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Even before President Bush gave his State of the Union address on Tuesday, he was being criticized by conservatives for his free-spending ways. Jonah Goldberg:
"Read Tuesday's lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal, and you'll find that this is the spendiest (yes, that's right, 'spendiest') president in American history, second only to LBJ.
"Maybe there's something about presidents from Texas--they like everything big down there, including their government."
The SOTU itself contained goodies like helping ex-convicts get jobs, support for community colleges, and a weird pronouncement about steroid us by professional athletes. Then, of course, there is a new space program.
Update: I forgot the $1.5 billion to promote healthy marriages. One might guess: space-age research to develop a vehicle that converts very easily from a mini-van to a little red sports car? Like a Honda CRV, only better?
Of course not. The President wants to pay for counselling, primarily aimed at low-income couples, to emphasize that marriage is generally a help to achieving financial security and even overall well-being.
There seems to some observers to be a disconnect between making the immigration of unskilled workers easier, on the one hand, and paying to help ex-convicts get jobs, on the other. Employers will be more willing to hire ex-cons, and pay a decent wage, if there is not a vast pool of recent immigrants, legal and illegal, to draw on.
What about the comparison to LBJ, of all people? It is interesting to compare this election-year SOTU with Johnson's in 1964. Of course memories of JFK's assassination were very fresh, and LBJ referred to that in various ways. And he launched the "War on Poverty," which has come to represent, on the domestic front, much that conservatives and neo-conservatives are opposed to.
But consider some other passages:
- plans to enact "the most far-reaching tax cut of our time"
- no overall increase in spending, and in fact all that he proposed could supposedly be done "with an actual reduction in Federal expenditures and Federal employment"
- cut in the deficit "in half--from $10 billion to $4,900 million. It will be, in proportion to our national output, the smallest budget since 1951"
- "by closing down obsolete installations, by curtailing less urgent programs, by cutting back where cutting back seems to be wise, by insisting on a dollar's worth for a dollar spent, I am able to recommend in this reduced budget the most Federal support in history for education, for health, for retraining the unemployed, and for helping the economically and the physically handicapped."
Bush is now promising a similar miracle--an increase in spending on homeland security of close to 10%, with sufficient reductions in other areas to keep spending growth at 1% overall.
Of course, national security was a big issue in the 60s as well, but in early 1964 Johnson simply wanted to give the impression that everything was under control:
"First, we must maintain-and our reduced defense budget will maintain-that margin of military safety and superiority obtained through 3 years of steadily increasing both the quality and the quantity of our strategic, our conventional, and our antiguerrilla forces. In 1964 we will be better prepared than ever before to defend the cause of freedom, whether it is threatened by outright aggression or by the infiltration practiced by those in Hanoi and Havana, who ship arms and men across international borders to foment insurrection. And we must continue to use that strength as John Kennedy used it in the Cuban crisis and for the test ban treaty-to demonstrate both the futility of nuclear war and the possibilities of lasting peace."
Johnson is remembered much more for out-of-control spending--both on domestic programs, some of which were wasteful pie-in-the-sky at the expense of the middle class, and on defence, particularly the Vietnam war. It may be true that he somehow meant the domestic spending stuff more than the tax-cutting, the need for government to be frugal, etc. Still, many conservative themes are there. Things just didn't turn out the way LBJ predicted or hoped.
Who knows which way Bush will go? He simply doesn't seem uncomfortable at big spending programs or deficits. He has never said, like Reagan, that government is the problem. And of course the new war is a justification for who knows what spending, just as "aggression" and "infiltration" were in the 60s.
Bush may be achieving a re-alignment such that Republicans can favour practically everthing--spending, tax cuts, lots of patriotic defence and security spending--because the deficit is somehow not a problem. What are the Democrats supposed to say? Balance the budget, as conservative Republicans used to say? Then you sound like the only sober person at a fraternity party. Spend more on something that's not a priority for the president, like the environment? The public is likely to say: that's being done. Some conservatives are grudgingly admitting that the President's approach is popular, and hoping there will be a "real conservative" party again some day.
In the 1964 campaign, LBJ rode very high, and beat Barry Goldwater overwhelmingly. My favourite line of his from that campaign: "We are in favour of a great many things, and opposed to very few."
Update: For a recent argument by David Greenberg in Slate as to whether the JFK tax cut (partially implemented by LBJ) was of the supply-side, Reaganite type or not, see here. (Democrats say no, JFK was Democrat, trying to re-distribute wealth as well as create it. There's a comment somewhere in the threat on this article that says something like: let's face it, JFK was a conservative). For a reminder that Governor Reagan pushed through the biggest tax increase in California history, see here.
Update: The many spending commitments in Johnson's SOTU are not a surprise today. But what about the hymns to tax cuts?
"Above all, we must release $11 billion of tax reduction into the private spending stream to create new jobs and new markets in every area of this land.
"...every individual American taxpayer and every corporate taxpayer will benefit from the earliest possible passage of the pending tax bill from both the new investment it will bring and the new jobs that it will create.
"That tax bill has been thoroughly discussed for a year. Now we need action. The new budget clearly allows it. Our taxpayers surely deserve it. Our economy strongly demands it. And every month of delay dilutes its benefits in 1964 for consumption, for investment, and for employment."
I'm behind on blogging this week; I had a lot of work to do for the course.
I must be well on the way to being a full-fledged pundit; I was completely mistaken about what would happen in Iowa, to say nothing of the rest of the race. Kerry, who in some ways seems born to be the front-runner, is once again the front-runner in fact.
I am a faithful reader of Mickey Kaus, who seems to find it impossible to take Kerry seriously. Kerry often seems to show no genuine emotion, which would explain an extreme slipperiness on policy positions. Sometimes only his lips move when he speaks; he is expressionless, like the people Conan O'Brien forces to speak by moving "their" lips.
Update: Kaus seems to say this picture of stiffness combined with insincerity is already the "old" Kerry; the new Kerry has some of the same Bob Schrum lines that Gore used to use: big companies/the rich and powerful have shafted us, we're helpless victims. Perhaps not what Americans want to hear, in addition to not being true. Leaders have to make tough decisions, usually with some group of stakeholders angrily opposing them. So?
Clark seems roughly as dead as Dean. If so, he will surely wonder for the rest of his life what the hell happened. Why wasn't he another Eisenhower? (Of course he's a Democrat, he says: he's pro-choice, pro-affirmative action, pro-environment and pro-labor. He got off a nice line in the Thursday debate: "I voted for Bill Clinton and Al Gore. When I got out of the military, I looked at both parties. I'm pro-choice, pro-affirmative action, pro-environment, pro-labor. I was either going to be the loneliest Republican in America or I was going to be a happy Democrat." But in fact he has voted Republican until recently, and he really wants a party to join him, rather than the other way around. Eisenhower decided rather late in his life that he was a Republican, and then he had to learn to put down the "socialists" and "Reds" in the other party).
(Update: my favourite story about Eisenhower's trip to the presidency, which included a term as president of Columbia University. Supposedly the Board at Columbia asked the advice of Robert Maynard Hutchins, the famous president of the University of Chicago. Hutchins recommended "Eisenhower," meaning the General's brother Milton, who was actually a university president. This site on the history of Columbia says this story is unlikely, but it also confirms that the General was an unlikely fit with an Ivy League university).
Some are suggesting Clark will go down roughly in parallel with Dean: they were the outsiders, running against Washington insiders, known more as pissed off at Bush than as having consistent "anti-war" views. Anyway, Democrats seem to have decided that whether they are themselves anti-war or not, their nominee will have no chance if he is.
Edwards: Southern, a real-life version of a lawyer in a John Grisham novel, who can say he's battled big companies--and won (and sometimes put family doctors
A Kerry-Edwards ticket? Edwards-Lieberman (since Lieberman is clearly at least some help in winning Florida)?
Update: Kaus is all over the latest numbers showing that while Edwards is still behind, he may be enjoying the biggest upward surge of them all.
One question: Edwards is expected to do well in the South because he is from there, sounds that way, and all that. (There was always a sense that Gore had to practice his Tennessee accent in front of a mirror). But what about the religion issue? When Dean, during his time as front-runner, was asked how he would campaign in the South, he said something like: he could talk about Jesus if he had to. Will Edwards talk about Jesus? Wonkette says he is drawn to the Hare Krishna, of all things. (Link via Kaus and Instapundit. Wonkette is the work of Nick Denton).
Update on Wonkette: Nick Gillespie on Hit and Run very properly credits Ana Marie Cox as the mind behind Wonkette (hence the feminine form, which had puzzled me). Gillespie says Cox is "a pre-menopausal Lucianne Goldberg at the top of her game."
Kerry supposedly has said something like: We can win without the South. Gore could have won with one more northern state. (I can't find this quickly). I think it was Michael Kinsley who said: what the major media consider a gaffe is usually the telling of the simple truth).
Iraq needs a new constitution. The country is under U.S. occupation. The U.S. will "substantially withdraw," or something, on July 1. This seems to mean there will still be a lot of U.S. troops, but they won't be so visible--e.g. they won't be in a palace in Baghdad.
The U.S. says there is no time for a real election by July 1. So there has to be another non-elected council, like the present Iraqi Governing Council. (Maybe the official name is "Interim"). The present Council, I'm pretty sure, is the second; the first didn't last very long.
Update: the U.S. plan is to have legislators chosen by 18 regional caucuses. Full elections are supposed to come in 2005. I'm still looking for more details.
Update: The Washington Post: "Under the Bush administration's plan, which was approved by Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council on Nov. 15, caucuses would be held in Iraq's 18 provinces to choose representatives to a transitional assembly. The assembly would then choose the provisional government to which the U.S.-led occupation authority is to transfer sovereignty by July 1."
Update: this account in another Washington Post story has its funny side:
"After weeks of quiet overtures and secret letters to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, administration officials say they are baffled over exactly what he wants--and even more confused about what it will take to get him to back off his demand for direct elections.
"On substance, the United States is not even sure how well Sistani understands the complicated U.S. plan to hold 18 regional caucuses to select a national assembly, which would pick a government to assume power when the occupation ends. Complicating the problem is the fact that there is no precise equivalent in Arabic for "caucus" nor any history of caucuses in the Arab world, U.S. officials say.
"Through intermediaries and in letters from Bremer over the past two months, the U.S.-led coalition authority has tried to explain its plan, which it calls 'election by conference' in Arabic. But Sistani's responses have been limited and often vague, U.S. officials say.
"Sistani has refused to see any U.S. official, and Washington is not sure how many of the indirect communications have reached the aging and reclusive cleric, U.S. officials add. The United States is still looking for people who know Sistani well enough to act as go-betweens for the negotiations or to explain Sistani's thinking."
The Shiites, a majority of the population, want an election, and representation by population. There have been large demonstrations on this point inspired by one Shiite religious leader: Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, head of the Hawza al-Ilmiya, "a historic center of Shiite learning in the holy city of Najaf that produces clerics serving across Iraq and the Shiite world." Al-Sistani is obviously one candidate for democratically elected "leader" (President? Grand Ayatollah?) of Iraq.
My main source is MSN.com.
There are obvious objections to simple majority rule in the near future. The Sunnis have had the upper hand for decades. They don't want to lose all power, and they probably fear retribution, including confiscation of property, from other groups. There seem to be two "candidates" who are Sunni: Nizar Khazraji, a former chief of staff of the Iraqi army, hero of the Iran-Iraq war, wanted in Denmark for war crimes commited against the Kurds in Iraq (? I don't know the story); and Adnan Pachachi, a former Iraqi foreign minister who quit in the late 1960s, and proudly says he never supported Saddam, and (therefore) he enjoys substantial support among the Shiites.
The Kurds have received a lot of attention. There have really been two Kurdistans in the north of Iraq, protected by the U.S. no-fly zone after 1991, and there are two prominent Kurdish leaders today: Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP); and Jalal Talabani, "chief rival to Barzani," the secretary general of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
Al-Sistani is not the only potential Shiite leader. The famous or notorious Ahmed Chalabi is another. His brief bio is a hoot: "Ahmed Chalabi is president of the London-based Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella group of exiles. Chalabi, a Shiite, relies on close ties to the Pentagon. He was convicted in absentia for bank fraud by Jordan in 1992." As far as we can tell, he is the favourite of the brain trust in Washington.
Finally, there is Muqtada Al-Sadr: "in his 20s, is son of al-Sistani's predecessor as grand ayatollah, Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, who was killed by Saddam's regime in 1999 and is now revered by many as a martyr. Witnesses said al-Sadr's followers were behind the killing of prominent cleric Abdel Majid al-Khoei, an al-Sistani ally, in Najaf on April 10.
It is difficult to tell how Bremer, or anyone in Washington, actually expects this to work out. [Update: they seem to be asking the UN for some kind of help]. The Kurds have been granted some kind of autonomy in Kurdistan, but not in Kirkuk--a city which they regard as theirs, and which Saddam deliberately settled with Arabs (Sunnis?) in recent decades. Are the Kurds going to try to take Kirkuk back by force? Would that be the trigger that would cause Turkey to intervene? [Update: There is also a substantial Turkmen minority in Kirkuk].
Syria has a Baathist government, at least nominally close to the former Saddam regime. Will Assad intervene on behalf of the Sunnis? Will Iran intervene on behalf of the pious, non-Chalabi Shiites, or on behalf of a specific mullah? To what extent are Iran and Syria already driving events?
The Bush Administration has mentioned "democracy" roughly a million times. That primarily means majority rule. Yet the pious, non-Chalabi Shiites--probably a majority of Iraq--seem to be the Iraqis that the U.S. will least want to work with--the closest to Islamic fundamentalism and the mullahs of Iran, the least Westernized and secular.
Presumably part of the U.S. Constitution might help: an upper house which gives equal representation to states or regions, and a lower house which is based on rep by pop. Of course, the U.S. Senate has caused problems over the years, but it has also allowed for some useful compromises. There is already concern in Iraq that giving some kind of autonomy to each major region will put minorities in a region at risk.
Update: Details on the transition plan are here. There is a reference to federalism (as well as a bill of rights, and independent judiciary), but not to an upper house with a federal organizing principle.
The 18 "caucuses" are to take place within "governorates". Huh?
Update: Slate quotes from the LA Times, including this quote from a director at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: "Beneath the new interest of the United States in bringing democracy to the Middle East is the central dilemma that the most powerful, popular movements are ones that we are deeply uncomfortable with."
Update: from an article in the new Newsweek: "In the immediate aftermath of Saddam's overthrow, Syrian President Bashar Assad looked like the most vulnerable of Iraq's neighbors, and he probably still is. Damascus not only has to contend with its new neighbor, the United States, but with its old one, Israel. So Assad has turned to Turkey. He quickly handed over several terrorists who'd tried to find refuge in Syria after the bombings of two Istanbul synagogues last November. And on a state visit this month, he emphasized a common goal on which Ankara and Damascus strongly concur: the need to keep Iraq's Kurds from establishing an autonomous, much less an independent, homeland. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that he and Assad were "in complete agreement." (Turkey, Syria and Iran all have Kurdish populations that might try the same thing if the Iraqis succeed.) The uncertainties raised by the Iraq effect--including the status of the Kurds--have brought these old enemies closer together."
This article suggests that two nasty regimes--Libya and Syria--are being allowed to come in from the cold with no serious internal reform. Iran's religious conservatives are tightening control--just when reform began to seem possible--because they know the U.S. needs them to achieve a smooth transition in Iraq. Unintended consequences, one might say.
A great national war is actually a temporary enthusiasm for the libertarians. Thousands of U.S. civilians have been killed, and no American can feel safe until something has been done about it. This can be presented as a deviation from the "normal" situation, although of course the war against terrorism might go on for a long time.
Commitment to a war seems to be the opposite of the libertarian program of looking after oneself alone, except that there may be no such thing as a safe haven for now. By contrast, some of the neo-conservatives may think war is always good for us, precisely because it re-dedicates us to the common good.
There is another "big picture" which gets libertarians excited, however, and does not depend on changing international circumstances: space. (See Glenn Reynolds and James Lileks). Many of the warbloggers seem to be libertarians who are also united by a long-standing interest in science fiction and in the details of space exploration.
For many of us, the Apollo program now seems to represent a golden age. What was impossible, became possible; human ingenuity, combined with a lot of hard work, seemed to be capable of almost anything, and yet there was still a sense of awe and grandeur--indeed of religion--about the whole enterprise. Somehow the hopefulness, as well as the awe, have been largely lost.
Charles Krauthammer (a neo-con and a scientist) says the shuttles and the Space Station have become a waste of time and money. Bush's proposal will be better. Lileks waxes eloquent about how it will all seem so meaningful if space flight can become routine.
What's really going on here? As I remember the Apollo program, it made a lot of people feel important. It turned Walter Cronkite into the most pompous ass in history. ("I have been hired to come into your homes because I look good and sound good. Now I am a visionary, sharing with you my observations on the future of our planet, and indeed of the universe." Oh shut up.) Whenever NASA has had to go for a big appropriation from Congress, they drop hints about finding life--formerly on the Moon, now on Mars.
Maybe it's just rock and gas? Maybe some of it can be commercially exploited? Oil fields in the Arctic are pretty spectacular. One of those New Yorker writers--Updike or Cheever--wrote once that the only real story in science fiction is how some new technology will change us, and the writers struggle to come up with something new and strange, but not so strange that it will be incomprehensible. The writer (Updike?) said a great story could be written about how the telephone actually did change us.
Part of Kennedy's idea in the 60s was to reproduce the excitement about settling the American West, and indeed the European settlement of North America. Glenn Reynolds has written that it would be good for people go through an enterprise like that (naturally, he favours more of a free enterprise approach, rather than governmental/bureaucratic). I don't think I'm being unfair if I paraphrase: people settling a harsh frontier are too busy to think about anything other than the problem at hand. This gives them focus, and their dreams, more or less unsullied by reality, can keep them going. Is this like wishing people would lose 20 or 30 points of IQ?
Reynolds also says human life will become unsustainable on earth, so we will have to leave within...say, a thousand years. Obviously at the peak of the scares about population and food supply, some thought this figure would be fifty years. We have come a long way in managing the global economy. Of course, we could be hit by an asteroid.
The left is naturally accusing Bush of promising a pipedream (and spending money that could be spent on social programs) to get re-elected. The broader question is: is space, to paraphrase Marx, the opiate of the people, once they are less attached to traditional religion? Was the settlement of the American West such a great story that we want to keep repeating it? (One science fiction story I remember from my youth is Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles, warning that the natives might disappear/get wiped out by disease or killed, almost before we have any idea who they are).
From libertarians you get a sense of the private individual, caring intensely about a very few people, just as described by Tocqueville. Then: space. In Gulliver's Travels the geeks on the flying island are totally absorbed with their own bodies and feelings, then with math and astronomy. One eye is turned inward, the other out to space somewhere, or to an abstraction. This might sound like the California Buddhist who is interested in space ("I'm in a selfish phase...How can be right for anyone else, if I'm not right for myself?"), but it might be the hard-working bourgeois, caring for his family, whose hobbies and heart-felt interests go in different directions. The island people also live in constant fear of extra-global events, like the earth being hit by an asteroid, and of hobgoblins.
Wherever we go, don't we keep taking the same old problems with us? I should have added: the island people in Swift also love to discuss current events. They assume that because they have mastered math, or something, they would know how to make wise political decisions. I guess they would be bloggers today.
Update: William Langewiesche presents a more sensible view in the Atlantic: we should probably plan on being a two-planet species; this may take centuries; money can be saved, and re-directed for this project, by cancelling all of the Shuttle mission and most of the Space Station.
Jim Pinkerton says there is a good chance we will miss out on something important if we don't explore space. Great civilizations have been known to go into a decline simply because they no longer set goals for themselves.
News that Al Qaeda training facilities have been "found" in Saudi Arabia. There is one perplexing sentence after another in this article.
"The statement [from the Interior Ministry] was the first confirmation the Al Qaeda terror network had infiltrated Saudi Arabia. The government previously acknowledged there could be Al Qaeda training facilities in the kingdom, but gave no details."
The government-run media are rushing to say "how open!," "how enlightened!" It reminds me of Mr. Collins, the fawning fool in Pride and Prejudice, sucking up to the great lady: "Such condescension!"
"The camps were set up to train militants to use weapons and prepare for terror operations, the official said on condition of anonymity. He did not specify the number of camps or say when they were found. Weapons seized from the camps will be turned over to the military, he said."
So maybe they're not being so open? The only dates given are in May 2003: a cache of weapons found in Riyadh, and then the bombings in Riyadh. Two editors of two government-controlled newspapers are quoted. We know the media in Saudi won't say anything critical of the royal family, thanks to Lawrence Wright in the New Yorker (link via Hit and Run).
Both editors downplay the discovery--the size and significance of it. One mystifying rationale: "'It is not really that Saudi authorities are making an announcement of something that they were hiding before,' he said. 'It is just that those places did not exist before. Now that they exist, the authorities are being transparent about it.'"
My questions:
1. How long have the facilities been there?
2. How hard were the Saudis looking?
3. Could this whole thing have been cleared up at the dinner table at the Crawford ranch?
Some things are actually becoming clearer.
Paul O'Neill, who is hurting his own credibility with his new book, says he was shocked--shocked!--to discover that plans to invade Iraq were being seriously considered in the White House right after the 2000 electioin--long before 9/11.
As Glenn Reynolds and others are saying, this should not have come a shock, since it continued the approach of Bill Clinton. Saddam was an enemy, and the U.S. should bring about regime change in Iraq as soon as possible. (See Reynolds again, with lots of links and quotes, here).
What has really brought things together for me are the comments by Ken Pollack in a new exchange of views on Slate. (Pollack is the author of The Threatening Storm, a book which has inspired many people to think the U.S. invasion was necessary and desirable when Bush launched it). Pollack says he was convinced until recently, based on his work in the Clinton White House, that Saddam had WMDs. He has been quite surprised to conclude that according to credible sources, Saddam had no WMDs to speak of for many years--although he had "rudimentary elements" of programs that were "not very active" so that he could re-start production of at least some weapons if the opportunity arose.
"For me, there is no escaping the fact that the prewar intelligence estimates regarding Iraq's WMD programs--and particularly its nuclear program--were wrong. Iraq was not 4-5 years away from having a nuclear weapon, as I and the rest of the Clinton administration had been led to believe.... the threat from Iraqi WMD (and particularly nuclear weapons) was much, much further away than was believed, but it was not gone completely....the combination of inspections and the pain inflicted by the sanctions had forced Saddam to effectively shelve his WMD ambitions, probably since around 1995-96."
Pollack still thinks he would have supported war in March 2003, even with this information in mind. He would do so first for humanitarian reasons--to give Iraqis a better life--secondly as a way of stopping Saddam's unstable and dangerous decision-making--regardless of what weapons he had--and, the weakest reason, because of a "residual" WMD threat.
He's still not sure there was a better alternative than war available: "I still find the alternatives all pretty bad--although some are not necessarily as bad as I thought them before the war." Deterrence might have worked: "While I think Saddam's astonishingly reckless behavior before the war only confirms the prevailing view among Iraq experts that this was not someone we would have wanted to trust with nuclear weapons, the postwar revelations suggest that he was so much further away from having those nuclear weapons that we might have safely opted for deterrence in the expectation that we could have found an alternative way to deal with him in the years before he did get his hands on a nuke."
I think the most revelatory, even devastating passages have to do with neo-cons and Ahmed Chalabi.
"I think the war put to rest the fantasies of the neocons that we could simply arm Ahmad Chalabi and a few thousand followers (followers he still has not actually produced), give them air cover, and send them in to spark a rolling revolution. Richard Perle and others argued for that initially, but in the end they had to support a full-scale invasion as the only realistic course. The covert-action-based regime-change policies that I and others in the U.S. government had pushed for as an alternative never had a high likelihood of success, either--they were just slightly more likely to produce a coup and much less likely to create a catastrophic 'Bay of Goats,' as Gen. Anthony Zinni once put it."
In short, the neo-cons had the stupidest plan of all--closely modelled on the notorious Bay of Pigs, with allies--defectors from the target regime--roughly as unreliable as in the Cuban situation. (Also let's not forget Iran-Contra, and an earlier attempt at a "Bay of Goats" in Iraq). Chalabi got the support of the Clinton White House, and presumably, later from the Bush White House, on the basis of lies about allies of his who would materialize to fight side-by-side with American military personnel.
Pollack doesn't quite draw the final connection. Did Chalabi also lie about Saddam's WMDs? Or did he simply repeat lies that were circulating in Iraq, lies that were deliberately spread there either by scientists and generals who wanted to claim success for their own favourite weapons facilities, or by Saddam, constantly trying to look tough?
In either case, the Bush White House seems to have fallen for the same lies that the Clinton White House did. That explains the continuity. Pollack says he and others working for Clinton wanted to invade Iraq in the 90s, but there was no public support for doing so before 9/11. After 9/11, Bush acted on the basis of a totally changed American public opinion, and on the basis of the Chalabi lies that had been circulating for years.
For those trying to figure out exactly how things happened, the question is whether, when you strip away the false information that kept getting swallowed at the White House, the invasion really made sense from the point of view of U.S. interests. Of course, things could still turn out well there, and dominoes may fall in the right way in other countries.
Tom Friedman, joining the exchange with Pollack, says he was skeptical that a democracy could be built in the Middle East, but when things went more or less well in Afghanistan, he became confident that something good could be built in Iraq as well. Like the neo-cons, he speaks of setting an example, and even shifting the tide, in the entire region. (Friedman doesn't speak of democracy, but of building a "a new and more decent context," bringing about a "decent outcome". He says he never bought the WMDs rationale).
And I ask again: how could two White Houses be so completely unable to confirm what was going on in Iraq, leaving them dependent on Chalabi?
Some will say I go on about this as if it were all taking place in a classroom. That is indeed a tendency I can fall into. Friedman and Paul Berman make a similar point: 9/11 proved that there were still totalitarians in the world, despite the end of the Cold War. Like all totalitarians, these people hated liberal society above all. Something had to be done, somewhere, to prove that liberal society would fight back, and Iraq seemed at least relatively manageable.
Update: Things get a bit more complicated in Pollack's new article in the Atlantic. (I found the link via Gregory Djerejian, Tom Maguire, and ultimately via Instapundit).
Here Pollack presents more of the official story of what went wrong with intelligence on Iraq, and less of the Monty Python story.
Pollock emphasizes how important the WMD rationale was to the Bush administration:
"The U.S. intelligence community's belief toward the end of the Clinton Administration that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear program and was close to acquiring nuclear weapons led me and other Administration officials to support the idea of a full-scale invasion of Iraq, albeit not right away. The NIE's judgment to the same effect was the real linchpin of the Bush Administration's case for an invasion."
It is now known that this was not true. There was consistency between the Clinton and Bush administrations in their reliance on intelligence reports that paint a very troubling picture of WMDs in Iraq. There was also a difference, though, according to Pollack: Bush officials (led by the Office of Special Plans, and Rumsfeld's and Cheney's staffs) would selectively quote from a mass of material, so as to present only the worst-case scenarios. For example, if Saddam acquired fissile material, he might be able to build nuclear weapons in a year. According to many reports, this was a possibility, but at the extreme of worst cases. It was therefore misleading to present it as Bush and Cheney, in particular, did.
The Bush administration tended to believe everything "Chalabi and the defectors" (almost a Motown group) said; the Clinton administration, according to Pollack, did not.
What about the intelligence consensus, which itself greatly exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq, and which Pollack was part of? (Christopher Hitchens, joining the exchange on Slate, teasingly says that in his official days Pollack was a producer, not simply a consumer of (sometimes deeply false and misleading) intelligence). On this Pollack tells a complicated story.
I think the main points are these. Before 1991, the UN weapons inspectors seriously understated the capability, particularly the nuclear capability, of Saddam's regime. In a way it was lucky that Saddam over-reached by invading Kuwait, resulting in forced inspections, because that began a process of meaningful inspections and the destruction of key facilities. The same mistake was made again between 1991 and 1994; some weapons were found, but Saddam succeeded in keeping some hidden. It was events in 1995-96 that really opened things up. (After 1991 the inspectors were part of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM)).
By 1995 or 1996, it now turns out, Saddam had destroyed virtually everything that is meant by a WMD program. Sometimes he destroyed a facility that had been found by international inspectors, but he also went beyond that and destroyed things that no outsider was aware of. Hence the tendency of Western intelligence to continue to believe he had things he did not.
(Jack Balkin paraphrases part of the Washington Post story, linked above, as follows: "The only thing that Hussein's government had were drawings of weapons of mass destruction, with no present ability to make those drawings into a reality." Pollack still doesn't go that far, especially in the Atlantic article; he appeals to David Kay's references to a program that can be re-started, precursors, dual-use facilities, and what not. Kay was supposed to produce a final report, confirming some or all of this. Instead, he is not talking to the media. There is a sense that he would prefer to drop the subject of weapons in Iraq, rather than report formally: nothing, nothing, nothing.)
The high-profile defection of Saddam's son-in-law and others helped to bring out a lot of information. Apparently in order to avoid being forced to turn facilities over, Saddam destroyed them and left a vague impression that some of them still existed.
There is a sidebar that has its funny side as well. The U.S. had an enormous amount of data on the raw materials for WMDs that had been shipped into Iraq. They kept searching for proof that all this material had either been made into weapons that still existed, or destroyed.
Pollack: "...it is likely that some of the discrepancies between UNSCOM and Iraqi figures are no more than the result of sloppiness. Saddam's Iraq was not exactly an efficient state, and many of his chief lieutenants were semi-literate thugs with no understanding of esoteric technical matters and little regard for how things should be done--their only concern was that Saddam's demands be met." U.S. officials exaggerated the competence of people in Iraq--isn't that in itself an example of incompetence?
Why did Saddam destroy his weapons so completely, on the one hand, and yet keep up such a brave front, on the other? The destruction, it seems, was to eliminate the risk of WMD programs and facilities being found by outsiders. For one thing, Saddam kept hoping sanctions would be lifted, and he thought the lack of actual finds would help. For another, being forced to give up his weapons might weaken him in the eyes of many people.
Saddam remained very confrontational, even threatening, to UNSCOM officials themselves, so he wasn't exactly trying to convince those people, or the West, that he had nothing--only that they couldn't prove what he had. All of this reinforced the Western perception that he was still hiding a lot. What was more important to Saddam, however, was probably frightening his neighbours, and his own people. Uprisings were a fairly common occurrence.
"He may have feared that if his internal adversaries realized that he no longer had the capability to use these weapons, they would try to move against him. In a similar vein, Saddam's standing among the Sunni elites who constituted his power base was linked to a great extent to his having made Iraq a regional power--which the elites saw as a product of Iraq's unconventional arsenal. Thus openly giving up his WMD could also have jeopardized his position with crucial supporters."
Saddam miscalculated in the sense that he forced huge sacrifices on himself by giving up the actual weapons, yet the sanctions weren't lifted, so the people as a whole suffered as well. After a few years, it was more and more difficult for him to admit the truth that this had all been, in a way, for nothing.
What about the possibility that scientists and others simply lied to Saddam, assuring him that programs were going well when they in fact had ground to a halt? Pollack admits there is probably something to this, but there would have been too great a risk of torture and murder for anyone who failed to do what they were told. This raises the question of just how Stalinist the regime was, and I will come back to that.
Beginning in 1996, things began to go more Saddam's way--the oil for food program, intended to provide some humanitarian relief despite the sanctions, helped, and the program was also easily abused. By December of 1998 Saddam's harrassment of the inspectors became so severe, the UN pulled them out.
More Monty Python: the CIA had depended heavily on UNSCOM officials for information on what was going on in Iraq. They infiltrated inspection teams in order to make their own observations, and in 1996, to help plan a coup. It is partly because he suspected this activity was going on that Saddam was less and less willing to allow inspections to take place. The CIA had over-reached themselves, and when the UN inspectors were withdrawn, there was little accurate information to go on at all.
The myth that Saddam was heavily armed prevailed; Pollack is able to cite many countries and agencies that said the same thing throughout the 90s. (It wasn't only him!) There was no real way of checking. Saddam, for reasons of his own, allowed it to be maintained even up to the point when the U.S. invaded. Either he simply refused to believe this would happen, as Pollack says, or he decided that he was finished anyway. With proof of no WMDs, there were many groups within Iraq that would turn on him.
The Bush administration concluded that Saddam was militarily strong, but he would be easy to replace with a better government. The truth was something like the converse: he was weak, but not so easy to replace given all the factions in Iraq. (And the concern in Syria and Turkey about what happens to the Kurds, and in Iran about the Shiites).
Pollack's is one of the accounts that makes it clear Saddam was afraid of almost every living person in Iraq. Stalin? Hitler? It hardly seems so. (See again John Mueller's presentation of Iraq before the invasion, discussed earlier here and here).
Pollack's proposals to prevent further embarrassments of this kind are to give more money to the CIA, and make the Director more powerful--more independent of political pressure. In particular, intelligence agencies that now report to the Secretary of Defence should report to the DCI. Well, they do say military intelligence is an oxymoron.
I want to give credit to Adam Wolfson for a pretty good line from his article in The Public Interest:
"Libertarians rise to the defense of every conceivable freedom but that of self-government; they typically tend to be pro-abortion, pro-drug legalization, pro-human cloning, and so on. Their goal, also ardently advanced by the postmodern Left, is the expansion of individual choice. But the "right to choose" has generally been secured in contemporary America only by enacting a judicial prohibition, one that forbids individuals from acting together to determine what laws they shall live under."
(Link via Jonah Goldberg on The Corner).
I would paraphrase as follows: libertarians think we should be free to do everything except deliberate on public policy and act on our deliberations; we'll leave that to the courts.
This is relevant to the course I'm teaching on U.S. Constitutional law. For the second semester we are moving from "Institutions" to "Rights," and there is a striking tendency to libertarianism in the cases on speech, religion, and privacy. (Update: Professor Randy Barnett, among others, likes it that way). (The old sense of radical freedom for economic or market transactions, captured most famously in the Lochner decision, is not back in fashion, but scholars are certainly noting a connection between it and the privacy cases).
I want the students to be able to articulate some sense of what might be wrong with the libertarian cases. What are we losing or missing? Of course they can still agree with the cases if they want to, but I want to see some sense of a real debate--intelligent people might be on the other side.
For the most part I have to stick to constitutional issues. Even if we don't like a particular piece of legislation, it might be that constitutionally a legislature or Congress have the right to pass and enforce it.
Beyond that, though, is the loss of a sense that democratic citizens might have intelligent things to say about how a community should live.
I was fortunate to attend a lecture by Harvey Mansfield of Harvard on Tocqueville on Friday, and I'm thinking now of handing out a reading (probably towards the end of the semester) on "individualism." (Wolfson mentions Tocqueville as well).
Update: Tocqueville's discussion of individualism in Democracy in America (Vol. II, Pat II) remains unique. I don't have the new translation by Mansfield and his wife Delba Winthrop, but here goes: "Individualism is a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends; with this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself."
This doesn't sound so bad; live and let live. But Tocqueville says this "inward-looking" life is based on "misguided judgment," and it "dams the spring of public virtues"--which would make us care actively about large numbers of our fellow citizens. Although different from egoism--a passionate preference for oneself over all others, individualism gradually merges into egoism.
In the U.S. today there is both a right and a left, and then there are economic issues and social issues. Libertarians are on the right on economics--as little regulation, and as few taxes, as possible--but on the left on social issues. They at least have a logical consistency that other groups may lack. They oppose "statism".
Why do conservatives tend to be on the right on social issues? Because they have some respect for traditional views and practices when it comes to "value" questions, and they think there is some public benefit in passing and enforcing laws that limit individual freedom in the name of morality, or even religion. There is always room in this position for a slightly cynical or detached view: it is not so much that specific traditions are true, or the best possible, but that ongoing maintenance of such traditions, accompanied by debate and yes, change, is healthy.
Why are many of these same conservatives prepared to be for "freedom" when it comes to economics? Partly, no doubt, they are persuaded by the success of capitalism in generating wealth for a great many people, and opportunity for many of the poor. In many cases, government cannot react quickly enough to help people as effectively as the market will, and regulations may actually stand in the way.
Defending capitalism is not really "conservative". Capitalism brings "creative destruction," and a world where "the only constant is change." It constantly undermines the traditional family, and has done a great deal to bring us from extended family to nuclear, to more or less tentative or scattered families. Thoughtful conservatives, however, are more concerned to maintain "moral" debates about social issues themselves, taken in isolation, than they are in connection with the market. Unlike Marx, they do not think economics itself, as powerful as it can be, is fundamental.
It strikes me today that libertarians are very comfortable in the individualist world, where it is really a very few individuals who matter, and one may not bother voting, much less debating issues. But they can't help but find this world dry, dessicated, limiting, even stunted. As Aristotle and Tocqueville would both say, there is a natural desire to say how we should live together as a society--what family life should be like, how we should recognize God. (Presumably worship proper should remain private in a liberal society). Modern government is "enlightened" insofar as it replaces "rule based on opinion"--the old narrow bigoted cities, or the old uncompromising religions--with rule by representatives, whose job is to carry out certain functions, more than to tell us what to do. But it does not seem healthy to cut ourselves off from the old debates completely.
So we have libertarians who become war-bloggers. Let's use a huge army to push people around, kill some of them, confiscate their weapons, tell them how to educate both boys and girls, and impose a curfew. But, er, not in my back yard. Somewhere else, like Iraq. War in an exotic country provides an outlet for all the old "political" desires, which are embarrassingly moralistic and imperialistic.
[Update: or I should say: they require, and reinforce, a sense of belonging to a community that is bigger and more important than oneself].
Social liberals act and speak as though, if we allow a display of the Ten Commandments, next we will have Christian mobs burning heretics. Some of them, and in particular some of the libertarians, now seem to enjoy having a clear enemy who can be described as evil, and so on, practically as an infidel from the point of view of freedom rather than the New Testament. They don't seem to mind if Bush, to some degree, invents an enemy, because it will be so enjoyable to have an outlet for all these feelings.
Maybe we would be saner if we had a bit more rational debate on social issues here at home.
It's pretty much official; there were no WMDs in Iraq in 2002 or early 2003. It seems the Bush Administration has quietly admitted this, and has given up searching; although Colin Powell is [link=http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/politics/09POWE.html? ex=1074229200&en=0bedf01f1ee25ad3&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE] keeping up[/link] a loyal, increasingly pathetic, "message".
There are more details. For example, it has always been confusing to speak of all WMDs as if they are the same--of course, the Bush Administration has contributed to this confusion. Saddam's chemical weapons probably lost their potency in 1991; there was "no convincing evidence" that Iraq had re-constituted its nuclear program. On the other hand, "uncertainties" were greater regarding biological weapons, and there was probably a capacity to re-constitute both chemical and biological weapons. This would have taken time, and there is no proof there were plans in place either to produce weapons or to make them available to terrorists. Again, the U.S. has repeatedly suggested that producing them would somehow be identical to offering them to terrorists.
There was a lot of deliberate exaggeration of the threat, and this was directed from the political level, through the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon, created in 2002. On the other hand, Clinton continues to say he believed Saddam had some WMDs in 2002--so there must have been some more or less solid evidence to this effect. [Update: For a while Clinton had a close working relationship with Ahmed Chalabi--until the fiasco of a "Bay of Pigs" operation in 1996. Perhaps Clinton continued to rely on Chalabi, and Chalabi's usual gang of defectors, for information until 2001. Gen. Anthony Zinni, who has made news recently for criticizing the U.S. operation in Iraq, has had a low opinion of Chalabi for some years because of the events described here.]
It seems that no credible person, anywhere, believed that Saddam had nukes. Perhaps we can even say that was an invention of Dick Cheney personally. There was more debate about chemical and biological weapons. Again, however, even if the White House believed in all honesty that Saddam had this stuff, or could produce it quickly, it did not follow that it would be made readily available to terrorists, or indeed that it was any more of a threat to anyone than it is in the many countries where it exists today.
The other continuing "non story," of course, is that there is no known link between Saddam and Al Qaeda; Powell responds to that in the article linked above, as well. (See Cheney here, where he doesn't mention nukes).
The Washington Post confirms that Iraq was developing new missile technology, and this fits with the story about an attempted purchase from North Korea--not of WMDs, but of long-range missiles, in contravention of the limits that had been placed on Iraq.
There are still questions about the sequence of events. If Saddam had no weapons to speak of, why did he not simply demonstrate that fact? When exactly did each type of WMD go out of production, or become unavailable, in Iraq?
I think the most interesting revelations are in the Post article. Scientists and others with actual experience in high-tech facilities in Iraq have testified in great detail. In some cases, there was a promising development of nukes or whatever until the invasion of Kuwait in 1991, and nothing since. In other cases, facilities were destroyed before UN Inspectors were able to look at them--no later than 1995 or 1996.
Above all, there was a lot of deception both within Iraq, and in the way information was disseminated to the world. Iraqis would deliberately deceive Saddam, always giving him good news--such as a facility is working, we will have weapons soon--in order to get funding, or to keep from being imprisoned or killed. UN sanctions did impose poverty on the country, and there was intense competition for scarce dollars. In many cases, people became sophisticated at diverting "oil for food" dollars for their pet projects.
So Saddam may not have known what was going on. He also wanted to appear as tough as possible. Blix now says: it can be useful to have a "Beware of Dog" sign on your door, even if you don't have a dog. Somewhat weirdly, the defectors upon whom the Bush White House relied for information (led and perhaps guided by Ahmed Chalabi), may have largely fallen for information that was fabricated or distorted either by scientists and others trying to build their empires, or by Saddam.
My question again is: why was the U.S., with its vast intelligence resources, unable to figure this out? Does the President have a daily intelligence briefing just so the experts can say: your guess is as good as mine?
Some conclusions: Iraq's invasion of Kuwait was a disaster for Saddam. Perhaps obvious, but there are some new wrinkles here. Saddam put dollars into this ordinary military invasion, and halted more WMD-type programs. Then, in the aftermath, the money never existed to start everything up again. I still think the invasion was not purely crazy: lots of people think the national borders imposed by the Europeans make no sense; there is no sign anyone really cares about the Kuwaitis, and Saddam probably thought he had a nudge and a wink from the U.S. Ambassador, April Glaspie. But to the extent that the U.S. did encourage him, they inadvertently weakened all of his weapons programs from that point forward, and hastened his downfall.
Another conclusion: UN sanctions worked. Maybe even UN weapons inspections, to a greater extent than the war hawks have been willing to admit.
Questions about U.S. messages. The flight-suit photo op has been done to death. Changing the schedule for a carrier returning home, simply for the photo op, may be a bit much, but it might seem par for the course if you accept the analogy to World War II and the Cold War. Someone who's not really a pilot, dressing up like a pilot? I've been inclined to say Eisenhower, who was a real general, never appeared in uniform while he was president, but that may not be quite true. When he visited troops he may have appeared in some kind of army fatigues. At any rate, the President is Commander in Chief, not a Commandante. Glenn Reynolds, who is pro-war, said the event was a bit too "Third World."
The low point that has not been discussed much is Colin Powell waving a vial of powder at the UN Security Council. He did not exactly hasten to explain what the powder was; only later did he say, of course he would not have carried any poison around like that, it was icing sugar or something. So he was trying to demonstrate that a small amount of powder can be very dangerous? Doesn't that make the point that anyone can make this stuff in their bathtub, and taking out sovereign governments may be more or less beside the point?
There is a similarity to Adlai Stevenson speaking at the General Assembly, showing photos of Soviet missile silos during the Missile Crisis. But to me, waving a vial is bit too much like that nasty kid in kindergarten, trying to scare everyone.
Afghanistan has a new constitution; and new negotiations get under way between India and Pakistan, and between Israel and Libya.
These are all pieces of very good news. President Bush deserves a lot of credit, particularly for the first. Afghans led by Hamid Karzai of course have worked hard on their new constitution, but they wouldn't have had the opportunity if the U.S. and its allies had not removed the Taliban. See the NYT today.
The President's "special emissary," Zalmay Khalilzad, obviously played an important role. He is another person with a lot of post-secondary education and experience in the U.S. He writes in the Washington Post today, emphasizing the new importance of women, and giving credit to the UN.
(Here is an article which is somewhat pessimistic. It says the war lords still have too much sway in the country, they intimidate a lot of law-abiding people, and they won too many concessions in the new constitution. It suggests the U.S. should have given more attention to Afghanistan after the defeat of the Taliban.)
Glenn Reynolds joins those who want to give full credit to Bush, and point out how wrong the most gloomy predictions were just a few months ago. He wisely does not try to clarify how much has been done by force, and how much by diplomacy; obviously both are necessary, or at least, a meaningful threat of force is necessary along with diplomacy.
Reynolds links to Colin Powell's New Year's Day message in the NYT, which promises initiatives by the Bush Administration to further democracy in Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Powell mentions Cuba specifically. Then he emphasizes relationships with allies, including Russia, India, and China. He mentions recent free trade pacts with Chile, Singapore and the countries of Central America. He says "narco-traffickers and terrorists are on the defensive thanks to strong United States support for a resolute Colombian government". Of course, in connection with Iraq he can't resist mentioning WMDs.
Powell's list of accomplishments and commitments refers more to diplomacy than military offensives. It does not seem the same as a neo-con plan to spread democracy and bring about regime change in entire regions by military interventions. Yet it is breath-takingly bold in its own way.
Powell says: "we are resolved as well to turn the president's goal of a free and democratic Middle East into a reality." This sounds like regime change in Syria and Iran, sooner or later.
(Compare this confidence to what is still apparently the attitude of the British Foreign Office in Iraq: it can be assumed as a given that democracy is impossible, so let's keep working with the minority Sunnis, even Baathists; they expect to be the rulers, so we shouln't annoy them too much.)
Nothing really on Pakistan here except Reynolds' brief reference to new India-Pakistan negotiations.
One strange news item: the U.S. is providing military assistance, as requested (but contrary to the wishes of Russia), to the government of Georgia (south of Russia). Private-sector advisors are being provided, under contract to the Pentagon. Also Bush wrote to Shevardnadze, the former President, for stepping aside rather than resorting to more violence, and urged him to provide advice to the new government.
This provides the U.S. a chance to help fight terrorists, including some that might be associated with Al Qaeda; there is also an opportunity to protect a new oil pipeline. Still, this does seem to be an example of coming to the defence of a new and fragile democracy, to use a phrase of Powell's.
It now seems to be official: Pakistan has been in the nuclear-arms sales business, issuing professional brochures and all. (NYT may require registration; here is a summary from the Chicago Sun-Times). What's interesting is the suggestion that President Bush must have known a certain amount about this (although the CIA apparently consistently understated and misunderstood the situation as Pakistan became more and more proficient in producing the fuel that they needed, and then selling the technology). He deliberately left them out of the lists of evil regimes, and all that, because of his sense that Musharraf has become an ally in the war against terror, and he may be doing his best in a country where many people are more radical than he is.
A.Q. Khan, Pakistan's nuclear genius, or whoever was in charge, may even have deliberately sold out-dated or inadequate technology to Pakistan's customers. Neither Iran nor Libya seems to be anywere near where Pakistan itself is, and it remains to be seen about North Korea.
Meanwhile there is more on the Palestinians. An article in today's Globe and Mail suggests that Arafat may be on the way to one of his many rehabilitations. Israel's attempts to freeze him out seem to have failed; there are other reputable Palestinians, but they refuse to proceed without him. Sharon has gone too far, and thereby opened some daylight between his position and that of the Bush administration. According to this article, some in the White House are saying they would not object to negotiating with Arafat; and Sharon's own son is supposedly already doing so.
Arafat can hardly be seen as a reliable negotiating partner. He originally derived his dominating position among the Palestinians from demanding the liberation of "all of Palestine," i.e. the destruction of the state of Israel. He signed the Oslo Accord in 1993, but took a lot of criticism for doing so, and famously walked away from serious negotiations in 2000.
It seems at least possible to argue that he is doing his best to arrive at a peaceful solution, while always ensuring he does not lose the support of his core. There are lots of hardliners and "Islamists" among the Palestinians, and sometimes, to maintain his own position, he has to make significant concessions to those people. This writer (Michael Bell) even suggests Arafat has sometimes "allowed" secular terrorist attacks to occur, partly to make sure "Islamist" terrorists (presumably including Hamas) don't gain too much ground.
Is this so different from Musharraf?
The Daily Star in Lebanon says Arafat must persuade Israel that Israeli occupation doesn't work; that requires keeping up attacks on Israelis. On the other hand, he must persuade both Israel and others that Palestinian self-rule can work. This requires stopping attacks. Obviously the goals, stated this way, contradict each other.
As I searched around on these items, I encountered once again a lot of people's favourite Palestinian: Salam Fayyad, now Minister of Finance for the Palestinian Authority. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Texas; he approached President Bush at their first meeting flashing the "Longhorns" symbol. He arrives at meetings alone, unarmed, carrying a briefcase, and chain smokes. Many of his Palestinian colleagues seem like the wild west by comparison. He is insisting on financial reforms in the Palestinian Authority--including proper accounting of the salaries paid to security officials. Arafat has preferred to keep the security forces loyal to him, and to pay them in cash.
Of course, Arafat is suspected of having shifted some money to private bank accounts as well.
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