Ohio? Tie?

As for the Electoral College, it looks like Kerry simply has to win Ohio. I haven't really looked at the uncounted precincts yet. I wish the media would say whether those are traditionally Democratic or Republican areas...and the margin in those areas from 2000.

Apparently, some of the uncounted votes are in the Cleveland area.

Also, just how many uncounted votes exist in Florida? Absentees? Early voters? What is left to count?

In any case, likely the next best hope without Ohio is 269-269 if Kerry holds New Mexico. In this tie scenario, Kerry wins all the Gore states, plus New Hampshire and Nevada -- a scenario I blogged about in late September.

In that case, the election would go to the House unless some individual elector was unfaithful (like one Bush elector in West Virginia). Presumably, the Republican advantage would give them the edge there, but that seems to be a place for all kinds of public democratic (small d) pressure.

Indeed, electors could be strongly encouraged to vote for the popular vote winner. It was impossible in 2000 when more than 1 Bush elector would have had to defect, but it seems more plausible in the case of a tie that would otherwise send the election to the House of Representatives.

Some states also send mixed messages and could perhaps be influenced between today and the potential vote in the House. Arkansas, for example, has more Dems in the Congress than Republicans; yet, the state has apparently gone for Bush.

Popular vote for Kerry?

I know Bush has been leading the popular vote all night, but I just took a look at the CNN national exit polling, which has already been posted.

Consider the demographic data...actually there's no need to be complicated. I was going to break it down by all the ages, but CNN conveniently provides this simple split of the data:

Ages 18-64 Kerry 51, Bush 48 (84% of electorate)
Ages 65 & older Kerry 50, Bush 50 (16% of electorate)

Quick, tell me who won the popular vote?

Clearly, Kerry.

It looks like about 50% Kerry to 48.5% Bush.

Exit polls

I'm getting a lot of google hits today for people trying to find "exit polls." Thanks for coming, there's plenty of political analysis on this blog.

However, for exit poll data, I'm visiting MyDD or Daily Kos. Apparently, Slate and Wonkette have also posted them.

Enjoy the parties tonight!

Kerry is going to be President-elect by morning!

Election Day

It is officially election day and I'm pleased to report the first bad news for George W. Bush.

As reported on MSNBC by Ron Reagan, Dixville Notch, NH, just released its complete returns and the result was 15 Bush, 15 Kerry and 1 Nader.

Traditionally, this town votes first in the nation.

Does their vote simply reflect the entire country? Is this a microcosm of what's to come?

No.

Like a bad Gallup Poll, however, Dixville Notch is solid red. They've gone Republican in every presidential election except for 1968 since at least 1960. I found this Detroit News article from January 2004:

In general elections, Dixville Notch went solidly for losers Richard Nixon in 1960, Barry Goldwater in '64 and, Hubert Humphrey in '68, then finally picked a winner with Nixon in '72, only to see him quit at midterm. In 1976, their choice was Michigan's Gerald Ford, who lost to Jimmy Carter. In 1980 and '84, they liked Reagan, as did most of the country. George H.W. Bush was their pick in 1988, but Dixville Notch didn't back another winner until George W. Bush in 2000.

Kerry is going to win.

CORRECTION Update: It was actually Hart's Location, NH that went 15-15-1, MSNBC reported it incorrectly. Dixville Notch went for Bush 19-7.

In 2000, these two towns went for Bush by a combined total of 38-15, according to Mark Kleiman and this year it was 34-19. Here's what Kleiman wrote:

That's a swing of nearly eight percent away from Bush and toward the Democrat. Using a likely voter model I just pulled out of my hat, this station can now project a Kerry landslide...

Regular commenter E-Mart pointed this out. Thanks.

Osama's "Endorsement"

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) released their own translation of the latest Osama bin Laden videotape. MEMRI says that OBL was threatening voters in red states!

The tape of Osama bin Laden that was aired on Al-Jazeera(1) on Friday, October 29th included a specific threat to "each U.S. state," designed to influence the outcome of the upcoming election against George W. Bush. The U.S. media in general mistranslated the words "ay wilaya" (which means "each U.S. state")(2) to mean a "country" or "nation" other than the U.S., while in fact the threat was directed specifically at each individual U.S. state. This suggests some knowledge by bin Laden of the U.S. electoral college system. In a section of his speech in which he harshly criticized George W. Bush, bin Laden stated: "Any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security."

I do not know if this translation is accurate. I googled a bit and couldn't find any major media that have picked this up.

It is on several dozen right-leaning blogs, however, so I fully expect this to be in the news cycle soon. Volokh has a link from the NY Post...as one of my commenters pointed out.

I'm waiting for Abu Aardvark or Juan Cole to weigh in on this, though I did find this from the Aardvark in late August 2003, when he was still on blogspot:

For me, the problem isn't that MEMRI is run by Israelis - it's that their agenda, more or less explicitly, is to highlight the worst and ugliest of the Arab media. They generally don't mistranslate - I haven't seen any instances of that - but their selections and emphases give a misleading picture of the state of Arab public debate.

Do a search, and you can find more Aardvark critique of MEMRI.

[Update: Abu Aardvark spikes MEMRI's translation.]

I stand behind my initial reactions to the tape. OBL must know that his threats cause Americans to rally behind Bush. It's awfully difficult to see how this is any kind of argument that he wants Bush to lose or wants Kerry to win.

Yet, that's exactly what Republicans and numerous TV talking heads have been saying all weekend. The right-leaning/Republican spin machine is truly awesome to behold isn't it? Consider this story from the AP: "Thompson: Bin Laden wants Kerry elected."

A new videotape of Osama bin Laden was meant to help elect Sen. John Kerry president, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson says.

The former Wisconsin governor said the admitted mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks wants voters to elect someone other but President Bush. Bin Laden’s message was ‘‘obvious to anybody that looks at it,’’ Thompson said Saturday...

Yet, in the same story, Thompson acknowledges that the opposite is actually true. The tape helps Bush:

Thompson said he believes bin Laden’s videotape would help Bush attract undecided voters.

‘‘I’ve come to the conclusion this has got to help George Bush, because if you are undecided and you see a sworn enemy of America - somebody bragging about what he was able to accomplish to hurt our country and kill thousands of Americans, and have the audacity to brag about it,’’ Thompson said.

On Saturday, some Bush campaign advisor said the same thing, though in more gloating terms:

"We want people to think 'terrorism' for the last four days," said a Bush-Cheney campaign official. "And anything that raises the issue in people's minds is good for us."

A senior GOP strategist added, "anything that makes people nervous about their personal safety helps Bush."

He called it "a little gift," saying it helps the President but doesn't guarantee his reelection.

A Houston Chronicle columnist used the new talking point openly.

Even Senator John McCain said of the tape, "It's very helpful to the president."

Election Prediction

OK, it's time for a prediction.

1. I think John Kerry is going to win the popular vote by a narrow margin: 49.15% to 48.75% for George W. Bush. That leaves 2.1% for Ralph Nader and the rest.

Kerry 57.0 million votes
Bush 56.55 million votes
Other 2.44 million votes

2. The Electoral College vote is probably going to be fairly close, and I think this is even harder to predict than the popular vote. Essentially, the thin national vote margin might be repeated in various states, which makes it very difficult to predict the outcome in a number of key places.

I'll go with Kerry 279 EVs; Bush 259.

I've given Kerry all the Gore states, save for New Mexico, plus taken 2000 Bush states New Hampshire and Ohio. There are numerous possible alternatives, and I genuinely think most of them end in a Kerry win given the current polling data at the state level.

Bush is apparently doing really well in his most solid 2000 red states, and Bloomberg recently reported that Bush may win as many as 2 million new votes in Texas, California and New York. However, none of those new Bush voters are going to shift even 1 electoral vote (EV) in 2004.

I think there's a greater than 50% chance that Kerry will receive more than 300 EVs, which would be great.

Get out the vote (GOTV)!

Monday morning QB?

George W. Bush says John Kerry's challenges about US failure to nail Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora reflect "the worst kind of Monday morning quarterbacking."

Note, Bush has been making the first argument for days, but today he apparently added a clause something like this: "especially since bin Laden released a tape today."

Psssst, media: the battle of Tora Bora was in December 2001.

This isn't Monday morning quarterbacking.

This is more like discussing the "curse of the Bambino."

If Bush can campaign as a "war President," then Kerry can legitimately point out that Bush has done a poor job of it.

Really.

Osama endorses Bush

Literally, of course, Osama bin Laden didn't endorse the President. But he didn't endorse Kerry either and the talking heads on TV (at least some I've seen on CNN and MSNBC, save Keith Olbermann) act as if he did.

It is ridiculous.

OBL is a terrorist and is obviously still at-large. If he appeared in the tape (the CIA apparently thinks it was him) and is as healthy as he looks, then three plus years after September 11, 2001, OBL does not seem to be too much the worse for the wear.

Sometime in 2002, of course, George W. Bush decided to turn the war on terror away from Osama bin Laden and focus on Iraq. Real resources were diverted, including Arabic speakers, special forces, spying technology, etc.

In an interview that year, the President famously said:

I truly am not that concerned about him [OBL]. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.

But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore.

Obviously, there's no way of knowing with certainty whether the US could have captured and killed OBL by now with more effort; yet, it is fairly clear that George W. Bush is fixated on state sponsorship of terror and seems to ignore the reality of non-state networks of terrorists.

Moreover, it is true that the US thought OBL was at Tora Bora in December 2001. And journalist Peter Bergen points out that the US military, as John Kerry says, didn't take it seriously enough and "outsourced" his capture:

Sadly, there were probably more American journalists at the battle of Tora Bora than there were US troops. And in that sense, Sen. Kerry's charge that Tora Bora was a missed opportunity to bring bin Laden to justice isn't "garbage", but an accurate reflection of the historical record.

So bin Laden escaped when the US had a serious chance to get him, right at the beginning of the "war on terror."

So...if you were OBL and looked at the 2 candidates, who would you support? The relatively unknown challenger is a US Senator and former soldier who wrote a book in 1997 about the need to confront new transnational threats like terrorism (though the book focuses primarily on transnational crime, it does mention the prospect of nuclear terror). He has publicly called for returning the focus of the war on terror on to OBL and wants to rebuild America's relations with the rest of the world.

By contrast, the incumbent botched Tora Bora, focused tremendous international attention on the wrong war, consumed $200 billion doing it, lost the cooperation of much of the world, and now serves as the primary recruiting poster. Plus, one of OBL's goals is to foment a global clash of civilizations, Islam against the West. At various times, Bush has threatened to bumble into that.

If OBL were going to make an endorsement, I do think it is rather obvious he'd prefer Bush to Kerry.


Update. Billmon's Whiskey Bar is open again and his latest post is "Osama's Endorsement." He calls the tape "virtual terrorism," an interesting phrase, and argues that al Qaeda is now acting as a 527 organization..

The President's Bulge

Salon.com has an interesting story today about a NASA scientist who took some time to examine the President's "bulge."


Here is the most important part of the report:

Dr. Robert M. Nelson...[is] a senior research scientist for NASA and for Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an international authority on image analysis.

For the past week, while at home, using his own computers, and off the clock at Caltech and NASA, Nelson has been analyzing images of the president's back during the debates. A professional physicist and photo analyst for more than 30 years, he speaks earnestly and thoughtfully about his subject. "I am willing to stake my scientific reputation to the statement that Bush was wearing something under his jacket during the debate," he says. "This is not about a bad suit. And there's no way the bulge can be described as a wrinkled shirt."

Nelson stresses that he's not certain what lies beneath the president's jacket. He offers, though, "that it could be some type of electronic device -- it's consistent with the appearance of an electronic device worn in that manner." The image of lines coursing up and down the president's back, Nelson adds, is "consistent with a wire or a tube."

Nelson used software and methods that space scientists typically use to sharpen and accent dark images received from outer space.

Bruce Hapke, professor emeritus of planetary science in the department of geology and planetary science at the University of Pittsburgh, reviewed the Bush images employed by Nelson, whom he calls "a very highly respected scientist in his field." Hapke says Nelson's process of analyzing the images are the "exact same methods we use to analyze images taken by spacecraft of planetary surfaces. It does not introduce any artifacts into the picture in any way."

Both Nelson and Hapke observe that the bulge clearly isn't a wrinkle in a suit or shirt -- and that it is consistent with an electronic device of some type.

They note the obvious: some sort of tube or wire snakes up from the bulge to the President's right shoulder.

"The truth is out there." (Fade to X-Files theme).

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.

The "Iraq Syndrome"

I thought that I had coined a phrase -- the "Iraq Syndrome." Last week, on an essay exam, I asked my students to write about the prospects of an "Iraq Syndrome" for the future of American foreign policy.

For those too young to remember, the "Vietnam Syndrome" meant that the US was quite unwilling to intervene with its military for some years after the Vietnam war. The war, after some years, was unpopular and costly -- in both human lives and dollars.

No less an authority than the current President's father argued that the US didn't get over its aversion to using military force until the Persian Gulf War:

Former President George H.W. Bush famously declared [in 1991], "By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!"

That quote is reproduced by former University of Kansas debater Gary Sick (who served in the National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan). He recently penned an interesting op-ed that used the phrase in the title: 'By God, we've just created the Iraq syndrome!'. The op-ed appeared in The Daily Star of Lebanon on October 9.

Well, I guess I didn't coin the phrase. Indeed, a google search depressingly reveals that many people have been talking about this idea for awhile. Notre Dame's George Lopez, for instance, used the phrase in November 2003 in USA Today.

Here's Sick's argument:

In one of the many ironies of our times, the current president, George W. Bush, may have inadvertently created a new syndrome - the Iraq syndrome...

...the U.S. has steadily whittled down both its objectives and its expectations in favor of a makeshift political arrangement that will meet the minimum requirements to permit America to disengage without excessive embarrassment.

The bottom line is the emergence of an Iraq syndrome that seems likely to bedevil U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East at least for the near future. After the fall of Baghdad, Washington neoconservatives were speculating openly about what the next U.S. target should be ("Should we turn left toward Syria, or right toward Iran?" they asked), and the leaders of both those nations were paying close attention. Today, the Iranians and Syrians are aware that America is bogged down in Iraq and, despite the persistent rhetoric of a few hard-liners, the U.S. is unlikely to soon launch another costly military venture in the region.

I suspect that any President in the near future is going to have to answer very tough questions about threats, costs, planning, exit strategies, and multilateralism.

For those who think the US might face some new emergency and need to use force quickly and preemptively in a legitimate case when the threat is imminent, this might be a disaster.

We can thank the Bush administration for that.

Academic blogging

If you've ever explored my blogroll, you already know that it includes a fair number of academic bloggers. In the past two days, I discovered several blogs that some of my readers might find interesting.

The Academic Life is written by a relatively junior international relations (IR) scholar. Like me, the author seems to be a basefall fan (though apparently a Yankee fan). The blogger writes fairly long and interesting posts about academic conferences, foreign travel, teaching, scholarship, etc. Specialists will be interested, but others might want to check it out too. For this individual, the act of checking out the blog (and thus relating to the blogger) would be quite important.

The Republic of Heaven is a new blog coauthored by a female spouse of an IR scholar (under the pseudonym Mrs. Coulter) and "Lee Scorseby" who may be the academic spouse. Lee's posts have made frequent reference to a number of other political blogs, including a number on my blogroll.

Mrs. Coulter has a four month old daughter named Lyra, which I recognized as the name of the main character in Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass. This was the first book in a trilogy, but so far, this is the only one my oldest daughter and I have read together. At age 11, with a very advanced reading level (according to her school's standardized tests), she rarely wants me to read to her anymore. For all I know, she may have read others in the series. I haven't.

In any case, Lee Scorseby is the name of a balloonist in Lyra's world. While living at Oxford early in the first book, Lyra has a friend named Roger...but he spells his name without the "d."

If I were a betting man, my guess is that I've met these academic bloggers at IR conferences...and have likely even shared a beer with them. If not, perhaps at a future conference?

Finally, I'll be watching "colonel sturgeon," a new blog authored by one of my former graduate students.

Happy reading.

Ka-Boom

CNN.com has this story today: "IAEA: Tons of Iraq explosives missing." It is not good news:

Some 380 tons of explosives, powerful enough to detonate nuclear warheads, are missing from a former Iraqi military facility that was supposed to be under American control, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog says.

Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told CNN the Iraqi interim government reported several days ago that the explosives were missing from the Al Qaqaa complex, south of Baghdad.

The explosives -- considered powerful enough to demolish buildings or detonate nuclear warheads -- were under IAEA control until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. IAEA workers left the country before the fighting began.

"Our immediate concern is that if the explosives did fall into the wrong hands they could be used to commit terrorist acts and some of the bombings that we've seen," Fleming said.

She described Al Qaqaa as "massive" and said it is one of the most well-known storage sites....Fleming said the IAEA, whose mission is to keep track of everything with potential nuclear weapons applications, had been monitoring about 100 sites in Iraq, but there were only a few of special concern, including Al Qaqaa.

Al Qaqaa was one of the first sites visited by UN inspectors in November 2002, and a google search reveals that they visited on a number of occasions during the next few months.

Once again, as the NY Times reports, it appears as if this was a case of very poor war-planning:

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded...

After the invasion, when widespread looting began in Iraq, the international weapons experts grew concerned that the Qaqaa stockpile could fall into unfriendly hands. In May, an internal I.A.E.A. memorandum warned that terrorists might be helping "themselves to the greatest explosives bonanza in history."

Great, just great.

And Average Joe American feels Bush keeps us safe?

There are 195 million metric tons (MMT) of HMX (high melting explosive) missing -- this is the most powerful non-nuclear explosive in the world. There are also 141 MMT missing of RDX (rapid or sometimes royal detonation explosive), which can be used to make "plastic explosives." As the NY Times story reported:

As a measure of the size of the stockpile, one large truck can carry about 10 tons, meaning that the missing explosives could fill a fleet of almost 40 trucks.

Why should everyone be concerned? First, consider the proliferation angle:

More worrisome to the I.A.E.A. - and to some in Washington - is that HMX and RDX are used in standard nuclear weapons design. In a nuclear implosion weapon, the explosives crush a hollow sphere of uranium or plutonium into a critical mass, initiating the nuclear explosion.

A crude implosion device - like the one that the United States tested in 1945 in the New Mexican desert and then dropped on Nagasaki, Japan - needs about a ton of high explosive to crush the core and start the chain reaction.

Next, the "conventional explosives" angle: RDX is the main explosive ingredient in C4, which is widely used by the US military -- and by the terrorists who attacked the USS Cole. Remember Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber"? Fox news reported December 26, 2001:

"An ounce of the plastic explosive could have been enough to blow out a window or wall of an airliner at altitude, and then 'the air pressure would rip the plane apart,' said Jack O'Keefe, a bomb technician with the Boston police bomb squad."

On ounce. Apparently, Reid had 10 ounces of a variety of C4 in his shoe.

Reports indicate that similar explosives were used by Chechens who downed the apartment buildings in Moscow in 1999 and by terrorists against housing compounds in Riyadh, Saudia Arabia during 2003.

These explosivs are fairly stable and easily transportable. Literally, right now, the missing explosives could be almost anywhere in the Middle East -- or throughout the world.

Just 12 ounces of Semtex (a particular plastic explosive), inside a Toshiba cassette recorder, downed Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988. 350 MMT is thus enough explosive to down virtually every airliner in the world.

Then again, I should note that the world has been living with this problem for some time:

...after the Czech Communist regime was toppled, the new president, Vaclav Havel, revealed that the Czechs had exported 900 tons of Semtex to Col. Moammar Qaddafi's Libya and another 1,000 tons to other unstable states, such as Syria, North Korea, Iraq, and Iran. Some experts now put worldwide stockpiles of Semtex at 40,000 tons.

Though George Bush wants to go after the states that might link to terrorists, it seems fairly clear that terrorists not clearly linked to states are a lot more willing to use nasty weapons and deserve much more attention.

Quick research tour

May I recommend the following? Warning: these are all pdf.

1. Greg Thielmann, who was head of the Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs in the State Department's Office of Intelligence and Research, has produced "Preventive Military Intervention: The Role of Intelligence" for the University of Pittsburgh's Ridgway Center for International Security Studies.

Yes, I am a member of the same working group and am supposed to prepare a similar short and readable policy brief, based on my chapter for the forthcoming book.

It needs to be done ASAP. Yesterday.

Disclosure, continued: Greg helpfully went over the last draft of my chapter and provided useful detail. Don't worry, members of the Human Subjects Committee, he did this as a colleague, not as a subject of my research.

2. Ohio State Political Science Professor John Mueller has authored "A False Sense of Insecurity?" about the relative unimportance of terror threats. It was published by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, DC.

3. Michigan Senator Carl Levin (D) has produced "Report of an Inquiry into the Alternative Analysis of the Issue of an Iraq-al Qaeda Relationship," October 21, 2004.

Levin looked into the Pentagon intelligence operation directed by Doug Feith, a potentially illegal undertaking, as I've blogged before.

I extend thanks to Matt Yglesias who helpfully provided the link.


Update: I fixed the link to Thielmann's piece, thanks to an alert reader (and former student).

Surprise: Bush Misleads Again

I just saw a clip of President Bush on MSNBC. At recent rallies, the President has taken to "quoting" his opponent, John F. Kerry:

Senator Kerry was recently asked how September the 11th had changed him. And he replied this: "It did not change me much at all." End quote.

The President is quoting the NY Times Magazine cover story by Matt Bai two weeks ago -- and he cherry-picks a line to make Kerry look bad:

"It accelerated -- " He paused. "I mean, it didn't change me much at all. It just sort of accelerated, confirmed in me, the urgency of doing the things I thought we needed to be doing. I mean, to me, it wasn't as transformational as it was a kind of anger, a frustration and an urgency that we weren't doing the kinds of things necessary to prevent it and to deal with it."

Oh, I see, Bush leaves out the rest of the quote because it explicitly criticizes the Bush administration's failings prior to 9/11.

How would we all feel if Kerry went around quoting this statement from President Bush:

"I made it very plain. We will not have an all-volunteer army."

It's an actual quote, though the President corrected his obvious error in the next sentence.

Can we have some fair play in the final days of the campaign?

I took the full Kerry quote from the original on LexisNexis, but some print media (like USA Today) have been repriting the entire quote when Bush pulls this crap.

One Vote, One Time?

Is Iranian-style theocracy in Iraq's near future? What does President Bush think about that?

Let me direct you to a story from the AP Wire | 10/18/2004 | Excerpts From Bush Interview:

"Q: If the people in Iraq, in a free, democratic election, someday choose an Islamic fundamentalist government, is that all right with you?

BUSH: I will be disappointed, but democracy is democracy. They have now got a - the beginnings of a constitution, the TAL, which sends a different message, that there will be tolerance and an open society. But people - if that's what the people choose, that's what the people choose."

So much for minority rights -- and separation of church and state.

My advice to the President? Prepare to be disappointed.

Consider this Iraqi polling data from the US-government funded International Republican Institute as reported Friday, October 22, in the Washington Post:

Leaders of Iraq's religious parties have emerged as the country's most popular politicians and would win the largest share of votes if an election were held today, while the U.S.-backed government of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is losing serious ground, according to a U.S.-financed poll by the International Republican Institute.

The former Pentagon favorite, Ahmed Chalabi, is favored by only 15% of the electorate, and opposed by more than half.

They aren't talking about it publicly, but administration officials apparently realize the worst is ahead:

Within the Bush administration, a victory by Iraq's religious parties is viewed as the worst-case scenario. Washington has hoped that Allawi and the current team, which was selected by U.S. and U.N. envoys, would win or do well in Iraq's first democratic election, in January. U.S. officials believe a secular government led by moderates is critical, in part because the new government will oversee writing a new Iraqi constitution.

"The picture it paints is that, after all the blood and treasure we've spent and despite the [U.S.-led] occupation's democracy efforts, we're in a position now that the moderates would not win if an election were held today," said a U.S. official who requested anonymity because the poll has not been released.

Jimmy Carter's presidency has long been tarnished for allowing Iran to move from an authoritarian ally to an Islamic enemy.

Will Bush move Iraq from a secular, weak, and contained state to a theocratic Iranian ally?

Well, Iranian theocrats must like their chances:

The poll found the most popular politician is Abdel Aziz Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). The group was part of the U.S.-backed opposition to Saddam Hussein and is now receiving millions of dollars in aid from Iran, U.S. officials say.

Hakim had 80 percent name recognition among Iraqis, with more than 51 percent wanting to see him in the national assembly, which will pick a new government.

...The one factor that skews the poll, analysts said, is that Ibrahim Jafari, the Dawa Party chief and current vice president, was not included. He had the highest popularity rating in previous polls.

That may still be the case, since almost 18 percent of Iraqis surveyed by IRI said they were most likely to vote for Dawa candidates -- the largest backing among the top 11 parties listed. Dawa is another former U.S.-backed group supported by aid from Iran, U.S. officials say.

US Iraq policy is like one long disaster movie that just won't end.

Thanks to Mark Kleiman for the link to the Bush quote.

Bombs away

The LA Times, October 22, 2004, reports that Israel may be about to take Iranian proliferation into its own hands:

Increasingly concerned about Iran's nuclear program, Israel is weighing its options and has not ruled out a military strike to prevent the Islamic Republic from gaining the capability to build atomic weapons, according to policymakers, military officials, analysts and diplomats.

Israel would much prefer a diplomatic agreement to shut down Iran's uranium enrichment program, but if it concluded that Tehran was approaching a "point of no return," it would not be deterred by the difficulty of a military operation, the prospect of retaliation or the international reaction, officials and analysts said.

You've got to give the Israeli policy actors credit, they don't bother to make these threats off-the-record:

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Yediot Aharonot newspaper last month that "all options" were being weighed to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability. The army chief of staff, Moshe Yaalon, declared: "We will not rely on others."

Iran presents "a combination of factors that rise to the highest level of Israeli threat perception," said analyst Gerald Steinberg of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

"Nuclear weapons in a country with a fundamentalist regime, a government with which we have no diplomatic contact, a known sponsor of terrorist groups like Hezbollah and which wants to wipe Israel off the map — that makes stable deterrence extremely difficult, if not impossible," Steinberg said....

"There may be a few months when the international community can still act and place upon Iran the kind of pressure that would compel it to stop its program," said Avi Pazner, a veteran diplomat who serves as an advisor to Sharon. "But there's not much time — there's not much time."

The Times notes that Israeli has long embraced preemptive strikes, and then cites the example of the June 1981 attack on Osirak (Saddam Hussein's reactor).

The problem with this analysis is that the attack was preventive war, not preemption, and was widely criticized around the world and at the UN. Reagan's Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick condemned the attack, as did Secretary of State Alexander Haig.

Plus, this time, the Muslim world would blame the US for an Israeli strike:

Unlike 1981, the blame for such an attack today would not be limited to Israel. The US would be perceived in the Muslim world as being complicit - probably boosting the motivation of extremists to carry out terrorist attacks on Western targets.

"Certainly it would be seen as a continuation of what the Americans did in Iraq,'' says Bruce Maddy Weizman, a fellow at the Dayan Center for Middle East and African Studies at Tel Aviv University. "Israel and US are widely perceived to be acting in concert.''

Let's hope diplomacy and/or sanctions work.

Or maybe deterrence.

Does anyone remember deterrence?

And containment.

Does anyone remember containment?

Before readers say, "yeah, but Iran could pass the bomb to terrorists..." recall that wacko right-wingers used to claim that the Soviet Union was the chief sponsor of global terrorists.

Of course, any national leader would be insane to give a bomb to terrorists. Beyond crazy...think about the fact that horrible mass murderers Mao and Stalin had nukes, but didn't just pass them around to any takers.

Evil-doers for Bush!

This is widely reported, but I took this from an AP story in the Indianapolis Star: "Iran endorses Bush for president."

The head of Iran's security council said Tuesday that the re-election of President Bush was in Tehran's best interests, despite the administration's "axis of evil" label, accusations that Iran harbors al-Qaida terrorists and threats of sanctions for the country's nuclear ambitions.

Historically, Democrats have harmed Iran more than Republicans, said Hasan Rowhani, head of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran's top security decision-making body.

"We haven't seen anything good from Democrats," Rowhani told state-run television in remarks that, for the first time in decades, saw Iran openly supporting one U.S. presidential candidate over another.

Though Iran generally does not publicly wade into U.S. presidential politics, it has a history of preferring Republicans over Democrats, who tend to press human rights issues.

"We do not desire to see Democrats take over," Rowhani said when asked whether Iran was supporting Democratic Sen. John Kerry against Bush.

The Bush administration rejected the endorsement, unsurprisingly, but can you imagine what they'd be saying if Iran had endorsed Kerry?

Rowhani, by the way, is sort of Condi Rice's counterpart in Iran. He has been the key Iranian figure in the ongoing negotiations with the IAEA and Europe about the status of Iran's nuclear program.

And he was hand-picked by the mullah's. This is from a BBC bio:

Analysts believe Ayatollah Khamenei picked Mr Rowhani, rather than a government minister or the reformist president, for the nuclear job because of his closeness to the hardline clergy, which would make him more acceptable to the military.

Born in 1948, Mr Rowhani studied theology in the holy city of Qom. He went on to gain a doctorate in law....He is often described by Western sources as a "moderate" or "pragmatic conservative".

Other than refer to Iran as an "evil" state repeatedly, it is really difficult to note one significant Bush-era US policy toward Iran. It's basically a continuation of Clinton-era policy.

So far as I can tell, the US is outsourcing its "new" "war on terror" Iran policy. From the President, August 2, 2004:

In Iran, we are paying very close attention to Iran. We have ever since I've been in office here. We are working with our friends to keep the pressure on the mullahs to listen to the demands of the free world. And we're working with the -- hold on a second, please. Excuse me. We're working with the IAEA to keep the pressure on Iran, and the Secretary is working very closely with the foreign ministers of France, Great Britain and Germany, who are taking it upon themselves to make it clear that the demands of Europe are also equal to -- the same as the demands of the United States, that we expect there to be full disclosure, full transparency of their nuclear weapons programs.

For more, here's Condi Rice answering a question about Iran in April 2002:

So I think that our view is that the behavior of Iran at this point would suggest that it is a state that while there may be some positive forces within it, those positive forces are not quite yet capable of changing the nature of Iran's behavior; Iran's behavior continues to be a major problem in international politics. And we watch the developments with great interest, but Iranian behavior puts it squarely in the axis of evil -- whether it is weapons of mass destruction or terrorism or any of those things. It's a complicated situation, but I think the behavior speaks for itself.

Indeed, it does.