Reports are circulating that Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (who recently campaigned for Robert Torricelli in Trenton, telling voters that, "You can't possibly appreciate the job Torricelli does") and New Jersey Senator Jon Corzine (who at the same time declared that he had "never been prouder to be on a dais as I have this afternoon with the leadership you've got in the state of New Jersey") will jointly propose a novel tribute to the career-end of New Jersey's now-departing senior Senator.
Senator Torricelli's political career was finally extinguished over the weekend by an Eagleton poll showing a 13-point gap, apparently evidence that there are just not - even in New Jersey - as many amoral, totally cynical voters completely obsessed with keeping the Senate in Democratic control to the exclusion of even serious ethical deficiencies in their representative as Mr. Torricelli and the amoral, totally cynical and completely-obsessed-with-keeping-the-Senate-in-Democratic-control-to-the-exclusion-of-even-serious-ethical-deficiencies-in-the-senior-New-Jersey-Senator New York Times had been banking on.
Senators Daschle and Corzine are said to have prepared a joint statement describing their proposed tribute:
"So that Bob Torricelli's Senate career may end with on the same moral note that has characterized it from the outset, the New Jersey Democratic Party will join with the National Democratic Party in making a squalid politicized effort to force the hyper activist New Jersey Supreme Court to annul rather clear New Jersey State Election law and permit the Democratic Party to place another candidate on the ballot in lieu of Mr. Torricelli. We are confident that the ensuing uproar over the degradation of the Court will completely drown out any of the "issues" we purport to wish to become the focus of the remaining few weeks of the campaign. We are also confident that the New Jersey Court will comply with our motion and allow the "Torch" to be passed to the man that a majority of Democratic Poobahs chooses in lieu of the man chosen by primary voters only weeks ago. Of course, we cannot predict who that man will be - since all the bids have not yet been received - but we can say that we don't want to be forced into the kind of degrading "write-in" strategy that Washington, D.C Mayor Williams was forced to resort to when he screwed up his election laws.
Once the new candidate is selected and rubber-stamped by the compliant New Jersey Court, Senator Torricelli's name will formally and ceremonially be removed from the ballot and replaced with the new name. On that date we ask all Americans - from coast to coast - to stand by in their bathrooms and, at exactly midnight on the appointed day, to mark the occasion by simultaneously flushing once or twice while observing a solemn moment of silence. Small paper torches may be lit and dropped in at the same time, if desired. The resulting drop in national water pressure - together with what will then be an ongoing chaos in the courts - will serve as a fitting and touching memorial to mark the end of this great career. We believe this simple and dignified ceremony will help to bring together everyone in the nation, and especially the troubled citizens of New Jersey, at this sensitive but disturbing moment in our nation's history for a true "Hands Across the Waters" experience. Those concerned about the potential for water waste attendant to this ceremony are advised to reserve an appropriate deposit before hand.
McGreevey, New Jersey's governor, appeared with Torricelli, and the Washington Post's transcript, produced by the error-prone folks at eMediaMillWorks, includes this telling typo in a McGreevey comment: "The Democratic State Committee will petition the New Jersey Supreme Court for the ability to replace Robert toilette's name with another candidate."
The same two loopy Democratic Congressman who embarrassed themselves on television a few days ago are now comforting Saddam from Bagdad. Hanoi Jane had nothing on these guys.
Surely these guys are Republican moles, right? Inserted into the Democratic Party in the Nixon era as a "dirty trick," there to lie in wait pretending to be ultra-liberal Democrats until the critical moment when they could emerge and destroy "their" Party's election prospects.
The Congressman want inspections. But even the U.N. weapons inspectors are now demanding the right to roam freely around Saddam Hussein's palaces and other suspect sites, a demand which Saddam has refused.
Of course, the concept of "inspectors" reliably determining that, say, there are no mobile biological weapons production facilities in Iraq, is grimly hilarious even if the inspectors could roam freely.
Paul Orwin of TurnedUpToEleven posts a very interesting (at least to me) continuation of our discussion regarding the significance of studies purporting to show that chimps and humans have similar genomes (with perhaps 95% to 99% of their DNA in common).
Referring to the proposition that comparable "useful" DNA should have more similarity than "junk" DNA, Professor Orwin, among other interesting things, makes two points:
"1) I was probably understating the case when I called it a "best guess". There have been many efforts to study human and ape genes, and all have borne out the very close relationship. 2). Functionality certainly constrains genome structure, in highly specific ways."
Taking the second question first: of course functionality constrains genome structure. But I don't think that is a correct formulation of the issue. If my questions were put in this form they might look like: "How much does external functionality constrain genome structure compared to internal functionality and other factors?" How can we measure the difference? My questions were: (1) doesn't the 95-99% overlap in non-functional DNA suggest that factors other than external (expressive) functionality may play a major role in determining the structure of this "junk" DNA? (2) In particular, if the "junk" does actually serve some kind of "internal" function, isn't it possible that internal function plays a major role in determining the structure of this "junk."
For example, to look at the simplest case, bacteria have little or no junk in their DNA. Isn't that consistent with a model in which there is no function for "junk" in such a unicellular organism, and that evolutionary pressures have therefore ejected entirely the DNA for which there is no internal structural role (in other words, constrained its "structure" to zero)? After all, I understand that one possible source of "junk" is retroviral insertions - which, I believe, bacteria have to contend with, too. So it's not as if there aren't candidates for "junked up" bacterial strains being produced. They just don't seem to survive.
The link between expressive functionality and genome structure is not, to my knowledge, always so clear as Professor Orwin suggests. For example, there is an immune system receptor common to rodents and humans called CD-32. In rodents it appears to correspond entirely to one gene. But in humans, it corresponds to two genes (CD-32A and CD-32B), but it is my understanding that there are also other ancillary variants of at least CD-32B involved. In this case, there is a lot of difference in genome coding for little or no apparent difference in expressive results (that is, the CD-32 receptor).
I'm not sure what lies between "best guess" (which I already construed as "best guess by an informed, highly competent expert" - and I don't think one generally makes money in Vegas betting against that kind of thing, already) and "scientific fact." But I'll construe this point to mean that Professor Orwin has a high degree of confidence in this guess, and that other experts do, too, and that confidence is probably manifested practically in the direction he and other experts choose for their research. Since to my knowledge nobody has even mapped the chimp genome, I'm not sure how much further one can wisely go at this point, but it's interesting that Professor Orwin is willing to climb out on that particular limb. I am certainly not saying Professor Orwin is wrong, or likely wrong in any of this. My original and continuing focus was on the meaning of the studies that purport to "prove" genome similarities - I don't see any popular articles about what even very good scientists think is probably right, or almost certainly going to turn out to be right, or whatever else may lie between "best guess" and "scientific fact.".
It is certainly well reported in the popular scientific press that various efforts to compare specific human and primate genes have been made, and - at least by the measures described by those researchers - all have borne out very close relationships. Indeed, Professor Orwin cites to one such popular report about a study of the "Y" Chromosome, a report which includes this passage:
The amount of variation in the human Y chromosome, for example, says something about the size of the population from whom we descended. The greater the variety, the larger the starting population must have been. Likewise for the chimpanzees and bonobos. Chimpanzees and bonobos, she found, show significant variety. "I found a ton of variation in chimps and bonobos," she said. Not so with humans, where little variation means we all evolved, recently, from a very small population, a few tens of thousands of individuals less than 200,000 years ago. In that small initial population, the key mutations that made us human could have spread quickly, Stone theorized.
Now, Professor Orwin described this report as a particularly good one supporting his position, but the qualitative language in the above excerpt doesn't seem to have the same confidence he suggests. And while the report does include quotes from the researcher such as: "Chimp and human chromosomes look virtually identical," the details of the report just says the researcher "looked at a stretch of DNA on the Y chromosome," which is hardly enough to determine how extensive the DNA segment studied there actually was. Moreover, the report does not state whether that researcher attempted to isolate a completely "useful;" piece of DNA - although one does get the impression that at least some of the examined DNA was "useful."
What is particularly striking to me about this article is the assertion: "DNA sequences in humans and chimpanzees are more than 99 percent identical .... It is that last 1 percent that makes us human." But as little as 1.5% of all human DNA may be "useful." The Man Without Qualities is not alone in expressing reservations about how meaningful it is to study the "junk": "They say 99 percent of the genome is not genes. I believe it's 3 percent that is genes," said Bill Haseltine, president of Human Genome Sciences.... At any rate, Haseltine believes studying the whole genome is a waste. "It's clear we should focus on genes and not the genome," he said.
In any event, there have been to my knowledge no attempts to simply compare the "useful" DNA of chimps and humans in the aggregate. Indeed, it is my understanding of the current state of molecular genetics that although some pieces of DNA are known to be "useful" there is actually quite a bit to be learned in the area of sorting the "useful" from the "junk." Indeed, there are quite active research efforts underway (including commercial efforts) to find (and patent!) new "useful" DNA concealed within the masses of "junk." So we seem to be rather far from a direct comparision of aggregate "useful" DNA.
I, personally, have difficulty in accepting naked percentages (99% or 95% or whatever) even of "useful" DNA as a very meaningful measure of species similarity. For one thing, as Professor Orwin points out, certain life functions are more basic than others. To use Professor Orwin's example, pretty much every cell in every organism needs to use adenosine tri-phosphate. So why should the presence of the genomic structure that corresponds to the ATP cycle be counted as a very significant point of "similarity" between chimps and humans? The "hedgehog" gene in a fly is considered very similar to the human hedgehog gene, and to the hedgehog gene as it occurs in most animals. Why should that not be a reason for discounting the hedgehog gene as a point of similarity?
If one were to count things like "lights," "desks," "windows," "teachers," "lab hoods," "reagent bottles" and the like at the CalTech biology department one could probably find a very high level of "overlap" with the biology department at "Poly" (the private school that runs through 12th grade down the street from the CalTech department). Would that show that the two biology departments were "very similar"? Isn't there something subtle and different about what goes on in Professor Orwin's head and the heads of his Tech colleagues that gets swamped in all this naive counting ?
I think Musil is overstating the case here. In fact, there are tremendous similarities between mouse and human immune systems. Can he name even one "theory" that was "demolished" by the differences?
Well, yes, of course I can. But I'll instead do something which Professor Orwin may find more intriguing: I'll describe a current theory that will soon be demolished in exactly this way. Specifically, there is a "hot" theory stemming from certain assumptions of rodent/human immune system similarities which is hoped in many quarters to have potentially direct application to a certain experimental cancer treatment. That theory will be demolished by a paper soon to be published. The paper will show that instead of the presumed rodent/human similarities at the gene level one species entirely lacks the genes being studied in the other species.
In any event, I hope that Professor Orwin does not find anything I have said above offensive or impertinent. I have been absolutely charmed that he took the time and effort to share his expertise with me, an expertise wildly beyond my own. After all, Professor Orwin could have done what Charles Murtaugh did - link to Professor Orwin and another blog that responded to my original post while refusing to acknowledge my existence, and this although I have permalinked to Charles almost from the inception of this blog. That's fine, everyone has their own view of Blogosphere civility. It's still my best guess that Charles is a wonderful, perfectly charming person.
There are reports that Senator Robert Torricelli may drop out of the election. Perhaps as early as today.
James Lindgren's article "Fall from Grace: Arming America and the Bellesiles Scandal" does a pretty thorough job of debunking "Arming America," even inverting much of Bellesiles' argument:
If guns were already more common in the eighteenth century than Bellesiles says they were on the eve of the Civil War, then his narrative of how we got from low gun ownership to high gun ownership collapses into the opposite story of a shift from high gun ownership to somewhat lower gun ownership.
But after reading Lindgren's article I found myself asking if there is still a research project to be accomplished there, the one that Bellesiles should have focused on in the first place: Can we determine how widespread was late 18th century and early 19th century ownership of guns of the type used by state militias.- not just of guns. Did ownership of militia-type guns increase over the 19th century.
"Bellesiles confuses arms produced at militia musters with arms owned. There were many guns that would have been suitable for shooting birds (“ fowling pieces” ) or vermin, or for hunting larger animals, that would not meet the standards of the day for battle muskets, which were very heavy with extremely long barrels. It is somewhat akin to confusing an M-16 with a shotgun."
As Professor Lindgren also points out (although he is certainly not the first to do so and does not claim to be) as a work of history, Arming America does not directly advocate any gun policies, one argument that emerges from his conclusions is that if guns were not widely owned in the late 18th century and early 19th century, then it is unlikely that gun owning was understood as an individual right in the Second Amendment.
Today, there seems to be a growing belief (if not yet a consensus) that "an individual right in the Second Amendment" may extend only to guns of the type used or potentially used in a militia.
It therefore seems relevant to try to determine historically not just whether ownership of all guns was widespread in the late 18th century and early 19th century. "[G]uns that would have been suitable for shooting birds (“ fowling pieces” ) or vermin, or for hunting larger animals, that would not meet the standards of the day for battle muskets' may not be as relevant in determining whether the Framers of the Second Amendment meant it to create an "individual" or "individual and fundamental" right.
Perhaps such research has already been done, or perhaps it can be extracted from the raw data already accumulated in the process of cleaning up after Bellesiles. There is some suggestion that such extraction may already have been done, as where Professor Lindgren writes:
As to the Providence, Rhode Island, data, Bellesiles has dropped the claim from the hardback edition of Arming America that the guns in the inventories were evaluated is old or broken and now claims that the majority of guns are so low-valued that he reappraises them as old or broken. There are a number of problems with this claim. Most important, historians should not reappraise 300-year old guns that they have never seen based solely on evidence of their monetary value. Bellesiles does not provide a sufficient basis for his reappraisal. He does not reappraise a few very low-valued guns. Rather, he appraises the median-priced gun in Providence as old or broken.The best evidence we have for what a typical gun cost in Providence, Rhode Island, is the very probate data showing that guns cost about one pound. This is consistent with other data, as I show in the next Section. A new military-quality weapon in a time of war might go for two to three times that amount, but that does not mean that an ordinary working gun or fowling piece in a time of peace would go for more than about a pound.
Finally, as to the frontier data on dysfunctional guns, Bellesiles says that they are listed as such. It is not possible to change this claim based on a reappraisal. Of the estates that Heather and I examined, 83-91% of them listed guns that were not described as old or broken.136 This does not, of course, indicate that most of these guns were of military quality or even suitable for battle. Many were undoubtedly fowling pieces, better suited for hunting birds. But this is solid evidence that many Americans owned functioning guns.
In any event, it would be interesting, to me at least, to know if militia-worthy gun ownership was common in late 18th century and early 19th century America.
The MinuteMan explains how Al Gore's same penchant for unstable factoids that harmed him so much during the campaign will - surprise! - probably harm him a lot this time around, too. The MinuteMan pretty much reduces Mr. Gore's problem to a kind of infernal macro.
It's sad to see a man like Mr. Gore trapped in a macro of his own making. Like him or not, he once had potential.
The New York Times says Saddam had made life more complicated for the President by agreeing to inspectors, so maybe the Iraq president felt bad and is now trying to make it up to Mr. Bush by refusing to agree to any new UN resolution (that is, one that differ from Saddam's "deal" with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan - who, of course, had no authority to bind the UN or the US).
If Mr. Hussein holds his ground on this new demand, and the Security Counsel resolution is "unacceptable," the problem the Times thinks it sees just goes away.
Little did he know: here, and here and here and here (in response to here) and, of course, generally, here.
"Soldier, would it make you happier if we prohibited everyone from having sex? Not just you, you understand, but everyone?
"Ja! You bet it would! None of us can stand the idea that someone else is getting more than we are."
New Jersey Democratic Senator Torricelli has been fighting to keep every fragment of the ethics/bribery case against him as secret from the public as possible.
As noted in a prior post, his efforts are wrongheaded and counterproductive - since they increase suspicions against him (and voter and media hostility), and will probably be worse than ineffectual in that the information he is trying to keep secret will simply escape at what, for him, is the worst possible time.
That worst possible time is starting now - with just weeks until the election. And sure enough "a federal appellate court on Friday ordered the release of a government letter that sought leniency for Cresskill businessman David Chang, convicted of illegal campaign contributions to the senator."
Senator Torricelli has ben arguing preposterously and counterproductively that the Chang letter should be kept secret to protect the Senator's "privacy". The appeals court addressed that argument by noting that Torricelli himself has "already made public statements attempting to refute the very material he now wants us to suppress from public view. ... As far as the Senator's privacy was concerned the ink was in the milk.''
My guess is that a lot of Jersey voters - especially the Independents, who are less likely to inhabit an apparent Democratic ethics-free zone - will be thinking about the Senator's inky milk when they enter that booth in November.
The New York Times, in an article that could almost be mistaken for a solicitation for emergency campaign contributions for Mr. Torricelli, reports no anxiety on the part of either the Times or top Democrats that a person so tainted with ethics and bribery charges may again be elected to the Senate as a Democrat. No. No. The Times predictably sounds a different alarm :
Prominent national Democrats now regard Senator Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey as their party's most vulnerable Senate incumbent, prompting concern that his endangered seat might cost Democrats control of the Senate.
But, of course, to be fair to the top Democrats, their anxiety is not limited to possibly losing the Senate if Mr. Torricelli loses. Some Democrats are, of course, attuned to the larger ramifications of Mr. Torricelli's situation. Such as how that situation might affect the ability of other Democrats to get hold of all the money they want:
Some Democrats also say they are concerned that the party's focus on New Jersey threatens to limit the money and other resources that are available for other Democrats as their party flushes more and more into New Jersey.
And while last week the Times reported that some Democratic voters in New Jersey are deeply troubled by Mr. Torricelli's ethical problems, the same apparently cannot be said of big Democrat donors:
But Mr. McAuliffe and other party leaders also say that the interest generated by the Torricelli race has helped draw more money than they expected. "Bob is bringing millions of dollars in," Mr. McAuliffe said. "If anything, Bob is creating excitement out there and helping raise more money."
The New York Times is now explaining on the front page that the Republicans will be aided by the fact that: No matter what the Democrats do now, Iraq considerations will dominate the media until election day..
The significance of the war debate, Republicans say, is that, by crowding out the issues Democrats wanted to talk about, it changed a race that had appeared to be shifting toward the Democrats in midsummer.
The "Reverend" Jesse Jackson seems to have missed more class days at the Seminary than I had previously thought.
“Since he’s not gonna volunteer, it means you have to kill Hussein. In order to get to him you’re going to have to kill a lot of innocent people - to get to him. It’s reminiscent of biblical times – killing all those children to get to Jesus.”
It turns out that TIME's fool is Bill Clinton's former national security advisor, Sandy Berger, who just back in August was busy telling TIME that the Clinton administration had prepared a major, magic strike against al Qaeda, which the Bush Administration delayed!
Well, what a difference a few months, some third-party investigations, and an oath (or at least the applicability of the Federal False Statements Act) can make - at least if you're not Bill Clinton!
Apparently under oath and definitely before Congress, Mr. Berger yesterday is reported by Foxnews to have contradicted "published reports" (that is, Mr. Berger's own August TIME interview) that the outgoing Clinton administration gave the incoming Bush team a plan to go after Al Qaeda. He also said that he heard of the possibility of airplanes being used as weapons as one of several possible threat scenarios. Mr. Clinton himself had previously confessed earlier this year that his administration's plans had a "high probability" of failure, and that he personally declined to pursue any such plan. Which is good, I guess, since Mr. Berger is now saying that there was no plan to pursue in the first place.
In addition, Newsmax is reporting that during the same Congreessional testimony Mr. Berger also insisted "that the Clinton administration never received an offer from Sudan to extradite Osama bin Laden to the U.S., directly contradicting President Clinton's statement earlier this year that he personally turned down the Sudanese offer in 1996."
Democratic Senator Jean Carnahan, appointed after the tragic race of 2000, is no better than a nominal favorite to win the remaining four years of the term technically won by her husband, the late Governor Mel Carnahan. Congressman Jim Talent, the unsuccessful 2000 GOP gubernatorial nominee, is a strong challenger who probably would have been governor had it not been for the plane crash that killed Governor Carnahan and created an enormous last-minute wave of sympathy for the Democratic ticket in Missouri two years ago. It is becoming apparent in public and private surveys that Talent is doing quite well, and that IF this trend continues, he will have a decent chance to beat Carnahan on election day. However, there are too many unknowns remaining in this race, and the Crystal Ball is not yet ready to say that it is leaning to Talent.
It should be noted that the Missouri match-up is technically a special election to fill the remaining the four years of the term of the late Gov. Carnahan. As such, the winner will likely be sworn in within a few days of the Nov. 5 election, assuming Democratic Governor Bob Holden doesn't sit on the official certification of the results produced by the elected Republican Secretary of State (Which Holden may well be tempted to do). Therefore, if Mrs. Carnahan wins, the effect is nil. But if Talent should capture the seat, and there are no other changes in the Senate before then, the Senate would revert to Republican control for any lame-duck session in November/December. With Trent Lott the Majority Leader again, this would have some dramatic effects, potentially, including the possible approval of Bush judicial nominees currently bottled up in the Democratic-controlled Judiciary Committee. This prospect--tantalizing for Republicans and nightmarish for Democrats--will undoubtedly increase the focus on and fundraising for this contest as election day approaches.
After an unusual eight years of Democratic rule in Republican Alaska under Governor Tony Knowles, Alaska seems to be reverting to form with Republican Frank Murkowski, the current junior U.S. Senator from Alaska. Democratic Lieutenant Governor Fran Ulmer is a credible Democratic nominee, but her only real chance is in the mad collection of third-party and independent candidates on the ballot in Alaska, which may drain more votes from Murkowski than from her. Still, Murkowski is firmly in the frontrunner's saddle, and he has to hope that Alaskans do not prefer in the end to keep his Senate seniority by electing Ulmer.
By the way, if Murkowski does win, he will be able to appoint his U.S. Senate successor. The new Alaska governor takes office on December 2, but by law (passed by a GOP state legislature), Murkowski must wait 5 days after his Senate resignation to appoint the successor. This provision was enacted to prevent outgoing Democratic Governor Knowles from getting the Senate appointment--though again under law, would have had to choose a registered Republican for the open seat. If the Congress has a lame-duck session, and the GOP has achieved majority status through the election of Jim Talent in Missouri (see Missouri Senate race), then Murkowsi's resignation might deprive Republicans of their temporary majority for the 5-day period.
The most recent Pew Survey results report many interesting things - including a rather predictable uptick in the President's standing. Although the report is certainly not clear good news for either party, at least one result is especially curious:
[T]here is no evidence that Democrats have been able to capitalize on a summer's worth of corporate scandals or a sagging economy. Republicans hold a slight 36%-31% lead as the party better able to deal with corporate corruption. Republicans have lost the lead they held early this year as the party better able to handle the economy; the two parties run even on this issue, mirroring the parity in the congressional ballot.
It is interesting to ask whether the electorate sees through the O-so-opportunistic Democratic grandstanding on this issue, especially over the summer.
The poll also indicates some Democratic strengths, including that "turnout is likely to be on par with the 1998 midterm congressional election, but that, unlike 1998, Democrats express as much interest in voting as Republicans at this stage of the campaign".
Of course, very few seats in the House are truly competitive - so such general poll results can be seriously misleading as a measure of House results. The Connecticut 5th Congressional district (Johnson/Maloney), for example, is supposed to be "competitive" - and here's a Republican poll for that District.
On the other hand, the Senate races are not gerrymandered. But, even there, state-by-sate polling is much more important. For example, here's a Republican New Jersey poll.
William Safire says that Social Democrat Rudolf Scharping, who Mr. Safire describes as "the defense minister who had been recently booted out of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's cabinet for financial irregularities," has a strange way of explaining why President Bush wants to depose Saddam Hussein. German justice minister, Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, is reported to have said that "Bush wants to divert attention from his domestic problems. It's a classic tactic. It's one that Hitler used." Chancellor Schroeder himself embarrassingly claims "This was always our aim, to get the weapons inspectors back in," while the Wall Street Journal (or rather, a Journal op-ed by the Christian Democratic Union's shadow foreign and defense minister) points out that the Chancellor strongly opposed the very American actions that brought Iraq to request the return of the inspectors - even in its current diversionary sense. The Journal article dramatically claims that "the chancellor has for his own personal gain plunged the federal republic into an international crisis." The Washington Post has accused the Chancellor of isolating Germany through unilateral obstructionism and refusal to cooperate even with a United Nations resolution.
All of these developments flow from the Social Democrats' weakness on German domestic issues, leading them to capitalize on what they see as a short-term popular international position. One might - and many will - write about the cynicism, opportunism and destructiveness of the Social Democratic approach. But a narrower issue is: what effect is the most recent wave of the German-left excess having on German voters? Until recently, the Social Democrats were able to increase their standing in the polls with this issue without sounding so extreme as to trigger the very claims of 'German isolationism" that are now being heard around the world. Many German people very much dislike the thought of their soldiers being sent into battle under any conditions - but it is at least possible (I would say probable) that even more Germans even more strongly dislike the thought of Germany being branded as a "unilateralist" determined to obstruct the functioning of international law, in this case the Security Council. The Best of the Web links to a Times of London article reporting that even before the most recent German-left excesses, polls showed a tentative resurgence of the Christian Democrats. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) tomorrow also points out that the Chancellor's claim to having assisted in bringing Saddam around is false and calls the upcoming election "too close to call." None of this reflects very well on the German electorate, who have had years to discover how ineffectual and downright dishonest their current government really is - and should have much better judgment of international issues, too.
To be fair to the German electorate, the round of German-left excess, the resulting recriminations and then the even worse German-left excesses - such as the bizarre statements of Social Democrats Scharping and Daeubler-Gmelin - may have arrived with a bang. But analysis of the significance of such developments is now available to German voters, if they care to see what is happening. The FAZ, for example, runs an editorial tomorrow including the following:
[O]nly Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, [are] red-faced on the international stage. The German version of unilateralism - “we don't care about UN resolutions“ - reduces the international pressure on Iraq. Baghdad was able to interpret Schröder's “without us“ and his brusque criticism of the United States as a serious rift in the Western alliance, yet in the end Saddam could no longer count on the German chancellor because Schröder, the unilateralist, became internationally isolated and thus minimized his own influence on the United States. By raising doubts over the West's willingness to push through UN resolutions with military action, Schröder hindered his self-professed goal of a political solution.
If, as suggested by some recent polls, the Social Democrats' excesses have already passed the point of diminishing returns with the German electorate, then the most recent developments coupled with statement's such as the FAZ analysis may well accelerate and intensify that process. The Germans may to some extent justify themselves in this election, yet.
"How can a guy who ran for president and other offices be such a lousy people person? This is a guy who never came back to us after that debacle a couple of years ago, never thanked us for the hundreds of hours we devoted to saving his sorry ass, never called, never wrote. Then he shows up in 2002 like it all never happened. He's useless."--an unnamed Palm Beach County, Fla., Democratic operative, quoted in The American Prowler, Sept. 19
Both Lileks and Galt have lots of sharp things to say about weapons inspections in Iraq. The Man Without Qualities thought just enough about the practicalities and strategies of weapons inspections to realize that I would need at least two more lives to think the whole thing through.
But I do have one wirthwhile consideration that hasn't been publicly vetted (perhaps for good reason):
My guess is that the United States knows some - but not all - exactly or reasonably specific - locations of Iraq's WMD centers, and that the evidence of such locations is very sensitive. Suppose an acceptable panel of experts (acceptable to whom I will leave as a seriously open question - but say the Security Counsel and the US intelligence agencies for the moment) could be formed and the evidence of such locations disclosed to that panel. The Security Counsel resolution requires that Iraq disclose all locations of WMD, and authorizes military force if that is not done. As a non-exclusive enforecement mechanism, the resolution also states that if Iraq does not disclose a single site that the panel knows about then Iraq is to be conclusively deemed in material defiance of the resolution. Iraq does not know which locations the US (and the panel) is aware of - so if Iraq fails to disclose even one location, that location may be on the "known" list.
Is the above feasible, and would it provide a meaningful incentive for Iraq to disclose? Would it help call the multilateralist bluff? Or would it just confuse the situation?
President Bush plans ... today [to] formally ask ... Congress to grant him authority to strike unilaterally if Saddam Hussein does not comply soon with United Nations mandates to forfeit his weapons of mass destruction .... Bush's proposed congressional resolution would give him "maximum flexibility" to carry out any war plans, regardless of U.N. actions .... Should the Security Council reject Bush's proposed resolution, the administration is prepared to make clear it believes it has authority to act unilaterally under a "self-defense" clause in the U.N. charter. .... Congressional leaders predicted swift passage of the proposed [Congressional] resolution