emphasized the failure of the US to comply with Article VI of the Nonproliferation Treaty:

“Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

In other words, according to the NPT, the US is supposed to be working towards "general and complete disarmament" rather than new weapons.

Like Lynch, Jenson highlights the bunker buster program.

Jacqueline Cabasso, executive director of the Western States Legal Foundation (a public-interest organization that monitors and analyzes U.S. nuclear-weapons programs) sums it up this way: “The U.S. is spending more money on nuclear-weapons research and development than ever before, giving its nuclear arsenal new military capabilities and elevating the role of nuclear weapons in its aggressive and unilateral ‘national security’ policy.” Cabasso cites ongoing work on such weapons as a “Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator” as clear evidence of U.S. intentions to pursue nuclear weaponry, not work toward its elimination.

Catchy name, eh? There's long been a pseudo-sexual side to naming weapons.

Jensen caught Bush in his own lies: "free societies are societies that don’t develop weapons of mass terror."

Similarly, Andrew Koch of Center for Defense Information (CDI) once argued on the CNN website that the "The US must lead by example." Koch was writing just after the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests and noted that India often specifically points to US failure to comply with Article VI of the NPT to justify its own decision not to join the anti-nuclear club:

perversely, the United States continues to pursue a hypocritical nuclear policy that encourages others to proliferate. One of several rationales for the Indian tests was to challenge the non-proliferation regime, which New Delhi views as discriminatory. What particularly peeked India's ire was the fact that the nuclear powers have not adequately fulfilled their obligation to move toward nuclear disarmament as promised under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Since the piece was published in 1998, it demonstrates that this is a long-term problem -- worsened by Bush, but bipartison nonetheless.

Earlier this year D. Ravi Kanth published "US hypocrisy on N-proliferation," in the Deccan Herald (which I found out is part of the South Asian Media Net). Kanth pointed out that the US has not only failed to ratify the CTBT, which since the 2000 NPT review conference has been recognized as the next step toward meeting Article VI requirements, but it also refuses to criticize Pakistan for its proliferation -- and, of course, wants to build the new weapons (such as the Penetrator).

These are not merely left-wing talking points. Even Carter administration National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski recognizes that "American policy is the height of hypocrisy." Of course, that piece was published in the Times of India rather than the New York Times. And that's the same hawkish Brzezinski who armed the mujahadeen in Afghanistan before Ronald Reagan ever had the chance. In fact, he armed them 6 months before the Soviets invaded.


Disclosures I worked on a project with Steven Brion-Meisels who is a Board Member at Peace Action. I also interned at CDI back in the summer of '85.

Still more hypocrisy

My connection was disrupted and I lost a post that I had been writing. Ugh.

Rather than rewrite the entire thing, let me summarize:

Bush, Rice, Powell and others in the administration have been arguing that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein in Iraq, partly because he was such a brutal dictator. Cynically, one might say that they are using this argument because of the lack of evidence about Iraqi WMD and because of few Iraqi connections to al Qaeda (and none to 9/11).

Then again, as I've previously noted, candidate Bush said in a 2000 debate that he would not have intervened in Rwanda to save 600,000 people.

In any case, administration officials virtually never acknowledge that the US is in bed with a lot of brutal regimes in the war on terror. Consider, for example, Uzbekistan, one of the members of the "coalition fo the willing."

Chris at SeeWhy? noted a recent story in The Guardian about US/UK hypocrisy towards Uzbekistan and Iraq. The link was dead, but based on his comments, I think this is the story. And it is well worth reading.

Basically, Britain recalled Ambassador Craig Murray for being too outspoken against the regime. The US may have played a role in his recall. After all, Murray pointed out that the Uzbek government boils its political opponents.

Here are some other key paragraphs from the story (some omitted)

Uzbekistan, a post-Soviet police state on the strategically important border with Afghanistan, was another potential political minefield. Uzbek security services use "torture as a routine investigation technique", according to the US State Department. But Washington's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led them to finance much of the regime's security apparatus. In exchange the US gets a military base in Khanabad as a centre for operations in Afghanistan. Last year Washington gave the government $500m (£298m) in aid, $79m of which was specifically for the same "law enforcement and security services" they accused of routine torture.

He [Mr Murray] said: "We believe there to be between 7,000 and 10,000 people in detention whom we would consider as political and/or religious prisoners. No government has the right to use the war against terrorism as an excuse for the persecution of those with a deep personal commitment to the Islamic religion, and who pursue their views by peaceful means."

Mr Murray sent numerous reports to London about human rights abuses, and his dispatches became increasingly heated during the build-up to the Iraqi invasion. He argued Uzbekistan's human rights abuses were as bad as those being used as ammunition against Baghdad. Yet Washington was financing Uzbekistan, rather than invading it, he said.

Justifiably, Chris at SeeWhy? is pretty upset about US/UK hypocrisy:

And don't tell me that this policy of sucking up to dictators is part of the cost of the war on terror, or that in the real world we're forced to make difficult trade-offs. No administration that squanders as many lives and as much credibility and influence as this one has in Iraq deserves to lecture me about the costs of my policy prescriptions. And neither do any of its apologists.

If the administration keeps using human rights as the post facto justification for war in Iraq, I'm going to report more of these stories.

Did Bush misread his audience?

I don't know what the domestic polls will show, but I'd guess there's a good chance that President Bush's UN speech today will be seen as genuine and helpful. He tried to put the past behind everyone, suggested a common agenda, and offered to lead the world down a pathway to solve security priorities.

However, I also think Bush's speech will be unpopular in much of the rest of world -- and was unlikely to be well-received by the delegates in the room.

A great many people around the world share the views expressed by Jacques Chirac today, after the President spoke:

"The war, launched without the authorization of the Security Council, shook the multilateral system....The United Nations has just been through one of the most grave crises in its history...In an open world, no one can be isolated, no one can act alone in everyone's name, and no one can accept the anarchy of a lawless society. There is no alternative to the United Nations."

So, why is the world so unlikely to be impressed?

First, Bush is still pushing the pre-emptive use of force. He didn't really talk about invading any specific countries, but the President did say that "Nations of the world must have the wisdom and the will to stop grave threats before they arrive." He also talked about interdicting lethal materials in transit, which is a pretty controversial idea given the lack of authority ordinarily governing the open seas.

Kofi Annan's speech, which preceded the President's, very clearly stated strong worldwide opposition to the so-called "Bush Doctrine" of pre-emptive war. Here are several highlights from the Reuter's story:

"My concern is that, if it were to be adopted, it could set precedents that resulted in a proliferation of the unilateral and lawless use of force, with or without credible justification," said Annan to sustained applause.

...[Annan] questioned U.S. arguments that nations have the "right and obligation to use force preemptively" against unconventional weapons systems even while they were still being developed...

"But until now it has been understood that when states go beyond that and decide to use force to deal with broader threats to international peace and security, they need the unique legitimacy provided by the United Nations," he said.

"Now some say this understanding is no longer tenable since an 'armed attack' with weapons of mass destruction could be launched at any time..." said Annan.

"This logic represents a fundamental challenge to the principles, on which, however imperfectly, world peace and stability have rested for the last 58 years," he said.

Actually, the text of the speech included an even stronger point that Reuters didn't quote:

"My concern is that, if it were to be adopted, it could set precedents that resulted in a proliferation of the unilateral and lawless use of force, with or without justification."

Second, consider weapons of mass destruction. Bush called for new international cooperation to "criminalize" the proliferation of WMD -- but said nothing about the size of US arsenals, British weapons, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Israeli weapons, etc.

Take a quick look at Article VI of the Nonproliferation Treaty:

Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.

Does anyone believe that the US is committed to this goal? Many states, such as India, point to US hypocrisy vis-a-vis Article VI again and again to justify their serious opposition to various nonproliferation measures.

By the way, the US position on this issue is quite hypocritical for another reason.

The NPT includes a provision (Article X) allowing states to withdraw from the treaty. North Korea took advantage of this legal action and is now outside the treaty -- just like Israel, India and Pakistan. When the US withdrew from the ABM Treaty, the administration defended the action as necessary for national security. It suggested that the US should not embrace arms control at the expense of national security.

Why, exactly, is the North Korean case different?

Third, consider the task of rebuilding Iraq. President Bush placed all the blame for Iraq's horrific infrastructure on decisions made by the old regime. However, the two US wars against Iraq, as well as the many long years of economic sanctions had a great deal to do with Iraq's crumbling "power plants, water and sanitation facilities, bridges and airports."

I'm not trying to be an apologist for Saddam Hussein...but the former UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq did say that US government officials could "be blamed for crimes against humanity, including possibly genocide" as a consequence of the sanctions, which he estimated were killing 7000 people a month. 100s of 1000s died over the years.

Certainly, millions in the Arab world viewed the sanctions with moral outrage.

The President made moral arguments in an attempt to inspire the world, but he was speaking to a pretty skeptical and knowing audience.