Outgoing U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan traveled to the Harry Truman Library yesterday to deliver his valedictory. It was yet another sanctimonious broadside against the Bush administration.
Ho hum.
As Truman himself once said, in a different context: "That's plain hokum. If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em: It's an old political trick."
What Truman would say today about Annan himself, and the organization he has headed for the past 10 years, can only be imagined.
But it would be, in a word, colorful.
Annan, who leaves office in 19 days, said he chose the Truman Library in order to pay tribute to his "far-sighted American leadership in a great global endeavor" - and to draw a distinction with the current president.
He noted that Truman "insisted, when faced with aggression by North Korea against the South in 1950, on bringing the issue to the United Nations" - in contrast to the Bush administration on Iraq.
This turns history on its head a bit: Truman could do so only because the Soviet Union was then boycotting the Security Council - and thus couldn't veto the authorization of military force against North Korea.
Nowadays, the United Nations can't, or won't, move swiftly no matter what the emergency - witness the continued genocide in Darfur.
Annan also appeared never to have heard of the Truman Doctrine, as defined by the then-president: "It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."
Wise and courageous words - uttered in the same spirit that animated President Bush to act in Iraq, when Kofi Annan's United Nations refused to do so.
Just as Annan & Co. even now refuse to act on the nuclear ambitions of such rogue regimes as Iran and North Korea.
Frankly, it's no secret why Annan prefers to bash President Bush rather than focus on his own sorry tenure in office.
As secretary-general, Annan presided over Oil-for-Food, perhaps the biggest financial scandal in history - and in which his own son was involved.
He presided over yet another financial scandal, involving the U.N.'s procurement office. There was even a drug-smuggling ring operating out of his mailroom. His efforts at reforming the world body's basic infrastructure - particularly when it comes to human rights - were exposed as ludicrous, at best.
On an equally bizarre note, Annan yesterday proclaimed that all of the U.N.'s member nations "solemnly accepted" the "shared responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity." Guess Darfur didn't count because that was only a "ethnicity-driven conflict" (his words not mine.)
Clearly, Annan hopes to confuse his listeners by ignoring the real problems facing the United Nations - and to evade his proper share of the blame for its descent into a cesspool of corruption and incompetence.
Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) yesterday said it best: Under Annan, the United Nations has become notorious for the "near-absence of standards of decency for the thuggish regimes that are too often empowered by its antiquated rules and procedures."
That Annan chose instead to bash the United States, added Hyde, was "completely predictable."
Harry Truman, certainly, understood the noble principles on which the United Nations was founded six decades ago.
Kofi Annan, during his tenure, betrayed them time and time again.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
You can't find this in the New York Times
From the Cato Institute:
Opponents of trade liberalization have sought to indict free trade and trade agreements by painting a grim picture of the economic state of American workers and households. They claim that real wages have been stagnant or declining as millions of higher-paying middle-class jobs are lost to imports. But the reality for a broad swath of American workers and households is far different and more benign.
Contrary to public perceptions:
Trade has had no discernible, negative effect on the number of jobs in the U.S. economy. Our economy today is at full employment, with 16.5 million more people working than a decade ago.
Trade accounts for only about 3 percent of dislocated workers.Technology and other domestic factors displace far more workers than does trade.
Average real compensation per hour paid to American workers, which includes benefits as well as wages, has increased by 22 percent in the past decade.
Median household income in the United States is 6 percent higher in real dollars than it was a decade ago at a comparable point in the previous business cycle. Middle-class households have been moving up the income ladder, not down.
The net loss of 3.3 million manufacturing jobs in the past decade has been overwhelmed by a net gain of 11.6 million jobs in sectors where the average wage is higher than in manufacturing. Two-thirds of the net new jobs created since 1997 are in sectors where workers earn more than in manufacturing.
The median net worth of U.S. households jumped by almost one-third between 1995 and 2004, from $70,800 to $93,100.
The large majority of Americans, including the typical middle-class family, is measurably better off today after a decade of healthy trade expansion.
Contrary to public perceptions:
Trade has had no discernible, negative effect on the number of jobs in the U.S. economy. Our economy today is at full employment, with 16.5 million more people working than a decade ago.
Trade accounts for only about 3 percent of dislocated workers.Technology and other domestic factors displace far more workers than does trade.
Average real compensation per hour paid to American workers, which includes benefits as well as wages, has increased by 22 percent in the past decade.
Median household income in the United States is 6 percent higher in real dollars than it was a decade ago at a comparable point in the previous business cycle. Middle-class households have been moving up the income ladder, not down.
The net loss of 3.3 million manufacturing jobs in the past decade has been overwhelmed by a net gain of 11.6 million jobs in sectors where the average wage is higher than in manufacturing. Two-thirds of the net new jobs created since 1997 are in sectors where workers earn more than in manufacturing.
The median net worth of U.S. households jumped by almost one-third between 1995 and 2004, from $70,800 to $93,100.
The large majority of Americans, including the typical middle-class family, is measurably better off today after a decade of healthy trade expansion.
Sadly, you won't read this real news in the New York Times, they prefer to focus on impeaching Bush and delivering Democrat propaganda.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
It's Never Really Correct.
With the release of the new intelligence estimate debunking the claim that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, the CIA is earning laurels from lefty loons everywhere (Nancy Pelosi I'm looking at you) for puncturing the Bush Administration’s alarms about Tehran’s intentions. But is its new report really any more reliable than its original 2005 estimate, which declared that Iran was marching briskly towards attaining nuclear status? A look at the history of CIA estimates suggests that caution is in order. While estimates are only that—not, as is sometimes assumed, ironclad statements—and the difficulties of assessing clandestine programs are obvious, in no area has American intelligence gotten it wrong more often than when it comes to assessing foreign powers’ nuclear prowess.
The CIA’s first blunder established the pattern. In 1946, the CIA’s Office of Reports and Estimates confidently predicted that Stalin’s Soviet Union was years away from producing a bomb: “It is probable that the capability of the USSR to develop weapons based on atomic energy will be limited to the possible development of an atomic bomb to the stage of production at some time between 1950 and 1953. On this assumption, a quantity of such bombs could be produced and stockpiled by 1956.” On August 24, 1949, the office again declared that Stalin would most likely not be able to field an atomic bomb until mid-1953. Five days later, the Soviet Union conducted its first atomic test.
The Office of Reports and Estimates was supposed to prevent a repetition of the blunders and failure to organize intelligence that occurred before Pearl Harbor. Instead, its egregious mistakes, including failing to predict the beginning of the Korean War, meant that it was abolished in 1950. According to CIA historian Donald P. Steury, “it had been the object of repeated investigations, all of which condemned its failures without reservation.”
In the 1950s, the CIA also failed to anticipate how quickly the Soviet Union would detonate a hydrogen bomb. It began to reverse course, perhaps partly as a result of these embarrassments. Where it had previously downplayed Soviet progress, the agency now exaggerated it. Aware that the Soviets were tapping into the expertise of captured German scientists, the CIA concluded that a missile gap existed between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev had claimed, in the wake of the 1957 Sputnik success, that the USSR was producing missiles “like sausages.” The CIA took him at his word. According to Sidney Graybeal, who was a CIA analyst at the time, “the estimates were based on capabilities rather than hard facts.” They were also wrong. After John F. Kennedy became president, satellite photography revealed not only that there wasn’t a missile gap, but that the U.S. was far ahead in the arms race, one reason that the Soviets backed down during the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
A new round of contention erupted in the mid-1970s. Neoconservatives, led by Albert Wohlstetter, Richard Pipes and other members of the Committee on the Present Danger, charged that the CIA was tailoring its estimates on behalf of détente and soft-pedaling the size of the Soviet missile force. The famous Team B that challenged the CIA’s Team A charged, in what critics later claimed was an anticipation of the bogus claims made in the run-up to the Gulf War, that the USSR was on the march and that the CIA was all wet. Who got it right? In retrospect, the hawks wildly exaggerated the power and coherence of the Soviet Union, but it does seem clear that the Soviet Union was pouring vastly more resources into the military than the CIA had realized. (In addition, the CIA had rather amusingly concluded in the 1970s that East Germany was one of the top ten economies in the world. It remains an economic basket-case today.)
If the CIA had difficulties judging the Soviet Union, it also badly bungled its assessment of another country’s capabilities. In the 1950s, Israel’s Shimon Peres began dickering with France to obtain nuclear technology. In order to weaken Egypt, then supporting an anti-French insurgency in Algeria, Paris began helping Israel develop nuclear technology. It took the CIA until 1960 to realize that Israel was building a bomb in Dimona. John F. Kennedy successfully pressured Ben-Gurion into allowing a team of Americans to inspect the facility there, but they saw what they wanted to see, being unable to find any evidence that it was something other than a peaceful project. The CIA report on the failure to identify the Dimona project earlier has a familiar ring. It stated: "The general feeling that Israel could not achieve this capability without outside aid from the U.S. or its allies . . . led to the tendency to discount rumors of Israeli reactor construction and French collaboration in the nuclear weapons area."
Then there was India. In 1998 New Delhi conducted three nuclear tests. Once again, the CIA was caught napping. According to the May 18, 1998 Washington Post, “six hours before the tests, no CIA warning was issued because the U.S. analysts responsible for tracking the Indian nuclear program had not expected the tests and were not on alert.” Congress was apoplectic. “Our failure to detect this shows that India did a good job of concealing their intentions, while we did a dreadfully inadequate job of detecting those intentions", said Senator Richard Shelby, then chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence. In response, the CIA could only state the obvious: "It is apparent that the Indians went to some lengths to conceal their activities and intentions.”
Is it that surprising, then, that the intelligence community has found Iraq and Iran to be so vexing? When it came to Iraq, American intelligence agencies radically underestimated the progress that Saddam Hussein had made before the first Gulf War toward a nuclear bomb. This was one of the reasons that it then reversed course before the second Gulf War, furnishing the Bush Administration with what it wanted in the National Intelligence Estimate released in 2003. That document infamously declared, “We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.”
Now, in the midst of President Bush’s mutterings about a possible World War III with Tehran, the CIA has performed a somersault on Iran. Opponents of bombing Iran have seized on the latest estimate to discredit Bush, while neoconservatives like Norman Podhoretz splutter that it represents a dastardly CIA plot to undermine Bush. Neoconservative distaste for the CIA is longstanding. It has been voiced by Laurie Mylroie, who believes that Saddam Hussein was behind the first bombing of the World Trade Center; David Frum and Richard Perle, in their book “An End to Evil”, present the CIA as a subversive institution intent on sabotaging the fight against terrorism. In a sense, such inanities signal that neoconservatism, which started out as a Trotskyist movement vociferously opposed to American government institutions, has now come full circle.
Neither the boosters of the new report nor its detractors really have it right. The rapidity with which the CIA has reversed course on Iran should itself induce circumspection. Dealing with Iran diplomatically may well be the best option, but the latest intelligence report shouldn’t serve as the final verdict on its nuclear intentions. Deciding how best to deal with Iran cannot rest on a single estimate that likely represents guesswork and inferences more than verifiable information.
The CIA’s first blunder established the pattern. In 1946, the CIA’s Office of Reports and Estimates confidently predicted that Stalin’s Soviet Union was years away from producing a bomb: “It is probable that the capability of the USSR to develop weapons based on atomic energy will be limited to the possible development of an atomic bomb to the stage of production at some time between 1950 and 1953. On this assumption, a quantity of such bombs could be produced and stockpiled by 1956.” On August 24, 1949, the office again declared that Stalin would most likely not be able to field an atomic bomb until mid-1953. Five days later, the Soviet Union conducted its first atomic test.
The Office of Reports and Estimates was supposed to prevent a repetition of the blunders and failure to organize intelligence that occurred before Pearl Harbor. Instead, its egregious mistakes, including failing to predict the beginning of the Korean War, meant that it was abolished in 1950. According to CIA historian Donald P. Steury, “it had been the object of repeated investigations, all of which condemned its failures without reservation.”
In the 1950s, the CIA also failed to anticipate how quickly the Soviet Union would detonate a hydrogen bomb. It began to reverse course, perhaps partly as a result of these embarrassments. Where it had previously downplayed Soviet progress, the agency now exaggerated it. Aware that the Soviets were tapping into the expertise of captured German scientists, the CIA concluded that a missile gap existed between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev had claimed, in the wake of the 1957 Sputnik success, that the USSR was producing missiles “like sausages.” The CIA took him at his word. According to Sidney Graybeal, who was a CIA analyst at the time, “the estimates were based on capabilities rather than hard facts.” They were also wrong. After John F. Kennedy became president, satellite photography revealed not only that there wasn’t a missile gap, but that the U.S. was far ahead in the arms race, one reason that the Soviets backed down during the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
A new round of contention erupted in the mid-1970s. Neoconservatives, led by Albert Wohlstetter, Richard Pipes and other members of the Committee on the Present Danger, charged that the CIA was tailoring its estimates on behalf of détente and soft-pedaling the size of the Soviet missile force. The famous Team B that challenged the CIA’s Team A charged, in what critics later claimed was an anticipation of the bogus claims made in the run-up to the Gulf War, that the USSR was on the march and that the CIA was all wet. Who got it right? In retrospect, the hawks wildly exaggerated the power and coherence of the Soviet Union, but it does seem clear that the Soviet Union was pouring vastly more resources into the military than the CIA had realized. (In addition, the CIA had rather amusingly concluded in the 1970s that East Germany was one of the top ten economies in the world. It remains an economic basket-case today.)
If the CIA had difficulties judging the Soviet Union, it also badly bungled its assessment of another country’s capabilities. In the 1950s, Israel’s Shimon Peres began dickering with France to obtain nuclear technology. In order to weaken Egypt, then supporting an anti-French insurgency in Algeria, Paris began helping Israel develop nuclear technology. It took the CIA until 1960 to realize that Israel was building a bomb in Dimona. John F. Kennedy successfully pressured Ben-Gurion into allowing a team of Americans to inspect the facility there, but they saw what they wanted to see, being unable to find any evidence that it was something other than a peaceful project. The CIA report on the failure to identify the Dimona project earlier has a familiar ring. It stated: "The general feeling that Israel could not achieve this capability without outside aid from the U.S. or its allies . . . led to the tendency to discount rumors of Israeli reactor construction and French collaboration in the nuclear weapons area."
Then there was India. In 1998 New Delhi conducted three nuclear tests. Once again, the CIA was caught napping. According to the May 18, 1998 Washington Post, “six hours before the tests, no CIA warning was issued because the U.S. analysts responsible for tracking the Indian nuclear program had not expected the tests and were not on alert.” Congress was apoplectic. “Our failure to detect this shows that India did a good job of concealing their intentions, while we did a dreadfully inadequate job of detecting those intentions", said Senator Richard Shelby, then chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence. In response, the CIA could only state the obvious: "It is apparent that the Indians went to some lengths to conceal their activities and intentions.”
Is it that surprising, then, that the intelligence community has found Iraq and Iran to be so vexing? When it came to Iraq, American intelligence agencies radically underestimated the progress that Saddam Hussein had made before the first Gulf War toward a nuclear bomb. This was one of the reasons that it then reversed course before the second Gulf War, furnishing the Bush Administration with what it wanted in the National Intelligence Estimate released in 2003. That document infamously declared, “We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.”
Now, in the midst of President Bush’s mutterings about a possible World War III with Tehran, the CIA has performed a somersault on Iran. Opponents of bombing Iran have seized on the latest estimate to discredit Bush, while neoconservatives like Norman Podhoretz splutter that it represents a dastardly CIA plot to undermine Bush. Neoconservative distaste for the CIA is longstanding. It has been voiced by Laurie Mylroie, who believes that Saddam Hussein was behind the first bombing of the World Trade Center; David Frum and Richard Perle, in their book “An End to Evil”, present the CIA as a subversive institution intent on sabotaging the fight against terrorism. In a sense, such inanities signal that neoconservatism, which started out as a Trotskyist movement vociferously opposed to American government institutions, has now come full circle.
Neither the boosters of the new report nor its detractors really have it right. The rapidity with which the CIA has reversed course on Iran should itself induce circumspection. Dealing with Iran diplomatically may well be the best option, but the latest intelligence report shouldn’t serve as the final verdict on its nuclear intentions. Deciding how best to deal with Iran cannot rest on a single estimate that likely represents guesswork and inferences more than verifiable information.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Elections, Russian Style
Yesterday's elections ended in a landslide victory for Vladimir "Shorter Stalin" Putin. This is no shock, but it does allow an observer to take away a few key points about how to win an election.
1. Arrest your opponents.
If the people running against you are in jail, they can't win. Putin knows this and ordered the Russian army to arrest one time chess champion and opposition leader, Gary Kasparov.
2. Convince other parties not to run.
When the only serious opponant to you is a commie, and the other serious political parties are endorsing you for fear of being labeled "terrorists," you have an increased chance of winning.
3. Just plain lie.
I'm not talking lie like the way Bill "Ladies Man" Clinton tells people he's always been against the Iraq War when in fact he told a magazine he was for the war. I'm talking lying in the tradition of bizzare UFO conspiracy people, Putin told people that he has recieved visions from God telling him to run, and that the United States is a "devil country... that seeks to destory our great nation."
4. Kill Opponants.
This is the big one. Hitler knew this, Saddam knew this, Nero knew this, and now Putin knows it because he ordered the G.R.U. to poison a key opposition candidate.
1. Arrest your opponents.
If the people running against you are in jail, they can't win. Putin knows this and ordered the Russian army to arrest one time chess champion and opposition leader, Gary Kasparov.
2. Convince other parties not to run.
When the only serious opponant to you is a commie, and the other serious political parties are endorsing you for fear of being labeled "terrorists," you have an increased chance of winning.
3. Just plain lie.
I'm not talking lie like the way Bill "Ladies Man" Clinton tells people he's always been against the Iraq War when in fact he told a magazine he was for the war. I'm talking lying in the tradition of bizzare UFO conspiracy people, Putin told people that he has recieved visions from God telling him to run, and that the United States is a "devil country... that seeks to destory our great nation."
4. Kill Opponants.
This is the big one. Hitler knew this, Saddam knew this, Nero knew this, and now Putin knows it because he ordered the G.R.U. to poison a key opposition candidate.
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