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When people say Reagan allowed Americans to stand tall and be proud again, the implied contrast is always with Carter. Poor Carter, as he has said more than once, did not actually use the word "malaise" in a famous speech, but I believe it was present in a draft that the media saw.
UPDATE: See the whole story of the "malaise" speech from PBS (link via the Corner). Patrick Caddell used the word "malaise" in a memo, and Carter decided he wanted to use the whole memo as the basis for a major speech--but the word didn't actually make it.
More to the point, the speech told Americans they should settle for less--less economic growth, less discretionary spending, perhaps less pleasure--not for the sake of some glorious outcome, but simply because this was the way the world was. The Americans may be the last people on earth who would take this message cheerfully--perhaps the French would have been more outraged.
UPDATE: Virginia Postrel has more on this (Link via Hit and Run).
It wasn't just Carter, it was the 70s--inflation, crime, oil crisis, hostages in Iran. There was a lot of middle-class fear that problems were out of control. I was in an economics class in the early 70s in which a professor said "stagflation"--a combination of high unemployment and high inflation--might be here to stay. If we reduced one problem, we would make the other worse.
Reagan seemed to make at least some of the "malaise" go away, as if by magic. Tim Noah is no doubt correct that Reagan, contrary to his promises, didn't actually reduce spending or the size of government while he was cutting taxes--he simply ran up deficits. Like W, he threatened wars on evil enemies, but he was careful to only attack pipsqueaks. At the risk of one of those statements that's a little too neat, if Carter offered sacrifice with no particular goal in sight, and certainly no glory, Reagan offered glory without sacrifice. And (one could argue) delivered it.
Walter Berns used to point out that it was Jimmy Carter, the Democrat, who imposed a grain embargo on the Soviet Union over Afghanistan; it was Reagan the Republican who lifted the embargo so that American farmers wouldn't suffer. Why should any American have to pay a price to change the world, if there is an easier way?
Of course one can question the long-term effects of Reagan's successes. Did it teach younger Americans that they can have even more, still without paying much of a price? If Communism can fall in so many countries as a result (at least in part) of some tough negotiations and defence spending, along with the Helsinki Accord (stressed by Democrats more than Republicans), then why not move on and transform other parts of the world? If America is greatest by far, surely no attack on U.S. soil can be met with less than a tremendous, history-making attack somewhere? In short, Reagan may have inspired the invasion of Iraq, both for better and for worse.
I believe the only kind of spending Reagan actually cut was transfers to the states--and this cut was probably possible mainly because Senators and members of Congress are less likely to fight to maintain spending that the States end up taking credit for. Because of the reduced revenue imposed by Reagan, the states became policy innovators--the book "Reinventing Government" is largely about the results. Did Reagan intend these largely positive results? Who knows?
One way the states solved their revenue problem was with more gambling. Did Reagan--does any Republican--care? Who knows?
Reagan definitely did cut taxes, and as someone just said, taxes once cut are hard to raise again. More than that, he made tax-cutting not only respectable, but a kind of moral requirement in the political agenda. The federal government also developed a "revenue problem," and this made it more permissible or mandatory for Democrat Bill Clinton to promise, and then deliver (with a Republican Congress) an end to "welfare as we know it."
So: Reagan changed the agenda, no question.
Lou Cannon's obit is wonderful, among other reasons for the stress on Reagan being a pragmatist as well as an ideologue. This is something the true believers don't like to talk about, and because it shows his intelligence, his critics don't like to admit. One of his first initiatives as governor of California was a huge tax increase to eliminate the deficit. This succeeded so well, the state in a few years literally had more revenues than it knew what to do with. This enraged some taxpayers, especially those who no longer had children in school, or did not see themselves as users of government services. The Proposition 13 movement (led by pretty obscure people, not by Reagan) was a result. Did Reagan intend this? Who knows?
Tax-cutting may or may not stimulate the economy. If people think their lives have less security provided by government, or they are more on their own economically, this may foster the entrepreneurial spirit for which Americans are famous. Regardless of this kind of "social science," or Keynesian economics whether emphasizing the demand side or the supply side, voters responded very favourably to a "tax cuts/smaller government" message. And why shouldn't voters be able to reduce government, or at least slow its rate of growth, if they choose to?
I believe both John Rawls and his student Amy Gutman reached the point of saying certain big expensive government programs should be protected as constitutional rights, not subject to the decisions of politicians. But if most of the budget is out of the control of the people, we won't have a democracy.
George Will says that with his firing of air traffic controllers (after an illegal strike) early in his presidency, Reagan deserves credit for opening up the whole private sector to more flexibility in hiring and firing, and thus to gains in efficiency and productivity. Here's the magic again: more ability to fire leads to more actual hiring in a growing economy. Will even suggests briefly that the information technology revolution, which largely happened after Reagan, was triggered by the firing of the controllers.
Will doesn't mention the fortune that the U.S. federal government has consistently spent on research--much of it branded, and given security from cuts by this branding--as "military." One part of government spending that grew astronomically under Reagan was defence spending, including "Star Wars." It's been explained to me that whether or not any equipment ever functions to shoot down incoming missiles, the program has been a vast expenditure in research of many different kinds--some of them apparently "pure" research, with no direct link to weapons.
I met an engineer in the U.S. once who said many of his friends from engineering school went to work in the "military-industrial complex," and much of what went on there was "welfare for engineers." In other words, in this vastly expensive area, growth of government is OK, wasteful spending is OK, everything is OK because it attracts the best and the brightest, members of Congress fight for spending in their own districts and states, and it is protected by the aura of "national security."
It is not entrepreneurship (the private sector) alone which causes the U.S. to be the innovators in science and technology so often: it is, I would suggest, vast government spending which ends up largely in the hands of people who are capable of thinking like entrepreneurs. I think that combination is very difficult to reproduce anywhere else. True believers in Reagan, including Will, don't like to talk about the government spending part of it. Liberals have a distaste for defence spending, and don't like to admit that many of the best and brightest in our world (at least in the U.S.) function and excel in the world of high-tech research that may spin off from military spending.
How much of this did Reagan understand? Who knows?
Dealing with the Soviets: Reagan was largely confrontational in his first term, and largely committed to negotiations (with "evil") in his second term. Did he plan this--softening the Soviets up first with massive spending on technology, including missiles in Europe, that they couldn't possibly keep up with? Who knows?
Probably the analogy to FDR is a very good one. Both Reagan and FDR were underestimated by many bright people. When people study Reagan, they often find him (away from the podium) a man of few, simple words--almost unreflective except in the direction of wing-nut theories about astrology or the end of the world. Of course there was a standard "government should be smaller/government is the problem" speech which seems nuts given his actual record as governor and president. At best I suppose it was an overblown, mythological rationale for cutting taxes. Sometimes to explain how government could disappear from people's lives, he referred to voluntary communities of family, church, service group, etc.--institutions which he treated more or less with contempt in his own life.
I suppose he was either very deep or very shallow.
UPDATE: See Josh Green from early 2003 (via Atrios). Reagan achieved some significant "liberal" goals, especially after the Democrats did well in 1982 in response to Reagan's talk of gutting Social Security.
Reagan did build a coalition--of social conservatives and pro-business (often libertarian) tax-cutters. As is often the case in politics, the coalition was an unlikely one. The movement intellectuals and Republican party hacks can benefit from talking as if the combined movement exists, and is accomplishing one goal after another. It is important to maintain Reagan as the saint/hero of this combined conservative movement. In fact he was something much more human and probably more likeable or interesting than that.
As has been pointed out, if the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative appointees actually succeeded in striking down Roe v. Wade, and denying that there is a constitutional right to abortion, this issue would have to be fought out in every state legislature, as well as Congress. It is unlikely the present-day Republican party could survive. (Scalia has said there is no constitutional rule against abortion, any more than there is a constitutional right to have one). For the movement to get what it supposedly wants, would destroy it.
UPDATE 2: Mickey Kaus, as usual, does a good job on a few brief points, especially:
- welfare reform
- the meaning of equality
- tax reform/closing loopholes/making the system fairer (identified by Josh Green as a tax increase)(Kaus criticizes Clinton for being addicted to new special deductions/loopholes/shelters, i.e. greater complexity and unfairness
- the air traffic controllers (see also Will)
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Kevin Drum, linking to Josh Marshall and the WP.
I think this clarifies a detail about the "Bay of Goats" in 1996 that I got wrong before.
Kevin Drum is still warning us not to believe everything the CIA says about Chalabi. They've hated him for years, and they seem to be fighting a bureaucratic battle in Washington these days.
Still, here's one I couldn't resist. Laura Rozen interviews "Reuel Marc Gerecht, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Middle East specialist based in Turkey for the Central Intelligence Agency."
Highlights? Why did the Americans raid Chalabi's office?
"He has an enormous amount of documents in his possession, which the Americans allowed and encouraged him to have for several reasons.
"First and foremost, the Americans simply don't have the means to review the documentation in Arabic themselves. It's simply beyond our capacity. To be frank, the safe houses in Afghanistan that we took possession of more or less broke the back of both the DIA and CIA for translation purposes. We were run ragged.
"Also, the Americans were enormously slow to secure sites after the fall of Baghdad, and their overall ignorance of what was in them led them to hand that stuff off to Chalabi."
It may be that the U.S. had little choice but to trust Chalabi implicity: they simply didn't know anyone else who knew the relevant languages.
Another gem, possibly a bit unrelated: "It would be amusing to find out if the Agency were giving money to the same people the Iranians are giving money to."
Glenn Reynolds has shown a lot of interest in coverage of major stories by the NY Times in the past--whether the "newspaper of record" deserves to be blamed for bias, or not, for example. He has a strong interest in whether it is fair to say the major media have a liberal bias, and above all, an anti-Iraq war or anti-Bush bias.
I just searched for "Judith Miller" in his archive. The only post that comes up is from June 25, 2003. Reynolds links to a Washington Post article which suggests on the one hand that Miller has worked too closely with the military unit she is embedded with, and become "too aggressive"; and on the other hand that she "helped the United States take custody of two important Iraqis." He says he is letting readers decide, but he is pretty clearly pro-Miller.
The Post article includes this: "In a May 1 e-mail to Times colleague John Burns, The Post reported, Miller said: 'I've been covering Chalabi for about 10 years, and have done most of the stories about him for our paper. . . . He has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD to our paper.'"
It has become a pretty significant story that Chalabi and the INC deliberately spread stories that were not just exaggerations, but wholly and completely untrue. Miller, whatever else she was doing, was acting as Chalabi's dupe. By her complete failure to carry out even elementary checking of the amazing stories she was told by one source, she displayed worse dishonesty than Rick Bragg, who was forced to resign from the Times, and probably worse than Jayson Blair.
According to Jack Shafer in Slate, Chalabi's INC has made it more or less official that they succeeded in placing their "product" or message--their detailed and fairly sophisticated line of crap--in 108 different media articles and broadcasts between October 2001 and May 2002. Many of these placements were in the "elite" big media, including, of course, the NYT.
Now there's a story of bias, no doubt some deliberate deception on a huge scale by the INC, in-group thinking that fails to question alternatives, talking in an echo chamber, etc. Yet it does not attract Instapundit's attention.
How about Chalabi himself? Here Reynolds has been raising questions--and in fact, in this connection he says the NYT is likely to be embarrassed if the charges against Chalabi turn out to be true.
What about the fact that the allegations about corruption in the oil-for-food program mostly originate with Chalabi? As far as I know, Reynolds has not mentioned that.
What about the new evidence that Dick Cheney actually did use his position to steer some business in Iraq to Halliburton, the company where he used to be CEO? Nothing so far.
What about the fact that Bush apparently had three chances to kill Zarqawi, and chose not to do so. Before March 2003, Zarqawi may have been the only Al Qaeda operative in Iraq. He stayed for the most part in the part of the country controlled by Kurds, and it has not been shown that he was ever the guest of Saddam. Bush may have wanted to avoid giving the impression that actual Al Qaeda leaders could be removed from Iraq without invading the country. Zarqawi may be one of the biggest sources of violent attacks in Iraq today. Reynolds, I believe, has mentioned none of this.
Tony Pierce has brought up another story more than once. President Bush's uncle had a senior position with a bank that handled discreet transactions for embassies in Washington, including the Saudi embassy, before 9/11. It is possible, according to Pierce, that Bush's uncle actually expedited the funding of the attacks on 9/11--although presumably without knowing what he was doing. Instapundit has not mentioned this story, either.
So now we wait for developments.
One question: who is the American who got drunk and blabbed the one secret to Chalabi which, once it was transmitted to Iran and detected by the U.S., caused Chalabi to become persona non grata?
Why would the Iranians use the very communication system which, as Chalabi was telling them, the U.S. had cracked? It's hard to know how these things get started, but somehow, somewhere, the Iranians may have gotten the idea that Chalabi is a liar.
UPDATE: I guess the classic problem with a double agent is that you're never sure that he's yours, or that he never lies to you. The Iranians may also have concluded that the U.S. has not proceeded in Iraq as though they are well-informed about anything, so it was unlikely they were able to read every Iranian signal.
The bigger question: to what extent did senior people in both the Pentagon and the White House trust Chalabi implicitly as the Saviour of the Middle East? To what extent was he getting "secrets," and passing them along to Iran if he chose, on a regular basis?
Still bigger (I suppose): to what extent was the whole Iraq adventure "Let's Do What Ahmed Says"? If this is what happened, obviously part of Chalabi's genius is in persuading people the lines coming out of their mouths are indications of their own genius, not, say, idiotic parroting of what Chalabi has told them. More hints are showing up as to how he schmoozed absolutely everyone, using U.S. taxpayer money. Christopher Hitchens, Peter Galbraith, Judith Miller....
And on a similar subject, was Chalabi developing files on Americans to use for lobbying, schmoozing, or even, dare we say it, blackmail?
There's got to be a fascinating book here.
Finally, Josh Marshall still seems to think the Valerie Plame case could be a big deal.
Judith Miller (along with another reporter) gives some of the Chalabi view of the oil-for-food program, but in a subtle way as one would expect from a big city, sophisticated newspaper. (via Alterman).
The headline and opening grafs actually give time to one of the individuals who has been "accused"--pretty much through the media--of corruption. So there is even-handedness; maybe this guy is corrupt, maybe he's not.
"Mr. Chalabi and his governing council have been sparring with the American occupation administration over who should investigate alleged corruption in the oil-for-food program."
But what's this? A spokesman for Mr. Chalabi says it is a real shame that so many allegations have somehow been made public, before anything like, you know, a real investigation or a hearing, or anything like that. But doesn't ace reporter Miller realize that Chalabi actually has been holding the most relevant documents, and he is almost certainly the one who deliberately circulated accusations or "smears"?
See FAIR quoting Newsweek, via Atrios.
Getting back to work on my article on Dalton Camp. I've updated it to take into account the Geoffrey Stevens biography from last year.
Camp was famous first as a political operative for the Tory party in Canada--I think he may have been one of the first people to earn that description in its present sense--then as a journalist. He wrote a really lively and interesting book on Canadian politics in 1970--focussing on his experiences in the 50s, which in some ways now feel like 300 years ago.
He spent his life being the brightest person in practically any room. Yet what did he actually accomplish, other than that book? A question for many of us, I guess.
At the end of the day I don't find Camp all that interesting, so it's difficult to finish this thing and submit it somewhere.
A cynic might say: "The Baathists are back." According to this article in the Globe and Mail, Iyad Allawi, despite being a Shiite, was a member of the Baath party for roughly 10 years--until 1975. "After moving to Britain for medical studies in 1971, Mr. Allawi reportedly continued to receive payments from the Iraqi embassy in London and did not quit the Baath Party until 1975."
"Mr. Allawi has also been an outspoken advocate of the idea that former members of the long-ruling Baath Party, such as himself, should not be excluded from senior government posts in the new Iraq."
Since the beginning of the Sadr uprising, it seems the Shiite mullocrats and the Baathists have co-operated to a remarkable extent. Perhaps they can only agree on ending the U.S. occupation, after which they will return to their own war. Allawi in a way personifies the collaboration.
Some more light on the factions within Washington, DC:
"He is the head of the Iraqi National Accord, a political party dominated by exiled military figures who defected from the Saddam Hussein regime. The INA was a long-time rival to another Shia exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, headed by Ahmad Chalabi, a distant relative of Mr. Allawi.
"While the Pentagon favoured the more flamboyant Mr. Chalabi, the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department preferred Mr. Allawi. Last week, when Iraqi police raided the office of Mr. Chalabi and his Pentagon funding was terminated, it was further evidence that Mr. Chalabi had fallen into disfavour and his rival was winning."
Can we shed some light on the attempted coup in 1996, in which everyone, so to speak, seems to have been involved?
"In the long years of exile, during debates over how to get rid of Mr. Hussein, it was Mr. Allawi, with the CIA's support, who argued for a military coup that would leave most of the Iraqi regime in place."
Spencer Ackerman: "Allawi recruited a number of ex-Baathist Sunnis and, after a brief return to London to rekindle his British contacts, set up shop in Iraqi Kurdistan, where he ingratiated himself to CIA agents trying to oust Saddam. Sympathetic CIA operatives enlisted the support of Jordanian and Kuwaiti intelligence for schemes that Allawi dreamed up--even as Allawi himself whispered in the ears of selected allies that he didn't think his plans would work. Those whispers turned out to be right, as the CIA and INA's long-planned military coup was thoroughly penetrated by Saddam's agents and ended in disaster."
Michael Ledeen comments on one of the Kurdish leaders: "Jalal Talabani is closely linked to the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian Intelligence Service, and reported to Tehran on U.S. activities in 1996 during the failed uprising against Saddam."
The role of Chalabi (and others) in the "Bay of Goats" in 1996: "Indeed, in 1996 an ill-organized INC offensive in northern Iraq, where Chalabi had assembled about 1,000 fighters, was half-heartedly backed by the CIA. Not only did Saddam Hussein's troops not defect en masse, as predicted by Chalabi, but one of the INC's key allies, the Kurdistan Democratic Party [Barzani's, not Talabani's group], chose to ally itself with Baghdad, inviting the Iraqi army back into northern Iraq's Kurdish areas for a mop-up exercise. Another of the INC's allies, the Iraqi National Accord, apparently blew up the INC's main offices in an act of bloody fratricide. These tragic failures only increased the distaste for Chalabi at the CIA and among the U.S. military."
While we're at: a piece in the New Yorker on Chalabi (via Atrios): A new total! "Between 1992 and the raid on Chalabi's home, the U.S. government funnelled more than a hundred million dollars to the Iraqi National Congress. The current Bush Administration gave Chalabi's group at least thirty-nine million dollars." Making Saddam look as bad as possible was originally a CIA operation, with money channelled through the Rendon Group.
Peter Galbraith emerges here as yet another American who has been charmed by Chalabi. He says Chalabi's stories before the war were not lies, and in any case Chalabi is not responsible for any decisions the Americans made. My question: what if Chalabi decided at some point (maybe after the Bay of Goats) that he wasn't getting enough from the Americans, so he turned to Iran? And what was Allawi doing all this time?
Clearly the U.S. has found a way to identify the elite of the country--the George Washingtons, the Thomas Jeffersons--and allow them to lead their country in a proud new direction.
UPDATE: Mickey Kaus says "if Sistani's happy, I guess we should be happy." The IGC may simply have made a decision in defiance of U.S. wishes, the preference of Brahimi of the U.N., and indeed the "official" process. This is not likely to represent the popular wishes of the Iraqi people, in any meaningful sense, but it may reflect the views of the "mullocracy" that is taking shape as a result of U.S. and Iranian actions.
Michael Ledeen defends Chalabi by pointing out that several Iraqi leaders are (as far as we can tell) just as close to the Iranian mullahs as Chalabi--yet they remain in the good graces of the U.S. Ledeen, of course, is not able to comment on the new damning evidence against Chalabi, which is causing Feith and Wolfowitz to keep their mouths shut.
Still, you get an uneasy feeling the Iranians have been running things for a while.
"Next: If we're going to worry about Iraqi political groups' associations with Iran, let's look at the really dramatic cases. There's Abdul Aziz al Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). SCIRI is funded directly by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (RG) to the tune of $1.2 million a month, and significant numbers of SCIRI members are paid personally by the RG. Hakim reports regularly to an Iranian intelligence official named Sulemani, surely one of the most dangerous men in the country. And SCIRI has its own militia, the Badr Brigades, which at least until very recently conducted military maneuvers with units of the Revolutionary Guards on Iraqi territory adjoining the Iranian border.
"But Hakim is a member of the Governing Council and is in our good graces."
Wow. That is impressive. $1.2 million a month, just for starters. This is not too far from the $30 million over three years Chalabi got directly from the Pentagon. (Chalabi has obviously been paid from other U.S. official sources as well, and for a longer period). Hypothetically, if Chalabi were working for the Iranian mullahs, would they have to pay him more than they pay Hakim? After all, Chalabi seems to have achieved more ... access than any of them.
Ledeen goes on. "Then there's the Dawa party, represented on the Governing Council by Ibrahim Jaffari. The Dawa is a fundamentalist Islamic party that was part of the Iranian-supported campaign against Saddam Hussein in the early 1980s. Its leaders lived in Iran for years--Jaffari was there from 1982-89 recruiting Iraqis to spy in their homeland, and reportedly informed on Iraqis in Iran who might be problems for the regime--and the party is funded directly by the Iranians. Dawa was believed involved in terrorist attacks against United States targets in the Persian Gulf in the early and mid-1980s. On his frequent trips to Iran, Jaffari meets the top leaders of the Islamic Republic, including Supreme Leader Khamenei.
"But Jaffari is in our good graces."
Ledeen doesn't say how much Iran has been paying Jaffari. Is there a price list somewhere?
"Then there are the Kurds, most of whom are actively engaged in commerce with Iran, including arms, explosives, and alcohol. Jalal Talabani is closely linked to the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian Intelligence Service, and reported to Tehran on U.S. activities in 1996 during the failed uprising against Saddam. His deputy reports directly to Iranian intelligence. Massoud Barzani, the other prime Kurdish leader, uses his cousin as a conduit to Iran, and the cousin is the head of Kurdish Hezbollah, an Iranian creation. Barzani meets regularly in Baghdad with the Iranians' top man, who was a guest in Barzani's house just two weeks ago. Barzani and Talabani both get funding from Iran.
"Both Barzani and Talabani are in our good graces."
So the Kurds also receive payment beyond what they are (rightly, surely) paid for merchandise. In the good graces of the U.S.? On the one hand, Barbara Lerner practically refers to the two Kurdish leaders as "our noble Kurdish friends (alongside noble Chalabi)."
On the other hand, in the latest constitutional "suggestions" or "hints" from the U.S., there was apparently no mention of an autonomous Kurdistan. This makes Timothy Noah worry, not for the first time, that Bush would sell the Kurds out for fifty cents. At one time it seemed he would sell them out to the Turks. Now it would more likely be to the Shiites/mullahs, who apparently promise some kind of peace and stability in Iraq, allowing the U.S. in the near future to bug out and declare victory. The mullahs, of course, are unabashedly pro-Iran.
UPDATE June 9: Nick Gillespie also thinks the Kurds have been left "in the punch bowl" by the Shiite mullahs and the U.S.
If this were Le Carre's novel, Smiley's People, it would become obvious about now that Iranian intelligence had turned the U.S. operation in Iraq completely inside out--partly by spending millions of dollars to do so. Poor Ledeen's point is simply that Chalabi is ... probably no more guilty of working for Iran than all these other guys.
UPDATE June 12: The Kurd story that Noah has been patiently following for years makes the big time.
UPDATE on Chalabi's cost to the U.S.:
While we're at it: a piece in the New Yorker on Chalabi (via Atrios): A new total! "Between 1992 and the raid on Chalabi's home, the U.S. government funnelled more than a hundred million dollars to the Iraqi National Congress. The current Bush Administration gave Chalabi's group at least thirty-nine million dollars." Making Saddam look as bad as possible was originally a CIA operation, with money channelled through the Rendon Group.
You get a sense that for Kevin Drum, it's almost literally too good to be true. Chalabi an Iranian agent? There might be proof? He links to Laura Rozen's digging on the story (now with a link to British intelligence), but then says: "Her sources say 'maybe.' It's interesting speculation, but I do think it's worth a warning or three. After all, if British and American intelligence screwed up so badly before the war, they might be screwing up over this as well. From what I've read I suspect there's something pretty solid here, but it's worth a few grains of salt. After all, if our evidence is so 'rock solid,' why don't we have him in custody already?"
In a way the story is eerily calm. Not just like Bush's repeated failure to take out Zarqawi when he had the chance--Bushies are obviously hoping that one will go away. Now there is something close to panic, just below the surface. Laura Rozen and Josh Marshall are both saying the people who continue to defend Chalabi are simply those who have not seen the new evidence. (See Ledeen, linked by Rozen, but also Hitchens and Mylroie).
The Weekly Standard does not seem to know what to say.
Now there is a new Prime Minister for Iraq: Iyad Allawi. There is confusion as to who really made the decision to put him there. Atrios is concerned that Allawi was one of the main advocates of the (Laurie Mylroie) view that Saddam and Osama were closely linked. Maybe the neo-cons, while forced to sacrifice one lying hero, are still able to lobby for another? Goodbye WMD's (Hitchens); hello "the real reason for invading Iraq was to get those responsible for 9/11" (Laurie Mylroie).
It turns out that Judy Miller, the latest pathetic liar who was caught lying at the New York Times, once co-authored a book with Laurie Mylroie. Now there is a new book by Stephen Hayes, somehow associated with the woman who has spent years trying to link Saddam and/or Osama to the Oklahama City bombing.
Hitchens describes himself being charmed by Chalabi so convincingly, I am wondering how many "messages" we have seen that actually come from Chalabi. Comparisons between Saddam, out of all tyrants on earth, to both Hitler and Stalin, so that anyone who didn't want to take him out immediately was as bad as Chamberlain in 1939?
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