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In May, as mentioned before, Christopher Hitchens argued in Slate that the presence of U.S. troops just outside Iraq, before the March invasion, may have caused Saddam to destroy any weapons of mass destruction that he had, in such a way that virtually no trace could be found later. Now Hitchens argues that the presence of those same troops, just before the invasion, may actually have caused the North Korean government to call off an arms deal with Saddam.
Perhaps Hitchens is conceding that Saddam had no WMDs at all, say, at the end of 2002. But the argument is that Saddam wanted to acquire a formidable arsenal, and North Korea was just the regime to supply him with one. Only the presence of U.S. troops, it seems, saved the situation.
But this presents us with a different Saddam than the scenario in May. Before we had a Saddam who kept on acquiring weapons, right up to 2002 or 2003, just as the Bush defenders keep saying, but who then destroyed them (somehow) at the last minute. Now we have a Saddam who was actually trying desperately to acquire WMDs, perhaps for the first time in many years, also at the last minute.
Does this make any sense? Assuming Saddam was the kind of guy who wanted to acquire WMDs, why was he so singularly unsuccessful? Perhaps one deal was scuttled early in 2003; was this the only potential deal? Were others scuttled in other ways?
I'm still struck by the possibility that Saddam's underlings, perhaps nervous at the difficulty in handling some of this stuff, had dismantled it in 1993 or shortly after. Saddam himself may not have known just how poorly armed he was.
I know this is weird, but is anybody else coming up with a more plausible narrative? It also fits with the idea that practically every household in Iraq has long had an AK-47, a pellet gun or .22, and maybe a handgun or two. Not exactly Stalinism.
How many governments in the world today have some WMDs? Was Saddam one of the very few with, so to speak, absolutely none?
Hitchens' source is David Kay. Kay's assignment was clearly to make the WMD issue look as good as possible for Bush. He hasn't been...er...remarkably successful. Kay still seems to be saying: OK, there were no actual weapons, but there was a program, precursors, and dual-use facilities. Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building in Oklahoma using fertilizer. Is fertilizer a precursor? Does every home or farm where fertilizer is stored have a WMD program? Is every fertilizer plant, everywhere in the world, a dual-use facility?
Given the amount of fertilizer in the world, is it possible that Saddam was not only one of the very few heads of state with no control over any WMDs, but one of a minority of individuals in the world with no effective control of precursors? OK, I'm joking.
I saw a documentary on TV on the chemical weapons programs in the U.S. and the USSR during the Cold War, how the USSR kept developing weapons in violation of treaties, and what has happened to the stuff since the end of the Cold War. One comment was: to some extent we are talking about products that anyone can make in a bathtub. In other words, it is misleading to speak as if only governments are likely to have WMDs, and if we find the right governments to take out, we will have solved the problem. The Bush administration has not spoken very honestly about this; nor, of course, about the way they continue to subsidize some governments that have, in the recent past, directly supported international terrorism in general, and Al Qaeda in particular: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan.
Of course, senior officials in the U.S. government believed in good faith that there were strategic reasons to take out Saddam. These reasons would have concerned benefits for the U.S. and its allies. There was always a "big picture" view about establishing a democracy in the Gulf, but in practice, security for the U.S., Israel and the West must have taken priority over liberating the people there. But insofar as the strategic reasons don't seem to be panning out, the sole defensible rationale that remains is liberation: the U.S. seen as nobly struggling for the underdog, and anyone who doesn't join them, practically a lap-dog to Hitler.
But no sane government would have intervened primarily or solely to liberate the Iraqi people. Hitchens has been reduced to brief suggestions that removal of Saddam was "long overdue," that we all owe Bush and Blair a debt of gratitude for doing this job, and that Saddam somehow would have been unusually nasty if he had somehow got his hands on WMDs. Or if not Saddam, then his sons.
Update Dec. 6: one "investigator" who is not working for Kay comments on the "shopping list" that Saddam's officials used in negotiating with North Korea: "What is also interesting about the shopping list, however, is 'what's not on it,' said one investigator. 'Nothing nuclear, no dual-use items, nothing about weapons of mass destruction.'"
Hitchens doesn't actually say Saddam was trying to acquire WMDs from North Korea. He emphasizes the "Rodong missile," which "has a range much greater than that prohibited to Iraq by the U.N. resolutions."
And another thing, according to Hitchens: "Incidentally, if the Iraqis destroyed the stocks they had once declared, they were in serious breach of the U.N. resolutions, which stipulated that they be handed over and accounted for."
Destroying weapons without permission? Very bad. Send in the Marines, for God's sake. Less sarcastically: is this what the war was all about?
Update: Here's a version of the new Korea-Saddam story, which opens with this gem: "Iraqi scientists never revived their nuclear bomb programme, and in fact lied to Saddam Hussein about how much progress they were making before US-led attacks shut the operation down for good in 1991, Iraqi physicists say."
If the U.S. economy looks good in 2004, it will be difficult for a Democratic nominee to beat President Bush--and the Republicans are likely to do well in the House and Senate as well.
The recent reports on the U.S. economy are very positive--surprisingly so, to many--and there are signs that the Democrats are getting worried.
Exhibit A: The New York Times. (Requires registration; I get "Today's Headlines" dumped into my Hotmail account).
There are several stories in today's Times that say: don't be fooled by the good news; things aren't as rosy as they seem. Example:
"ECONOMIC VIEW
As Stimulus, Tax Cuts May Soon Go Awry
By LOUIS UCHITELLE
The tax cuts are helping to revive the economy by putting more spending money into people's pockets. But that will soon backfire."
The idea here is that the stimulus of tax cuts will end when the tax cuts end; Bush has proposed a schedule of gradually scaling back on the tax cuts; so there will be a diminishing stimulus, and diminishing economic growth, in the Bush plan.
This is weird: aren't there any "escalators"--if that is the word--parts of the economy that will add to growth once the stimulus of tax cuts has its effect? Is there no hope for growth at all now except for Bush's tax cuts? Hasn't Bush made it clear he would love to have more and deeper tax cuts?
I guess Uchitelle assumes there is a limit to how much anyone will cut taxes--given the many spending demands, and the deficit, both of which Bush has increased. Still, it is strange to give Bush so much credit for kick-starting the entire friggin U.S. economy, and then try to take away this credit, one brick at a time. Of course Uchitelle ultimately argues that stimulus in the form of spending--such as transferring money to states to pay nurses and teachers--would help more than tax cuts.
Example:
"OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Unemployment Myth
By AUSTAN GOOLSBEE
There are more Americans without jobs than we realize."
Here the interesting twist is that Clinton benefitted from some fudging of the numbers for many years; now that Bush stands to benefit, the Times wants to blow the whistle.
The official good news is: the recession is over and "The government reported that annual unemployment during this recession peaked at only around 6 percent, compared with more than 7 percent in 1992 and more than 9 percent in 1982." The problem is that a significant group of people have simply stopped being listed as "unemployed."
"...once Congress began loosening the standards to qualify for disability payments in the late 1980's and early 1990's, people who would normally be counted as unemployed started moving in record numbers into the disability system--a kind of invisible unemployment. Almost all of the increase came from hard-to-verify disabilities like back pain and mental disorders. As the rolls swelled, the meaning of the official unemployment rate changed as millions of people were left out.
"By the end of the 1990's boom, this invisible unemployment seemed to have stabilized. With the arrival of this recession, it has exploded. From 1999 to 2003, applications for disability payments rose more than 50 percent and the number of people enrolled has grown by one million. Therefore, if you correctly accounted for all of these people, the peak unemployment rate in this recession would have probably pushed 8 percent."
Ah yes, there is another twist in there: as bad as the deception may have been in the Clinton years, when Clinton took credit for low unemployment, the fudging got much worse "from 1999 to 2003."
Example:
"OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Productivity Paradox
By STEPHEN S. ROACH
We aren't working smarter, we're working harder."
Any stats that exist on "productivity" show the U.S. as the world's leader over many decades. I can remember when there were lots of predictions that both Japan and Germany would take over, but they haven't.
Now Roach argues that the stats are soft, and difficult to nail down, especially in service jobs. Not only that, they reflect out-dated assumptions such as a standard work week of 40 hours or less. To get the work done that is done today in that time really would be amazing--but of course, anyone senior enough to have a cell phone or pager is on call virtually all the time, and even "standard" work weeks have grown longer. So: Americans work harder than other people, while continuing to believe a myth that they work smarter as well or instead? Where exactly is the bad news here? If they knew the truth, more Americans would be lazy slobs?
Josh Marshall has noticed conflicting stories about retail sales this "holiday season." He doesn't really say, but I suspect he's enough of a Democrat that he hopes the economy isn't great for the next year.
According to CNN: "Analysts expect stronger sales this holiday season but [say] that discounts won't be as deep as last year's. There are reports that luxury retailers are even raising prices." OK, this is logical: demand is strong, so prices stay high. On the whole, this is evidence of a good economy, and a contributor to an even better one.
According to CNN business: "store traffic and the promotional activity is at lower levels than last year at this time."
Mickey Kaus, as he does so often, has a nice, concise "compare and contrast" (scroll down to "Times vs. Times"): two New York Times articles on rental housing, one from Nov. 29, the other from Sept. 9. One says housing is available, and rents are stable or falling everywhere except the big coastal cities (including New York and Los Angeles); the other says things are tight everywhere.
One of my favourite moments in recent coverage of Iraq:
"While troops have been targeting suspected insurgent targets, U.S. forces have also carried out dozens of raids aimed at apprehending suspects and seizing weapons and bomb-making materials.
"One such 'cordon-and-search' raid early Monday in Baghdad's middle-class Azamiyah district netted 21 suspects along with 30 Kalashnikov AK-47 automatic rifles, about a dozen shotguns and 10 handguns. Most suspects had violated a coalition rule allowing only one weapon - a single AK-47 - per house.
"Some 2,000 troops of the 1st Armored Division - backed by tanks, armored vehicles and low-flying helicopters took part in the nighttime raid, sealing off a 20-block area and searching every single building inside it.
"Residents of the neighborhood next to the Tigris River were furious over the sweep. They said those arrested included men who had revolvers or bird guns that could not have presented a serious threat to the security of the occupying forces.
"'Of course everybody has weapons,' said Samir al-Hadith, an engineer who works in Saudi Arabia and had returned to Baghdad to check on his home. 'There are so many thieves nowadays. we have to defend our families.'
"'Under Saddam Hussein there was much more security and we could own guns,' he said.
"Zuheir Ali, 26, was detained after troops found a snub-nose .38 Smith & Wesson revolver in his house along with an AK-47. They left the automatic rifle but confiscated the handgun.
"'I don't understand this, we're not criminals, we only want to defend our homes from looters,' Ali said."
So just to be clear: each household is entitled to keep one (1) AK-47 rifle--presumably for legitimate household security needs. Other guns, as pathetic as they may be, will be confiscated. One would think that if these people were a threat, they would use the AK-47 which is being left with them, rather than the pellet gun which is being confiscated.
This all reminds me of the debate, pre-war, about whether the Iraqis were a heavily armed people--in their homes, not at the governmental or official level--like, say, Texans. (Thanks to Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit for his amazing Archive search). It turns out they were. Doesn't this undermine the analogies between Saddam's regime, on the one hand, and Hitler's or Stalin's on the other?
When Timothy Noah raised this debate on Slate (follow-up here), he was interested in the question: is a well-armed populace a good hedge against tyranny, as the NRA likes to suggest (and Reynolds has argued)?
Edmund Wilson wrote in the 60s that to many Americans, Canadians are exotic, without being interesting.
In that spirit, I will suggest that Conrad Black is the one and only interesting Canadian these days--and even he is not all that interesting. (I suppose there should be a special category for celebrities like Avril Lavigne, Shania Twain and Celine Dion.) (Update: arguably both Mike Myers and Jim Carrey are more interesting than the divas; back to our story).
Slate has taken up the new saga. Black apparently (perhaps I should say allegedly) has used a fairly widely owned company to funnel money to himself and a few close associates--profiting the few rather than the many who have invested and trusted him.
The best line is actually from a couple of years ago: "'For 30 years, Conrad Black has been Canada's most extraordinary businessman,' said David Plotz in this 2001 Assessment. 'For U.S. readers who've never heard of him, this is the same as saying: Conrad Black is the world's tallest midget.'"
Black has always liked to portray himself as an extremely successful businessman who is also a man of letters, and probably some kind of all-round gentleman or lord. He has literally fought, and even given up his Canadian citizenship, in order to get into the House of Lords. Yes, that one. God knows why. He said at the time it was a privilege to join the greatest debating body in the world, or something. Huh?
He grew up with some money, and had some success for a while in making more. He attended Upper Canada College in Toronto--what Americans might call a prep school associated with old money--but he was kicked out, as he admitted in his memoirs, for cheating. (The details are recounted in a biography here.)
There are now suggestions that he has never been all that successful at business. His standard procedure may have been to gain control of a business that generated cash, keep a lot of the cash, and then move on. This is different from actually growing a company, which might profit investors and shareholders in general. His major assets have lagged behind the main stock market indicators for some time.
For more on the high and low points of Black's career, see here.
As for the man of letters, I for one intend to read his book on Duplessis (premier of Quebec in the 50s, when the "Quiet Revolution" was just getting started)--some day. The new book on FDR may also be interesting--and obviously, not only to Canadian history buffs.
Update: I probably should have mentioned before that Black, while he owned Southam newspapers in Canada, founded the National Post in Toronto. This paper has been a huge money-loser, but I suppose all readers must be grateful for its existence. (I was a charter subscriber, and I have the acrylic paperweight to prove it). At the beginning the paper emphasized a kind of literary tone, small print, lots of facts and argument, and fairly often, it was actually witty. It praised the U.S. and decried problems in Canada. The joke soon circulated that the typical headline and/or editorial was: "Canada Sucks."
What makes this less funny now is that Black has somehow become the most crawling kind of Anglophile--maybe worse than Max Beaverbrook, another Canadian newspaper proprietor who became a Lord. Meanwhile, David Frum, one of the main "intellectuals" at the Post, has become more or less an American.
By the same sort of standard: is Brian Mulroney interesting?
Alas, no. But the Globe and Mail gave major coverage in recent weeks to yet another "Airbus" story. Briefly: one enterprising reporter named Stevie Cameron has been convinced for years that Mulroney as Prime Minister was "on the take"--she actually used that phrase as the title of a book on Mulroney. She thought the deal Air Canada made to purchase Airbus planes from Europe, instead of Boeing planes, would provide the proof she was looking for. But: there really never was any proof.
Partly or largely because of her efforts, some members of the RCMP became convinced there must be some fire at the source of all the smoke, so they have investigated for years. In one case they wrote to Switzerland, saying they wanted to see some bank records partly because Mulroney had been part of a criminal conspiracy. That's right, they didn't just say "alleged." This led to a big law suit, which Mulroney won.
Bizarrely, there has been another court case grinding on more recently--this one involving helicopters. One character who is in both stories is Karlheinz Schreiber. There seems little doubt that this guy is a dubious character. Cameron and others have probably proved that he was willing to put government deals together corruptly, with bribes being paid, that Mulroney's old friend Frank Moores loved to portray himself as a big-time lobbyist who could deliver a deal with the PM, and that Mulroney, like Richard Nixon, liked being in private conversations where there was cynical laughter about such deals.
In the recent stories, there is lots of testimony from other politicians that they knew Schreiber was bad news, and they wouldn't even have lunch with him, or let their staffs meet him.
And yet, it now turns out that as soon as Mulroney left office, he took a contract with Schreiber worth $300,000. This was supposedly to help a pasta business do its strategic planning, or whatever the jargon is now. Nothing to do with helicopters or jets. And yet, no one thinks Schreiber would hand over this money for nothing.
My brother e-mailed me and asked: have Canadians done an injustice to Mulroney, in thinking he's crooked, or to Cameron in thinking she has given up her career for a crazed vendetta, and become a kind of ersatz cop?
I don't know.
Linking to two comments on the Stephen Hayes article in the Weekly Standard, which in turn cites a leaked memo by Douglas Feith--one of Rumsfeld's "politicals" in the Pentagon.
Josh Marshall: most of the alleged links between Al Qaeda and the Saddam regime have circulated before. Intelligence experts have said they are unreliable, or taken out of context. Low-level meetings may mean very little as far as an international conspiracy to attack Western countries, particularly the U.S.
On the other hand: why can't we simply get a full accounting of what is known, instead of odds and ends of leaks?
"And when you consider that we now essentially own Iraq --- the regime leaders, most all the government records that survive, and so forth --- we shouldn't need to go on hints and allegations. We should know something close to the whole story. And from what we know now, there's not much of a story."
Jesse Walker in Reason Online: He still thinks the best reason for opposing the U.S. invasion was that Saddam had little to do with Osama. The key fact was not and is not that Saddam was secular, while Osama was pious/sacred, but that "Saddam was more interested in power than ideology, and his ambitions were regional; bin Laden was a threat to those ambitions and that power."
"Hardly anyone denies that there were 'links' between Iraq and Al Qaeda, if by 'links' one means periodic communication; then again, not many people are willing to endorse a war just because Osama was in somebody's rolodex."
For Walker, the U.S. invasion is likely to be creating supporters of terrorism, and it is the invasion that has most likely forged an alliance between the Osama forces and the Saddam forces. "If investigators ever uncover a joint effort between bin Laden and Hussein to kill Americans, they will have found a compelling reason to have intervened against Iraq. They will also have found a compelling demonstration that our past intervention in the region was a failure."
We may be getting close to the last word on global warming in our time:
"There is indeed a small amount of man-made global warming, but the scientific evidence is growing stronger that it's not much of a crisis."
That's a relief. The activists are going to have to identify some new calamity affecting the entire globe. Of course, it can't be boring old sun spots, or asteroids hitting us; those are too obviously completely beyond our control. I kind of hope it's global cooling; it would be really something to see them do a complete 180. Almost like time stands still, and in the eerie calm, you can only hear truths, no lies.
Joe Clark has now held forth on the proposed merger of the Progressive Conservative party, with which he has long been associated (as a Red Tory), and the Canadian Alliance.
Clark says the PCs are simply being taken over by a hostile, right-wing party that is in free-fall, desperately hoping the old PC brand will help.
Where are the seats the new party will win? he asks. There are probably none. On the other hand, are there seats they are likely to use? Yes, many.
Clark may be right.
It all reminds me of an old joke. When some of the mainstream Lutherans in the U.S. were discussing a merger with the Episcopalians, or Anglicans, one bishop of one group or the other said: this is a classic case of ecclesiastical necrophilia.
This has been the weekend of the national Liberal convention in Toronto; Jean Chretien's official adieu (although I believe he has still not set the date he will actually step down as PM); and Martin's victory as leader (pre-ordained by the one member, one vote system).
Last Saturday when Chretien was on the front page of the Star, I said to my wife "the old bugger," and she said something like "exactly." He's tough, often totally unforgiving of anyone who crosses him. A minor example from Frank magazine (new issue not yet on line): at a recent state dinner in Ottawa for Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa, Joe Clark and his wife were deliberately seated far from the head table, and were not even able to get in the receiving line to shake hands with the guest of honour. Clark is a former Prime Minister, and a former External Affairs minister who took a leading role in opposing apartheid. He was until recently leader of the Progressive Conservative party--his second stint in that position. Frank speculates that Chretien has never forgiven Clark for scoring political points over Chretien's apparent improprieties in in "Shawinigate."
Chretien has hung on longer than many people expected. He has admitted he only stayed to lead the party in the 2000 election because he was irritated at Martin's obvious moves to prepare to take over. "'Some wanted me to go, so I stayed. That's as simple as that. So I'm grateful.
"'Otherwise I would have left at the end of 2000. Now I will leave between now and the 29th of February,' Chretien said, laughing as he continued to elude questions on his departure date."
In an interview he made it clear that it was a particular meeting of Martin supporters in Toronto in 2000 that angered him.
He has always made it clear he dislikes Martin, or has a kind of contempt for him. Here is a Globe and Mail piece from yesterday:
"Why did he do it? Why did he so compromise his legacy? One person close to the Prime Minister maintains that Mr. Chretien is worried about the future of the party under Paul Martin. He believes his successor lacks political judgment, that his hysterical claim during the referendum crisis that separation would cost Quebec a million jobs was the tip of a larger, lethal, iceberg of bad political instincts. Another senior Chretien adviser put it more simply: 'They are two men who dislike each other very much.'"
Back in '90, as my late father used to say, Martin favoured the Meech Lake Accord, at a time when Chretien officially thought adoption of the Accord into the Constitution would threaten the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Later, as PM, Chretien brought about the "social union," accepting many of the provisions of the Meech Lake Accord--Quebec a distinct society, yet all provinces equal--without giving them constitutional status.
By any conventional standard, Chretien deserves a lot of credit after 10 years as PM. The deficit and Quebec separatism were both big issues; now they are not. He made tough and controversial decisions to achieve both of these results. The country is enjoying peace and prosperity (although the foundations of that prosperity may need work). In his last year or so he has at least promised some "left-wing" initiatives, such as one would expect from a Liberal government enjoying surpluses. (Since he did so little to pass his "legacy" legislation, some are saying it was window-dressing). He no doubt enjoys huge support, to say nothing of relief, from Canadians for staying out of Iraq.
His more left-wing side I'm not too crazy about, but does he read the Canadian voter, while giving just a bit of a sense of the future? Absolutely.
On the other hand, he's never had what Bush senior referred to as "the vision thing," and this may prevent him from being remembered as a great PM. Lawrence Martin has written a nice piece comparing Chretien to Harry Truman. Despite the similarities (the plain-spoken man from common roots, who always put them on display), Martin points out a big difference. For Truman, tough means were used with an end in mind; for Chretien, it was often unclear what the end was other than staying in power. See also L. Ian MacDonald here.
For a while the cliche about Chretien was that he was a Quebecker who didn't understand Quebec. He thought the solution to "the Quebec problem" was to continue with Trudeau's policies--bilingualism, multiculturalism, the Charter of Rights, and say "I love Canada," "Canadian first, Quebecker second" with some regularity.
This often did not cut it with the Quebecois--especially intellectuals who subtly distinguish many different kinds of Quebec nationalist: a souverainiste is not necessarily an independantiste. Chretien seemed disastrously out of touch in the 1995 Quebec referendeum campaign on whether to start a new relationship between Quebec and Canada. Chretien largely stayed out of the debate until it was almost too late, and the "No" or "Canada first" side barely squeaked out a victory. For many, this proved that Chretien was better at talking about Quebec to the rest of Canada--even making fun of himself as if supporting stereotypes about Quebeckers--than at talking to Quebeckers themselves.
History may show--although Liberal history books may not admit it--that Chretien's only two "big" ideas as PM were deficit reduction and a new tough line on Quebec separatism; and that he borrowed both from Preston Manning, founder of both the Reform and Alliance party. Better to say: the success of Reform in 1993 was one indication of the public's dissatisfaction with the Mulroney record. Some parts of that record, Chretien didn't touch (especially free trade and the GST). The deficit could be tackled, and it was.
On Quebec: the close result in 1995 seemed to confirm that Manning had been right, and Chretien (along with the Joe Clark Tories) had been wrong: it wasn't enough to keep going through vaguely-worded referenda on whether Quebec would separate. Canada should make its own view clear, and state some consequences of a Yes vote. Behold, the Clarity [updated nov. 16] Bill. Chretien also brought a poli sci professor, Stephane Dion, into his cabinet to help with this issue.
My take is that generally Chretien doesn't like or trust "big idea" people. He has plenty of experience to show that many of them turn out to be Hamlets sooner or later. John Turner may be a spectacular example. He no doubt makes a big exception in his mind for Trudeau--a man who brought impressive ideas into practice. But I suspect he would say Trudeau was unique--and he might say that even Trudeau was too much of the intellecual, too much of the time.
So David Miller is the new Mayor of Toronto. Raised by a single mother who managed to get him into good schools, where he also won scholarships; lawyer with a beautiful and successful wife; NDPer who has been known to have a big picture of Tommy Douglas (Kiefer Sutherland's grandfather) up on his office wall.
I think this is one case where, if I lived in Toronto, I would have voted for the NDP guy. Miller is right to oppose a bridge to the Island Airport, so that the waterfront can continue to develop in a "grimy industry-free" direction. He is also right to think about tolls on major roads; charge people who mostly don't live in the city for the privilege of driving there, and use the money to support transit for people who do live there.
I believe Miller is wrong to oppose new-generation incinerators, and John Tory (who really is a Tory) was right on that one. Toronto is literally hauling its garbage by the truckful to Michigan. Hard to believe; hard not to be disgusted, really. The recently elected governor of Michigan, Canadian-born Jennifer Granholme, is probably going to do everything she can to stop it. Yet no one in Toronto seems to be able to think of a real alternative for the city's waste.
Yes, yes, recycle. It's done in Edmonton. Toronto is indeed recycling more all the time, but it's a big job.
There is an article in the November 2003 Atlantic Monthly that I strongly recommend to politics junkies like me.
Only a summary is available online.
As so often happens with stories that involve Nixon and transcripts of the White House tapes, the most interesting character to emerge in the story, by far, is Nixon. Many of his comments are crude or claustrophic--disappointing, somehow, coming from a president--but you can always see a very bright individual at work: thinking, giving advice, trying to be funny. "Nobody cares about Latin America"; OK, one would probably wish he hadn't said it, but I don't think it's exactly false.
Young (basically pushing 40 around 1970) Rumsfeld emerges as kind of a dull little troll, toiling away underground, invisible to most. After 6 years in Congress, he worked in the Nixon campaign in 1968, and then kind of hung around the White House, hoping for a good job. He wasn't one of the insiders, and that's part of the reason he struggled to get a job he wanted. Nixon was more or less on his side, or he claimed to be, until there was increasing evidence, firmly reported by Haldeman and others, that Rumsfeld didn't like sticking out his neck for the President.
Rumsfeld was supposed to be effective at reaching out to college campuses and other places with young people in them that were or less like Mars to Nixon and his inner circle. Yet Rumsfeld was hesitant to give a speech to a difficult audience. Also, the one issue that Rumsfeld was outspoken about was Vietnam; the war (meaning U.S. military action there) should be ended as quickly as possible, and a special emissary (like Rumsfeld) should be sent to work on the post-war settlement. This was consistent with what Nixon said during the 1968 campaign (he had a "secret plan" to end the war) but it was no longer "on message." The war had to be fought, we had to be tough, etc., just like Kennedy and Johnson.
Still, Rumsfeld could get private time with the President, and Nixon would offer encouragement and advice.
For a while Rumsfeld headed a real do-gooding federal agency (Office of Economic Opportunity) that Nixon had inherited from Johnson, but which he supported and wanted to spend money on. (Remember the 60s and 70s? Leaders of "conservative" parties did a lot for the growth of the welfare state). Rumsfeld even got the job made into a Cabinet position. Then Rumsfeld lobbied for something else. Once again it took him quite a while to find something. Finally, in 1973, he became U.S. Ambassador to NATO, and thereby managed to be away when everything hit the fan.
In this whole period Rumsfeld was a moderate Republican. In Congress, he joined with other members to dump some of the Goldwater-type conservatives and choose as Republican leader: Gerald Ford. This obviously paid off when Ford became President, but this amounts to rejecting the ideological Reagan wing of the party for the most lacklustre kind of Republican imaginable. Rumfeld's most memorable hire was: Dick Cheney, who has never been known to have a significant disagreement with his former boss.
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