THE Secret Intelligence Service has run an operation to gain public support for sanctions and the use of military force in Iraq. The government yesterday confirmed that MI6 had organised Operation Mass Appeal, a campaign to plant stories in the media about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

The revelation will create embarrassing questions for Tony Blair in the run-up to the publication of the report by Lord Hutton into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the government weapons expert.

A senior official admitted that MI6 had been at the heart of a campaign launched in the late 1990s to spread information about Saddam’s development of nerve agents and other weapons, but denied that it had planted misinformation. “There were things about Saddam’s regime and his weapons that the public needed to know,” said the official.

The admission followed claims by Scott Ritter, who led 14 inspection missions in Iraq, that MI6 had recruited him in 1997 to help with the propaganda effort. He described meetings where the senior officer and at least two other MI6 staff had discussed ways to manipulate intelligence material. ...

... administration officials have come to appreciate that while our task in Iraq perhaps became a little easier over the weekend, it is still incredibly difficult and complex, with the outcome very much in doubt.... in military terms Saddam's capture may prove to be of very little importance. There is no indication that he was directing the resistance against us; in fact, he apparently hasn't functioned as commander in chief for quite a while now.

The only way that military attacks will ease is if the resistance has been inspired largely by hopes of reinstating Saddam, and I doubt that's the case. If the attacks are motivated instead by growing anger at U.S. occupation, they are likely to continue....

In the days to come, the military situation in Iraq will no doubt continue to be challenging, and American soldiers will continue to die. But it is unlikely that militarily, the situation will deteriorate to the point that it drives the United States out of the country. If we lose control of things, it will happen instead in the political sphere.

By promising the Iraqis freedom, sovereignty and self-government, we have set in motion a process that we cannot hope to control or predict. That process may give full voice to the anti-U.S. resentment apparently building within Iraq because of the occupation....

... Ivo Daalder, a national-security official in the Clinton administration and one of Dean's foreign-policy advisers, said the major elements in Dean's scheduled foreign-policy address today will not be changed by Saddam's capture. Nor, he said, did the arrest represent a setback to the former Vermont governor, who said on the day Baghdad fell last spring, "I suppose" the Iraqi people were better off with Saddam gone.

"The issue wasn't capturing Saddam," Daalder said. "The issue was whether this was the right war at the right time. That critique still stands." ...

... as the former Vermont governor solidifies his front-runner status in the nine-way race for the party's nomination, bolstered last week with the endorsement of former Vice President Al Gore, [Dean] seeks to impress upon an increasingly attuned audience that his foreign-policy knowledge is deep and wide -- not the Achilles' heel of his maverick campaign, as his rivals charge.

To that end, Dean will deliver his most extensive foreign-policy speech to date tomorrow in Los Angeles, in which he will (1) call for the creation of a global alliance to defeat terrorist cells and root out weapons of mass destruction, according to the Dean campaign.

(2) The alliance would operate with a multibillion-dollar fund paid by the United States and its partners, which could include NATO members and other countries with common interests.

(3) The alliance would be modeled on the federal Nunn-Lugar program, initiated in 1991 to secure nuclear, chemical, and biological materials left behind by the former Soviet Union.

Under Dean's plan, (4) cooperating nations would work to identify nuclear, chemical, and biological arms around the world. It also would (5) work to create specially-trained units to handle terrorist situations involving lethal substances and work to ensure cooperation against biological terror.

Dean also will propose (6) strengthening protection of ports, aircraft, food supplies, and power plants, and (7) giving greater federal support for local police, fire, and medical responders.

In an interview with The Washington Post Dean embraced a (8) plan that would establish the borders of a Palestinian state, and said he would seek (9) negotiations with North Korea to work out a deal that would include economic aid, energy assistance, and a "nonaggression pact." ...

... The battle has not only divided the nation's union leadership. It has also divided friends, colleagues and families. Accustomed to fighting political fights together, many union members now find themselves on opposite sides of the political fence.

... Gore, it was said, wanted to shed his image as a slave to the politics of caution. But there is another way to read Gore's bombshell. It is a commentary on the fortunes of Democratic moderates.

The moderates are losing the battle to define the post-Clinton Democratic Party, for four reasons.

First, they have ceded the insurgent mantle to Dean and his supporters on the Internet, student activists and antiwar acolytes.

When Clinton and Gore became active in the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, they saw themselves as insurgents battling entrenched left-wing political interests. Clinton ran as an outsider on a vision of a New Democrat who shunned party orthodoxy on such issues as welfare reform, free trade and balanced budgets. By re-energizing the party, he inspired the grass roots — students, (Remember MTV), stay-at-home moms and African Americans.

Eleven years later, it is Dean who has embraced Clinton's pedigree as an outsider, incessantly flaying opponents as Washingtonians too cozy with President Bush to fight him effectively. His charges are specious. Candidates Rep. Richard A. Gephardt and Sens. John Edwards, John F. Kerry and Joe Lieberman all oppose Bush's handling of postwar Iraq. But Dean's attacks on them have reminded voters that this quartet supported the use of force in Iraq in the first place. Dean didn't, and that has fueled his insurgent campaign.

Second, Democratic moderates in Congress and on the campaign trail have failed to develop a clear, consistent national security strategy. They have put forward good policies, but a coherent strategy and a simple message have proved elusive. In 2002, Democrats decided to fight the midterm elections on domestic matters, ceding security as an issue to the Republicans.

But in the world after Sept. 11, 2001, defense is the paramount issue. In 2003, Democratic moderates have scored points in attacks on Republican policies on Iraq and Afghanistan; they have noted, to the administration's embarrassment, that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are still at large. But Republicans have mastered the art of bumper-sticker politics: pro-war, pro-defense, pro-freedom. In contrast, Democratic foreign policies are too complicated to fit on a sticker. Moderates are still struggling to find their voice in foreign affairs.

[Third]... liberal interest groups rushed in to fill the power vacuum created when Clinton stepped down in 2001, significantly diminishing the moderates' institutional authority. Groups such as the National Organization for Women, the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and the AFL-CIO long to defeat Bush in 2004. But, above all, they act as if their most important goals are to advance their narrow agendas regardless of the broader implications for the country. In putting out press releases, hosting candidate forums and bickering over whom they should endorse, these organizations want a candidate most committed to their special issues, a poor basis for a presidential platform.

[Fourth] moderate think tanks and idea factories are divided on issues of politics and policies....

... [the "Agreement on Political Process" ... hastily approved in mid-November by the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq and the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.... is both fascinating and deeply irritating . ... [It] reflects the dangerous tendency of America to engage in policymaking by panic. The agreement's content and the hasty manner in which it was promulgated reveal that its main goal is to provide an American exit strategy rather than a workable plan for Iraqi sovereignty.

Washington has taken a good idea — transforming tyranny into democracy — and implemented it badly . In acting unilaterally and militarily, and in seeing Iraq through a narrow Western prism, the U.S. has fallen into the colonial trap of attempting to reshape a society according to Western rules and values.

Making it all work in the end won't be easy, and the U.S. can't expect much help from other countries in the region. Most Arabs and their governments are proving to be docile spectators, passively watching their own postcolonial history of autocracy, passivity and powerlessness replayed over and over again. Arab critics have lambasted the U.S. for its policies in Iraq, but not a single Arab country has provided a model of democratic governance or the sort of widespread prosperity that would keep young Arabs at home rather than seeking to emigrate.

The antidote must include a more realistic, humble and multilateral American policy, along with more activist, honest and credible policies on the part of Arab countries . Countries in the region must provide their people with better governance and systems based on the rule of law in order to avoid both the home-grown tyranny of Baathist Iraq and the colonial militarism of Anglo-American armadas.

Iowa and Idaho and the other states became prosperous and democratic because their people wanted [to], and worked to forge, good governance. America offers us ennobling lessons, along with ugly, imposed colonial treaties. We should reject treaties that don't serve our interests, but at the same time we should embrace the concept of good governance. America is welcome as our partner in this process, but not as our master.

First, we eliminate (assassinate, invade, occupy directly or through puppetry) selected "terrorist" regimes, mainly in the Middle East and surrounds. No, silly, not Israel under Sharon or Uzbekistan! For more on this, check out An End of Evil companion piece, Mark Palmer’s rousing adventure tale of how America destroys the 43 (just 43?) evil dictators on the planet once and for all by the year 2025. [A search for palmer's piece came up zip.]

Secondly, Frum and Perle advocate creating new enemies around the world. These naturally include the easy-to-hate House of Saud and France, as well as China and the rest of the world as represented by membership in the United Nations. One might assume that UN member countries and Israel, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands will be exempt from eventual enemy status. Or not.

Thirdly, Frum and Perle have advice for Americus domesticus as well. Speaking only for myself, I am hugely grateful for advice on how to run our country from a Canadian like Frum and a suspected agent of a foreign government like Perle. Their valuable counsel includes more centralized government interference in everyone’s lives, continued erosion of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights through enlightened courts and the insatiable state, and special attention to encouraging oncological growth of the state security apparatus. The book jacket says Frum was the "most influential thinker in the foreign-policy apparatus of the Administration of George W. Bush" and Perle is "the intellectual guru of the hard-line neoconservative movement in foreign policy." Pay attention, people!

Lastly, in case anyone missed it – world peace and security depends on the prevention of a Palestinian state. Period. In light of the hysterics evident in the promotional materials and the fact that I am already shaking in my boots, my advice is to simply submit to the whole shmiel. Ignore the illogic, suspend your disbelief, do what Perle and Frum say. Resistance is futile! You will adapt to service us. ...

... many Democrats are increasingly intrigued by the man behind Dr. Dean.

After a lifetime of long shots, including five failed presidential campaigns, Mr. Trippi is the political consultant of the season, having helped transform Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont, from an asterisk in the polls to the man to beat for the Democratic presidential nomination. Mr. Trippi has revolutionized use of the Internet for political organizing and fund-raising, while becoming a cult hero to some members of the C-Span set.

The Dean phenomenon is, undoubtedly, due to a synergy of man, moment and message, but people inside the campaign, rivals, independent analysts — even the candidate himself — agree it would not be happening without Mr. Trippi....

Isn't this about where we did not want to be at this point? While the Bush administration says things are going well in Iraq, the news from the American-led occupation is looking like a catalog of easily predictable, and widely predicted, pitfalls.

Frustrated by suicide bombings and guerrilla violence, American military officers resort to the kind of harsh tactics that have caused endless ill will in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict....

Former Vice President Al Gore's surprise endorsement of Gov. Howard Dean is definitely just what the Doctor ordered, giving him some extended "buzz," some nice joint appearances, and some serious street cred among political professionals and the chattering classes of Washington. Indeed, much of the Democratic establishment is rushing to crown Dean as the nominee.

But let's remember: nobody's voted yet. Dean's got a ways to go in persuading a majority of Democrats that he's the guy. And as the self-described "people-powered" candidate, he should be the last candidate around to want any sort of coronation by the Democratic establishment or the punditry, before the people have weighed in.

Moreover, Dean is a candidate who really does need some tempering through political competition. There are legitimate questions about his candidacy that need answering: Can he offer a positive vision for governing as well as a blistering critique of Bush? Can he persuade as well as energize? Is the excitement of his core supporters contagious to those swing voters that he has so often dismissed as irrelevant? Can the Dean campaign diversify, transcending its early origins as a sort of therapy group for upscale liberals? Will the candidate learn to take the cultural issues that many voters care passionately about more seriously? Can he become more self-disciplined in his off-the-cuff remarks, which are storing up treasure for Republicans in the fall? If the answers to these questions are negative, then it would be nice to know before Democrats entrust him with the tough challenge of trying to unseat George W. Bush.

And then there are the issues. Dean has rightly boasted of a fine centrist record as governor of Vermont, but his light-on-issues, heavy-on-anger presidential effort has borne little resemblance to that record. ....

Al Gore's endorsement confirms the status of Howard Dean as that rarest of animals in the jungle of presidential nominating politics: an insurgent front-runner. It gives him the legitimacy he has been seeking, but it also presents him with problems of self-definition....

... At each moment, he appears outspoken, blunt and honest. But over time he is incoherent and contradictory. He is, in short, a man unrooted. This gives him an amazing freshness and an exhilarating freedom.

... As more and more voters learn about Dr. Dean, they will inevitably ask who he is, what he believes and what events have shaped his views and character. Is he a liberal, as his passionate young supporters believe, and as his relentless criticism of the war in Iraq implies, who can flank primary opponents to the left? Or is he more of a centrist, as he said in the South over the weekend, who can appeal to general-election voting blocs that have seemed highly antagonistic to each other? What to make of his record in Vermont, where he combined liberalism on abortion with conservatism on gun control?...

Clinton's former White House chief of staff Panetta told The Washington Times that he was hearing growing concerns throughout the party "about Dean's ability to appeal to the entire country, particularly on national-security issues."

... Validation for the left: the winner of the 2000 popular vote endorses the anti-war, so-called “unelectable” candidate, and a Green could get elected mayor of San Francisco. Dean’s capture of his party’s third-biggest possible endorsement (after the former POTUS [bill clinton?] and FLOTUS [hillary clinton?] ) seriously ups his mojo... [but see quotes from an interview with bill clinton in a lower paragraph]

... The usually loquacious Sen. Hillary Clinton offered a stony, one-word answer when asked whether she agreed with her husband's once-loyal veep. "No," said Clinton.

Behind the scenes, observers said the frosty response had more to do with 2008 - when both Gore and Hillary Clinton are projected as potential presidential contenders - than current affairs.

Under this view, Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean yesterday was aimed at seizing long-term control of the Democratic Party, in part by gaining favor with front-runner Dean and his growing base of active, left-leaning Democrats.

That Gore chose to make his endorsement in Harlem - down the street from former President Bill Clinton's office - was just an added twist of the knife.

Dean stole center stage for this 90-minute, prime-time program on WMUR-TV hours before its 7 p.m. start.[Dean's] had such success building a national organization that even the establishment led by Gore is taking a second look at him because he has the best chance to win the nomination...

"This was not Al Gore taking a shot across [Sen.] Clinton's bow .... This was him putting one right into the solar plexus of both Clintons."

.... At a rally in [Columbia, South Carolina] which Dean received the endorsement of Greenville-born U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Illinois, perhaps no more than 20 blacks were in attendance, although a placard on the lectern declared, "African Americans for Dean."...

The crowd mystified Dick Harpootlian, the former state Democratic Party chairman who has long been involved in Columbia politics.

"I don't know who the hell they are, but Dean has energized a whole group of white people that I've not seen in politics before. If this is a beginning, this is a good beginning.

"If this is where he thinks he needs to be 60 days from now, he's in trouble," Harpootlian said, referring to the absence of party regulars, those most likely to work for a candidate and vote in the primary.

The day represented Dean's first trip to South Carolina since last spring, well before he vaulted into the lead in national polls. His previous visits, mostly to Columbia, attracted little attention....

... It is in South Carolina, [february 3, 2004] his Democratic rivals believe, where Dean's rise is most likely to be stopped. If Dean wins the opening contests in Iowa and New Hampshire but is slowed here and in Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico, which hold contests on the same day, a new front-runner could emerge...

Confederate flag fans

During Dean's afternoon address at a downtown Columbia hotel, at least two members of the audience were dressed in Confederate flag apparel. They said they were taking Dean up on his offer last month when he stated he wanted to be the candidate for "guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks."

"We should stick up for what we are," said Anthony Wallace, 27, a sign maker from Kershaw, S.C., wearing a large Confederate flag on his back.

Later, again trying to explain his flag remark, Dean told reporters, "You will never hear those words pass my lips again." He added, "I did it clumsily, I apologized for it, I don't ever plan to say it again."...

... Dean is described by supporters as obsessed with his nascent strategy to win southern states, realizing it could be a key to his success. In addition to planning to greatly outspend his rivals in several key southern media markets, Dean is aggressively courting black lawmakers and then prominently touting their support once they sign on. He is also spending more time than his rivals in key southern states.

In South Carolina on Sunday, Dean, who governed a mostly white state and surrounds himself with few minority aides, appeared with Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), the son of former presidential candidate Jesse L. Jackson. In several other recent appearances in the South, including Florida on Saturday, Dean has asked black lawmakers to introduce him. In virtually every speech he delivers, Dean accuses Bush of using "race-loaded" language when he talks about affirmative action, a concern to many blacks.

Rep. Jackson officially endorsed Dean on Sunday. "Today I'm endorsing Howard Dean because he desires to provide food for hungry men and women, jobs, education and health care, and to strike a blow to lift all Americans to a new economic plane and a higher moral plateau," Jackson said.

Rep. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott, a black Democrat from Virginia, endorsed Dean on Sunday, too. He became only the second southern Democratic member of Congress to publicly back Dean.

Solidifying black support in the South is a prudent primary strategy, rivals strategists say, but it is southern whites who hold the key to success in the region. Although far from a monolithic bloc, southern whites tend to be more culturally conservative than those from other regions and place a higher value on a politician's views on guns, gays and religion, according to surveys. The region has become increasingly Republican during the past three decades and a is major trouble spot for Democratic candidates.. .

Some Dean supporters privately say Dean's admonition for southerners to stop voting based on "guns, gays, God and school prayer" is offensive to many voters....

The Times of London [ a Murdoch paper] writes that the US is starting to "think the unthinkable," considering a "search for a 'strong man with a moustache' to stop the present rot." The paper writes that the Americans have adopted the old British strategy of "deal with local leaders and leave them to it," and that the only goal now is to "get out with dignity."

"This strategy is now being rammed down the throat of the Pentagon proconsul in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, by George W. Bush’s new 'realist' Deputy National Security Adviser, Bob Blackwill. He answers to Ms. Condoleezza Rice, not Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, and is the new boss of Iraq. The Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Paul Wolfowitz, architects of the old 'idealist' strategy, are in retreat. The Iraqi Governing Council, which Mr. Bremer reluctantly created, will be disbanded. Washington must find someone with whom it can do business, someone who can deliver order in return for power. That search is Mr. Blackwill’s job."

In another potential policy reversal, The Associated Press reports that Iraqi political parties and coalition authorities, are discussing the creation of a 1,000-member militia to bolster the US military's fight against a guerrilla insurgency. If created, the paramilitary battalion would represent a significant policy reversal by Washington. The US previously declared private militias illegal and called on Iraqi political leaders to disband the groups....

...As the guerrilla war against Iraqi insurgents intensifies, American soldiers have begun wrapping entire villages in barbed wire...[and] demolishing buildings thought to be used by Iraqi attackers.

They have begun imprisoning the relatives of suspected guerrillas, in hopes of pressing the insurgents to turn themselves in.

... The Americans embarked on their get-tough strategy in early November, goaded by what proved to be the deadliest month yet for American forces in Iraq, with 81 soldiers killed by hostile fire. The response they chose is beginning to echo the Israeli counterinsurgency campaign in the occupied territories.

So far, the new approach appears to be succeeding in diminishing the threat to American soldiers. But it appears to be coming at the cost of alienating many of the people the Americans are trying to win over....

... David Steinberg, 22, a Columbia University student, asked 12 local Democrats to gather their chairs in a circle. Steinberg proceeded to tell his story — of how he deferred law school to come here to work for Dean — and asked the others to "share a little bit."

For 90 minutes the rural New Hampshire residents talked about their political passions, their views of the presidential race, and, most of all, their thoughts and concerns about Dean.

... Steinberg followed with what the Dean campaign calls "the ask": recruiting people to offer their homes for another such meeting. Mr. Steinberg found no immediate takers, but no matter. He was booked with such sessions for the next five nights.

... the Dean campaign will, sometime this week, log its 1,000th neighborhood meeting like the one that took place here Sunday at the home of Jim and Polly Curran. These sessions are led not by the candidate, but by paid out-of-state coordinators trained by experts in community organizing.

The meetings are designed to create a foundation of supporters with an intense personal commitment to a candidate that political consultants say cannot be created with a television commercial and that will be resistant to attacks on Dean by his opponents.

This show of organizing prowess is a tribute to the past and a nod to the future. These are the same methods that were used to organize farm workers in California 25 years ago. Steinberg is one of 45 Dean coordinators trained by, among others, Marshall Ganz, a Harvard University sociologist who helped pioneer these methods in 16 years with the United Farm Workers.

Ganz : "The very first get-out-the-vote I learned to do from Cesar Chavez ... House meetings were the No. 1 organizing approach that we learned to use in the farm workers."...

The Wall Street Journal editorial page accuses Bush of a “Medicare fiasco” and a “Medicare giveaway.” Paul Weyrich, a coordinator of the conservative movement, sees “disappointment in a lot of quarters.” Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist with the National Center for Policy Analysis, pronounces himself “apoplectic". An article in the American Spectator calls Bush’s stewardship on spending “nonexistent,” while Steve Moore of the Club for Growth labels Bush a “champion big-spending president.”

Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation “The president isn’t showing leadership,” Riedl who calculates that federal spending per household is at a 60-year high. ... This has led federal spending to top $20,000 per household in today’s dollars for the first time since World War II — a jump of $4,000 in the past four years... “Conservatives are angry.”

When Representative Richard A. Gephardt accused President Bush this week of condoning a culture of corporate greed, he cast his criticism in distinctly moral tones. "We've lost ethics," he told voters at a pizzeria in Independence, Iowa. "We've lost a sense of right and wrong."

One day later, Gen. Wesley K. Clark told Democrats at a crowded synagogue in Florida that he would never allow Republicans to claim a monopoly on faith.

And all week long in New Hampshire, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut cast an array of policy proposals, like expanded access to health insurance and child care, as proof of his dedication to family values. "It's a basic commitment," he said, "a moral commitment that we should make to all of our families."...

"We went for years in the Democratic Party without recognizing God, and we pay a price for that," said Al From, chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist Democratic group.

Highlighting the urgency of the issue for Democrats, a random survey of 1,997 registered voters released this fall by the Pew Research Center found that 63 percent of voters who attended religious services more than once a week said they planned to vote for Mr. Bush next year. That compared with 37 percent who said they preferred a Democratic candidate. The margin is narrower among the larger group of voters who attend church once a week, with 56 percent planning to vote for Mr. Bush and 44 percent planning to vote for a Democrat....

...Claims that the news media form a vast liberal conspiracy strike me as utterly unconvincing, but there's one area where accusations of institutional bias have merit: nearly all of us in the news business are completely out of touch with a group that includes 46 percent of Americans. That's the proportion who described themselves in a Gallup poll in December as evangelical or born-again Christians. Evangelicals have moved from the fringe to the mainstream, and that is particularly evident in this administration.

It's impossible to understand President Bush without acknowledging the centrality of his faith. Indeed, there may be an element of messianic vision in the plan to invade Iraq and "remake" the Middle East.... Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago argues that America is now experiencing a fourth Great Awakening, like the religious revivals that have periodically swept America in the last 300 years. Yet offhand, I can't think of a single evangelical working for a major news organization. Evangelicals are increasingly important in every aspect of American culture. Among the best-selling books in America are Tim LaHaye's Christian "left behind" series about the apocalypse; about 50 million copies have been sold. One of America's most prominent television personalities is Benny Hinn, watched in 190 countries, but few of us have heard of him because he is an evangelist.

In what the Baltimore Sun bills "A presidential mystery []," President Bush is stopping today in Halethorpe, MD "but nobody seems to know why." Why would the President make such a sleepy town the focus of a visit? The answer: It has a Home Depot. Bush will make his speech on the economy on the floor of the town's Home Depot, standing next to CEO Robert Nardelli, who has close ties with this White House. Public Citizen reports the home improvement retail giant has donated $1.5 million to the Republican Party since 1999 and "during that time, no candidate has benefited from Home Depot's largesse more than Bush." For their contributions, they've reaped a massive payoff from the White House. The energy bill includes a $48 million tax break for the retailer, with a buried two-paragraph measure which "would lift a tariff on Chinese-made ceiling fans" the store sells. And the White House has many other close ties to the superstore. Former Bush Deputy Energy Secretary Francis Blake left the Administration to become executive vice president of Home Depot in 2001. Also, "the wife of Kent Knutson, Home Depot's top in-house lobbyist, formerly was a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. Karen Knutson served as deputy director of the National Energy Policy Development Group, better known as Cheney's secret energy task force. She left the administration last year to become a lobbyist."...

... WP columnist David Ignatius examines the danger of the falling dollar and what the U.S. needs to do to fix it. "The dollar is sinking these days on good news and bad, and the explanation is pretty simple: Investors around the world are worried that the Bush administration's policies are eroding the value of the U.S. currency. So they're rushing to unload greenbacks, in what could soon become a full-blown financial crisis" which could lead to increased interest rates and a depressed U.S. stock market." According to Ignatius, "To prevent a full-blown crisis, the administration must take prompt action. It should pledge to cut the deficit; it should stop playing politics with free trade; and it should signal that it will intervene in currency markets when necessary to protect the dollar's value. Those steps might convince global investors that somebody at the White House is at least minding the store."...

... Speaking by telephone from his hospital bed in Springfield, Ill., where he awaits open-heart surgery, former Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois endorsed Howard Dean's presidential campaign Thursday...

... I and a number of other wealthy Americans are contributing millions of dollars to grass-roots organizations engaged in the 2004 presidential election. We are deeply concerned with the direction in which the Bush administration is taking the United States and the world.

If Americans reject the president's policies at the polls, we can write off the Bush Doctrine as a temporary aberration and resume our rightful place in the world. If we endorse those policies, we shall have to live with the hostility of the world and endure a vicious cycle of escalating violence.

In this effort, I have committed $10 million to America Coming Together, a grass-roots get-out-the-vote operation, and $2.5 million to the MoveOn.org Voter Fund, a popular Internet advocacy group that is airing advertisements to highlight the administration's misdeeds. This is a pittance in comparison with money raised and spent by conservative groups. ...

... Two new Granite State surveys give former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean a 30-point lead over Kerry seven weeks from the first-in-the-nation primary - a bitter fall from the double-digit leads Kerry held in his backyard turf early this year. ...

... While Democratic and independent voters maintain a five to one margin in opposition to the general, Republican voters are evenly divided on this question. This is due to the fact that a majority of voters who define themselves as “born-again Christians” are supportive of Boykin, and this group comprises about one-fifth of Republican voters. This is a constituency that Bush must be wary of alienating.

To make this point clear, a recent article in The Los Angeles Times quoted Gary Bauer, a religious conservative leader who ran against Bush in the 2000 Republican primary contest, as saying: “Anything that looks like punishment or reprimand [of Boykin] will turn off, disappoint and demoralise an certain percentage of the president's base that he is going to desperately need a year from now.... I've heard nothing but outrage that General Boykin has been treated this way.” (This link leads to another fundamentalist posting, quoting Gary Bauer, that confirms Zogby's allegation about the religious right's position on Boykin." )

With religious fundamentalists holding key posts (for example, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Congressional Majority leader Tom DeLay), or playing important roles as supporters of the Republican administration, the Boykin controversy is even more problematic for Bush than the Trent Lott affair of2002 .

Compounding the dilemma that Boykin's comments have created for the White House is the fact that it has widened the rift between the Pentagon and the State Department. Boykin is not just any general. He is a highly regarded defence intelligence expert, a decorated member of the Special Forces, and now serves as Deputy Secretary of Defence for Intelligence. In this capacity, he oversees the US' efforts to find Osama Ben Laden and Saddam Hussein. As such, his Pentagon bosses are not inclined to remove or reassign Boykin. In fact, the best they are hoping for is that the entire matter is quickly forgotten. Therefore, to buy time, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld requested that the Department of Defence's inspector general “investigate” the general's comments...

...FDA COMMISH ACCEPTING DRUG INDUSTRY AWARD: Yesterday, it was revealed that the architect of the White House's Medicare bill,Tom Sc ully, was pursuing a job with the HMO and drug industries at the very same time he was pushing for passage of the legislation that gives billions to those industries. And now today, the non-profit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) reports that FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan will be accepting an "award" from the American Council on Science and Health - a front group for "food, drug and other companies" that gets its funding from "Abbott Laboratories, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Dow Corning, Kraft, Merck, Monsanto, NutraSweet Co., and Pfizer." The award is to be presented to McClellan by right-wing journalist John Stossel. CSPI's Michael F. Jacobson said the drug industry front group giving McClellan the award "seems to be raising money from corporations by peddling access to a government regulator." He said, "If Dr. McClellan would feel queasy about accepting an award from a drug company directly, he shouldn't accept one indirectly through ACSH—a deceptively packaged front group."

REIMPORTATION MALARKEY: It is possible that one of the reasons McClellan is getting the award is because of his tireless efforts to eliminate House- and Senate-approved provisions permitting the importation of FDA-approved prescription drugs from Canada – provisions the drug companies vigorously opposed. McClellan repeatedly tried to divert the debate away from highlighting lower prices in Canada (something the drug industry doesn't like) to health and safety, claiming that drugs from Canada were unsafe. He was joined by Sen. John Breaux (D-LA), one of the seven negotiators of the final Medicare bill who, combined, took $11 million from the health care industry since 2000. "I don't think it's prudent or safe" to import drugs, Breaux [ scroll down] said, in helping to strip out the provision. Of course, Knight-Ridder reports that, when pressed, "FDA officials can't name a single American who has been injured or killed by drugs bought from licensed Canadian pharmacies." Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-MN) recently questioned FDA officials about the number of Americans who have died after taking drugs shipped from Canada. "It's a nice round number - it's zero," said Gutknecht, questioning why people like McClellan, Breaux and others who have such problems with drug reimportation, have no problem with unrestricted importation of other goods like the tainted green onions from Mexico that caused an outbreak of hepatitis in western Pennsylvania.

... I had never worked for neocons before, and the philosophical journey to understand what they stood for was not a trip I wanted to take. But my conversations with coworkers and some of the people I was meeting in the office opened my eyes to something strange and fascinating. Those who had watched the transition from Clintonista to Bushite knew that something calculated had happened to NESA. Key personnel, long-time civilian professionals holding the important billets, had been replaced early in the transition....

...“National Democrats planning to launch their presidential nominee from the home state of the historic gay marriage decision either want to recast the issue as one of basic civil rights or to ignore gay marriage entirely during next summer’s convention” says the Boston Globe.
“In interviews this week, top Democrats were struggling with how to handle the gay marriage decision at next year’s convention, with the party’s chairman saying he would like to avoid what he called ‘wedge issues’ and to remain focused on the Democrats’ traditional message of the economy, jobs, and health care.”...

... That's what makes Brooks' defense of gay marriage so damaging for them. If they lose their social issues, what's left? Robbed of grand modifiers like "social" and "economic," the club is reduced to mere lobbyist status, like the NRA and AARP. The risk is that conservatism ceases to be a credible club at all, as in Canada and Britain.

Support for gay marriage is a big crack in the facade. Brooks' action not only undercuts their social agenda but deprives conservatives of an issue to use in next year's election. ...

... DAVID BROOKS: I support the decision. I'm for gay marriage. I'm for gay marriage; I not only think gays should be allowed to get married, I think they should be expected to get married and encouraged. We should consider it a disgrace if people fall in love and don't want to get married. Being conservative, I'm for marriage. Making a life long commitment worked for me and my character. Everyone should do it. I haven't told that to my daughter. She's only nine. The politics I think are tricky. I agree with Mark completely....

US companies are exporting millions of dollars worth of equipment known to be used for torture, including selling devices to 12 countries where the US State Department says that the use of torture is "persistent",....

In doing so, the administration of US President George W Bush, which approves the sales, is violating the spirit of its own export policy, adds the [Amnesty Intenational] report that was released on Tuesday. In 2002, US exports of electro-shock weapons and restraints that can be used for torture amounted to US$14.7 million and $4.4 million respectively, adds the 85-page report titled "The Pain Merchants"....

A three-year-old study by the London-based group found that torture has been reported in all but about 35 countries worldwide, and that there are more than 70 countries in which torture has been reported to be widespread or persistent.

In more than 80 countries, including the US, deaths have been reported as a result of torture. In the US case, for example, a man died after being "lasered" a dozen times - each time with a 50,000 volt shock - by deputy sheriffs in Florida.

Last year, the US Department of Commerce approved licenses for the export of discharge-type weapons - including electro-shock stun guns, shock batons and similar devices - to 45 countries, among them a large number where the State Department has reported the use of torture against detainees. Those countries include Bangladesh, Brazil, Ecuador, Ghana, Honduras, India, Jordan, Lebanon, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand and Venezuela. ...

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who has bashed the Washington establishment throughout his presidential campaign, is increasingly courting this city's lawmakers, lobbyists and political operatives to help cement his status as the man to beat for the Democratic nomination. While Dean has risen to the top of polls in Iowa, New Hampshire and other key states as the anti-Washington candidate, he is adjusting his campaign tactics to appeal to establishment Democrats who can help deliver the money, manpower and momentum he might need to wrap up the party's nomination, advisers say. ...

... None of the gatherings was planned or organized by campaign officials. Instead, the volunteers found each other through the "get local" section of Dean's Web site, where people can type in their ZIP code and find out about activities for Dean in their community. They can also suggest ideas and find other volunteers to help them carry out events....


"The campaign is really in the hands of these hundreds of thousands of people connected loosely in these local networks around the country," said Jonah Seiger, an Internet strategist and visiting professor at the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University. "It is not a traditional command-and-control campaign."...

President Bush a "liar?" Donald Rumsfeld a defense secretary who "betrayed" his troops? Republican leaders in Congress part of a "concerted effort to erase the 20th century?"

Not since Richard Nixon left the White House have liberals felt so free to be feisty. After decades of being shushed and shooed aside by centrist Democrats who feared the party's left-wing image was turning off voters, liberals have kicked their way out of the political closet. They are loud. They are angry. And they've got a whole new attitude....

Republicans had better worry. Angry people are motivated to get out to vote. If they can channel that anger into something constructive, they can literally upset the presidency.

...1. The Politics of Education

The last Bulletin cited an article by Jay Mathews that asked why Democratic presidential candidates were not spending much time talking about education. The national issue environment remains dominated by foreign policy and economic issues, as well as recent Congressional activity on Medicare and energy. Still, since Mathews' article, several candidates are talking more about education. Ironically though, this may turn out to be one of those cases of be careful what you wish for!

To be sure, many excellent ideas are being put forward. Several candidates have articulated proposals on early-childhood education and higher education that address real problems and would make good public policy. Unfortunately, on elementary and secondary education too many of the ideas are simply pandering with real potential to boomerang in the general election.

Recently, 100 African-American and Latino education and civic leaders called on elected officials to maintain support for No Child Left Behind. [Evidently the Bushies have chosen not to even adequately fund the program, supposedly one of the stars in Bush's Compassionate Conservatism crown. Regardless, NCLB seems to be such a cynical gesture toward strengthening education. Many of my friends think it is simply designed to gut public education as we know it. ] The letter they signed was organized by the Education Trust, hardly a bastion of right-wing sympathy. And, during the past two weeks a commentary by Ron Brownstein in the Los Angeles Times and a New York Times editorial make clear that for Democrats recapturing the education issue means doing more than simply bashing President Bush or mindlessly taking cues from the National Education Association. It means articulating a progressive reform-oriented agenda.

And make no mistake, this isn't a freebie issue. Education matters in the general election. Unlike such issues as gun control or abortion, few voters tell pollsters they would vote for or against a national candidate over education positions. However, education helps voters, particularly independent and moderate voters, form overall perceptions about candidates and make relative judgments between them. The president's advisors know this and make no secret of their strategy using education as an appeal to moderates.

The education issue is still very much a jump ball because of President Bush's apparent unwillingness to see education reform through once the photo-ops are over. NCLB alone is a weak policy intervention without a variety of supports. But, if the debate is NCLB versus no NCLB we'll never even get to have the policy or political debate about additional supports. And in the meantime President Bush will pick up some counter-intuitive validators and allies....

... In Thomas Friedman's November 30 New York Times column, he chides anti-war activists participating in a protest against George W. Bush's visit to London for not acknowledging the bombing of British targets in Istanbul that had occurred on the same day (11/21/03) just hours before.

"Sorry, but there is something morally obtuse about holding an antiwar rally on a day when your own people have been murdered-- and not even mentioning it or those who perpetrated it," Friedman wrote. The lack of acknowledgment of the Turkish bombings made Friedman "wonder whether George Bush had made the liberal left crazy."

Friedman appeared to base his analysis of the protest's message on a survey of signs carried by activists in the march; he complained that none that he saw made any reference to the killings in Istanbul. It is difficult, of course, to respond to a breaking news event on a handheld sheet of cardboard-- particularly since they are often painted the day before a march. If Friedman had actually listened to what the speakers at the rally had to say, however, he would have heard plenty of discussion of the day's violence.

Republican Party Chairman Ed Gillespie on Tuesday went to Vermont Howard Dean's home state for the first time and criticized the Democratic presidential candidate for his stance on the war, comments about military pay and refusal to open his records. ... "The fact that the Bush campaign is flying one of their top political operatives to attack Governor Dean in his hometown shows just how much they don't want to run against Governor Dean and his army of grassroots supporters," said Jay Carson, a spokesman for the former Vermont governor....

...Cementing Dean’s frontrunner status from the GOP side, Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie in Vermont tonight will challenge Dean to unseal the records, based on Dean’s “I’ll unseal mine if Bush unseals his” comment. Gillespie speaks at 7:00 pm at the Champlain Valley Exposition in Essex Junction. An RNC spokesperson says Gillespie will challenge Dean on policy at St. Anslem’s in New Hampshire Wednesday night, also at 7:00 pm...

... When right-wing/Fox News media mogul Rupert Murdoch says “jump,” it appears the Bush Administration and Congress say “how high?” After the FCC deregulated media ownership laws, conservatives and progressives banded together to pass legislation through both houses of Congress that would have rebuked the Bush Administration and the FCC, preserving the limit of 35% on how many viewers one giant media company can control. ...

Although they've been warning Americans about the dangers of prescription drugs from Canada for nearly a year, U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials can't name a single American who's been injured or killed by drugs bought from licensed Canadian pharmacies....

...But while most or all these arguments might be contributing to the administration's obstinacy, perhaps the most powerful one is the least discussed. Is it possible that the most compelling reason for the administration to retain control of the transition is its determination to build permanent military bases in Iraq, bases that it knows would under no circumstances be approved by veto-wielding potential strategic rivals on the UN Security Council, namely China, Russia and, according to some neo-conservatives, France. ...

... We are fighting two different wars today, against two very different enemies.

The first war , against international terror, was brought to our shores by the attacks of Sept. 11, and we had no choice but to respond aggressively, with every bit of power we could muster . The invasion of Afghanistan, the toppling of its Taliban government and the destruction of al-Qaida bases in that country were justified and necessary responses, and if anything should have been prosecuted even more aggressively than they were.

The war against Iraq , on the other hand, has been a war of choice , a war of opportunity launched by the Bush administration because the events of Sept. 11 gave it the cover to do so. If Iraq is now "the central front on the war on terror," it is because the Bush administration made it so by invading that country and threatening to turn it into the type of "failed nation" that produces terrorism ...

It is almost never wise to start a second war when the outcome of the first is still unsettled because you are inevitably forced to divide resources. With more than 100,000 troops and many billions of dollars committed to Iraq for years to come; with our limited Arabic-language intelligence assets now targeted at the Iraqi resistance, not at al-Qaida and its network; and with international support for our war on terror eroded by our high-handed invasion, we have committed the classic mistake of military overreach...

"Trying to eliminate Saddam... would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. . . . There was no viable `exit strategy' we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post–cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nation's mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land" ...

...The advertisement, which ran in Iowa this week and is to be broadcast in New Hampshire in December, portrays Mr. Bush in precisely the terms many White House aides have been trying to live down. For months, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, have been orchestrating speeches in which Mr. Bush affirms his faith in a strong United Nations and emphasizes how he is working with Asian and European nations to put diplomatic pressure on North Korea and Iran to disarm....

It was a rude awakening, then, when the foreign policy team returned to Washington last weekend and saw the political advertisement from the Republican National Committee, with its suggestion that voters call their Congressional representatives and "tell them to support the president's policy of pre-emptive self-defense."

"What was that all about?" one of Mr. Bush's senior aides asked after returning from Britain, where the president took his appeal for collaborative action against common enemies to new heights. Saying the advertisement ignored Mr. Bush's recent series of speeches, the official complained, "Don't these guys read the papers?"

In fact, what both the White House and the Republican National Committee wandered into was the gulf between George Bush the president and George Bush the candidate for re-election. Just shy of 12 months from Election Day, Mr. Bush's political team and his foreign policy team are emphasizing opposite messages, leading one senior State Department official to say this week, in exasperation, "Karl Rove ought to learn that any ad he broadcasts in Iowa gets rebroadcast in Italy."...