IN THE FEDERALIST PAPERS NO. 68, ALEXANDER HAMILTON writing as Publius defends the Electoral College. Hamilton wrote: "A small number of persons, selected by thir fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations." In other words, don't let the mob rule.

Like the New York Times has recommended in its editorial, "Abolish the Electoral College," I agree that since "the majority does not rule and every vote is not equal," the Electoral College is an anachronism that should be abandoned.

However, Americans have lost three valuable years in this debate following the contested victory of President Bush in 2000, when a U.S. president again won the White House without winning a majority of the vote. Yes, I know, the Supreme Court helped. But nonetheless, America went to sleep after this debacle and should have begun to dismantle the Electoral College then.

In August, when the Democrats were outperforming Bush in projected electoral college tabulations, there was virtually no coverage of this topic. Now, Bush is pulling ahead in some states, and the Democrats (and New York Times editorial page) are calling for the undemocratic Electoral College system to be scrapped.

I agree with the effort, but this should have been part of the Democratic Party's efforts to broaden and deepen its voter base after 2000. Democrats should have made the case three years ago that the Electoral College was no longer assuring civilized, anti-mob rule but was rather undermining democracy and empowering shrewd political strategists (i.e., Karl Rove) that were gaming the system and establishing a national political machine.

I blame myself as well because I thought after 2000 that the Electoral College disenfranchised the active participation of millions of voters in this national political process. If one resided in what are considered "safe states" in one candidate's column or the other, then those citizens' votes were pretty much disregarded and candidates didn't even try to connect with those people. This would not be true if there were direct elections for the president. We all should have tried to use our political weight in this town to move this issue when there was time to get something done.

Last night, while watching the Convention, there was some post-Giuliani discussion on CNN with the New York Times' Sam Roberts who bluntly said that the Republicans were trying to suppress the black vote in Florida. He said that everyone, Democrat and Republican, in Forida political circles would say "off the record" that the black vote in Florida was Democrat and thus had to be choked.

This revival of poll tax type strategies in the South is directly caused by Electoral College politics. If those black voters and voters throughout the nation were voting directly for the president, there would be a lot less interest in stripping suspected felons off of voting rosters.

Remove the borders between our voters. This is something the Democratic Party should passionately embrace -- whether or not John Kerry wins this election.

And if the Democrats don't do it, it could very well be the next trick in the Republican Party's sleeve to look like a 21st century populist party. I know that if I were Rove, I'd go for aboloshing the Electoral College. . .right after this election.

If you want to see an interesting site that tracks political polls and translates them into likely Electoral College outcomes, see www.electoral-vote.com. I can't vouch for its accuracy -- and the battleground states clearly flip a lot as Kerry has been leading Bush recently on this site. Today, those states in Bush's corner or leaning that way have him at 280 electoral votes, with Kerry at 242. However, the August 30th report had Kerry at 249 and Bush at 232.

-- Steve Clemons

I USED TO THINK THAT SEBASTIAN MALLABY WAS A MANIC NEOLIBERAL. I have always respected the former Economist magazine writer and thinker who now writes as an editorial writer at the Washington Post, but much of his writing years ago was so heavily on the go-go globalization side that I wondered whether he ever thought seriously about the costs and adjustments, and real train wrecks in some societies, associated with high speed neoliberal style globalization.

I was wrong because Sebastian Mallaby -- and his wife the talented and thoughtful top U.S. economics correspondent, Zanny Minton Beddoes -- have emerged as two important writers who can write about neoliberalism while not suspending conscience or political rationality. Mallaby is out there with Harvard's Dani Rodrik arguing that we need to get the developing nation problem right -- and that whether it is more enlightened drug policies or finally removing anachronistic farm subsidies -- failing to think about the "welfare to work" road map in Congo will eventually undermine globalization.

Beddoes, as well, while a believer in the net economic benefits of outsourcing of jobs focuses a great deal on the burdens faced by those who carry the burden for outsourcing and thinks that the Bush administration has simply failed to implement policies that help retrain and rehire displaced workers.

Today, Mallaby poses "The Character Question" about George Bush in his op-ed in the Washington Post and asks the question of whether Bush is all attitude and boldness combined with intellectual laziness and ignorance -- or whether he is fundamentally duplicitous and a liar. These words are mine -- but the article poses roughly this set of questions.

Mallaby writes:

This weakness (sometimes defending positions that have no intellectual basis) is most commonly associated with this war in Iraq -- a radical policy that has backfired on him. Even if you accept the case for war, the way Bush has argued it raises fundamental character issues. Why did he claim links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein despite the lack of evidence? Had he failed to absorb the facts, or was he being plain dishonest?

Why did he allow the postwar planning to be so scandalously poor? Could he not be bothered to cross-examine the officials who were drawing up plans that would determine his standing in history? Bush appears to have been deaf to the chorus of outside experts who warned that nation-building would be difficult. Doesn't this illustrate a lazy lack of curiosity about how bold ideas will play out in the real world? Doesn't this raise doubts about Bush's fitness to be President?

Believe me, Sebastian Mallaby is as tough on John Kerry in the pages of the Post. As in his critique of Kerry, Mallaby pulls no punches on the questions that should be posed to Bush and those of his team in power.

Questions are important and legitimate. Why are so many of our nation's best journalists failing to pose the kinds of questions Mallaby is posing?

Why didn't anyone ask James Shlesinger if he would resign over the Abu Ghraib mess if he were in Rumsfeld's shoes?

Why isn't anyone asking Senator Joe Lieberman why he is mixing his name and reputation with James Woolsey who is making financial profits off of the Iraq War.

Why isn't anyone asking our former chief spy James Woolsey whether he feels guilty for serving as the lawyer for Ahmed Chalabi who now seems at the nexus of an intelligence investigation involving BOTH Israel and Iran? John Le Carre must love this.

I got goose bumps reading Mallaby's hit on the Bush tax cuts. He writes:

The clearest illustration of this inflexibility (not acknowledging mistakes) is not Iraq. It is the central plank of the economic agenda: the tax cuts. These were conceived when the economy was booming and huge budget surpluses were expected, but when the boom turned inito bust, Bush showed no ability to course-correct. Almost unbelievably, Bush not only rammed through the huge tax cut he had promised in the campaign: He cut taxes again in 2002 and a third time in 2003. Even now he seems ready to sign an appalling pork-ridden corporate tax reduction. . .

Again, this is not just a policy issue; it goes to Bush's character. How can he push such a dramatic shift in economic policy without grappling with the basic point that his cuts are unaffordable?

. . .Bush fails to understand that his policies are unsustainable, or perhaps he understands but refuses to say so. In other words he is either ignorant or dishonest: Neither suggests that he deserves the trust of the electorate.

Sebastian Mallaby, and his former Economist magazine colleagues Zanny Minton Beddoes, Adrian Wooldridge, John Micklethwait, John Parker -- and there are probably others on staff there -- are all the sort of writers who are biased towards a "kinder, gentler" conservatism and kind of soft neoliberalism. They are the kind of center-right commentators that if Fox News were fair and balanced they would be using. I know that many of my progressive friends despise the Economist magazine -- but these folks are everything that I would hope from serious thinkers in both moderate Republican and moderate Democrat circles.

Bill Emmott, editor of the Economist and an old friend who used to be Tokyo Bureau Chief for the magazine, and his editors were big supporters of the Iraq War. They did not have unanimity in their circle -- but the fact is that the Economist ate crow, for the most part, and admitted their failures of perspective and reporting this last year. I give them credit for that.

But mostly -- though he is no longer at the Economist -- Sebastian Mallaby deserves kudos for having the guts to pose exactly the right questions about Bush's continual resistance of empirical reality -- "Is he either ignorant or dishonest."

Congratulations Sebastian Mallaby -- for reacquainting us with our backbone and political conscience.

-- Steve Clemons

THE WASHINGTON POST IS TAKING NOMINATIONS for the best political blogs. Obviously, I think that Josh Marshall's www.TalkingPointsMemo.com ought to sweep the categories, but I think that there may be a couple of sections that www.TheWashingtonNote.com might be competitive in.

Also, Matthew Yglesias and a great number of brilliant bloggers are out there whom you might want to nominate. Did you know that if you Google just the name "Matthew" the first item that comes up is not Matthew the Apostle -- but rather Matthew Yglesias' blog.

If you are so inclined to look into this, the nominations end at noon on September 3rd, about a week away. Then voting for those nominated will begin on September 27th. Only the top five nominated sites in each category will be eligible to be voted on.

The link for more information is: www.washingtonpost.com/bestblogs

-- Steve Clemons

THE POST'S BRADLEY GRAHAM AND THOMAS RICKS also finger Pentagon staffer Larry Franklin (confirmed to me by two sources as well) as the FBI's spy probe target in an article today.

About Franklin and his background, they write:

The name of the person under investigation was not officially released, but two sources identified him as Larry Franklin. He was described as a desk officer in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia Bureau, one of six regional policy sections. Franklin worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency before moving to the Pentagon's policy branch three years ago and is nearing retirement, the officials said. Franklin could not be located for comment last night.

There is a great deal we do not know about this case -- and a lot will become clear when and if Franklin is formally charged with a crime.

One thing that needs to be sorted out was whether this alleged spy was a spy of ideology and conscience, or a spy for money.

If the allegations are true, was the spy passing on information that he himself thought might be useful to Israel? Or did Israel solicit this spy for a roster of wanted information?

Also, if the allegations against Larry Franklin turn out to be true on any of these fronts, one has to wonder whether there was some odd "double agent" things going on. Franklin worked closely with Douglas Feith and Harold Rhode, both movement neoconservatives embedded in the Pentagon and both strong advocates of Ahmed Chalabi. In fact, the official address of Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress was also the address of Doug Feith's former law firm.

If Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress intelligence chief were a sieve to Iran, as seems to have been the case when Chalabi allegedly tipped off Iran that the U.S. had broken its codes, could Feith's office have both been feeding intelligence to Israel and Iran at the same time? Was Israel trying to use Franklin and Chalabi to get intelligence from Iran, and the tip about the codes was a confidence building gesture?

It's strange when reality is so much more dramatic than fiction -- but this may be one of those cases. What is clear is that Douglas Feith, No. 3 in the Pentagon, had a cesspool of intelligence intrigue swirling in, around, and through his office -- and he still has his job.

Lurking through much of this is Michael Ledeen, about whom we will be writing more later.

-- Steve Clemons

A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE GOING TO BE ASKING ABOUT LARRY FRANKLIN in the next few days. Josh Marshall has been working on a related story for a long time and will be offering a lot on this -- so do check what he says about this when he posts.

However, I have spoken this morning to someone this morning who has confirmed what CBS, CNN's David Ensor, and Knight Ridder's Warren Strobel and John Walcott have reported.

No one seems to want to mention names yet, but what has been reported is that the alleged high level "mole" working for Israeli interests worked for Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's No. 3 official. The 'person of interest' is "a veteran of the Defense Intelligence Agency who moved to the Pentagon's policy branch three years ago and had been nearing retirement," according to the Washington Post.

The FBI is apparently investigating not only the flow of high level secrets from this individual to Israel, possibly through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, but also meetings with and sensitive information passed on to Ahmed Chalabi and Manucher Ghorbanifar -- which AEI scholar and Iran-Contra player Michael Ledeen helped set up.

I have to be a bit careful here because Josh Marshall is sitting on a ton of information that he needs to get out, but he is working with other people and news bureaus and has to handle some protocol.

What I have shared above comes from news reports on the web -- the bulk of which I have just confirmed with sources of my own in the government.

As this story was breaking last night, one person instantly recognized the possibility that Larry Franklin, who participated with Harold Rhode in a secret meeting with Ghorbanifar, might be the target of the investigation.

I do not have confirmation that Larry Franklin has been fingered -- but I was informed that Larry Franklin's profile does in fact closely match the profile of the individual under investigation.

In fact, I was strongly encouraged that this might be the right track to follow. We should hear more today.

I just got a call from another source who finally confirmed for me that Larry Franklin is the target of the investigation.

This is going to open a big can of worms -- and hopefully get the nation back into asking big questions about the Iraq War and how we got into it rather than refighting Vietnam.

-- Steve Clemons

TWO YEARS AGO, LE MEMORIAL DE CAEN INVITED ME TO DEBATE RICHARD PERLE on the conduct and direction of U.S. foreign policy at a star-studded event attended by about 4,000 people. The entire meeting was terrific, and on another day I will share some of the juicier moments of the exchange.

However, today is my birthday and I want to keep today's commentary somewhat festive.

One of the other speakers at this assembly in Caen, France was former Polish President Lech Walesa, with whom I had a two hour lunch discussion via a very busy interpreter. Walesa didn't need much prompting to share his views on anything, but at some point, I needed to ask him something that might prove worth his attention.

So, I asked him who among the many U.S. presidents he met did he like and appreciate the most. He paused and went silent for quite a long time and then pounced on this question, replying that as he thought about it, he was of a mixed mind.

Walesa liked Ronald Reagan the best. He trusted Reagan; they joked a lot and traded bad jokes. He thought George H.W. Bush honorable but less compelling than Reagan. But then his face crinkled up and said that Bill Clinton used to make him crazy, making him wait forever in a holding room. He said that Clinton wouldn't waste the time meeting until all of the media and camera crews were in the room, and then as soon as the cameras were rolling, Clinton came alive and the show began. Clinton taught Walesa that what really mattered when they met and pushed big issues was how the world was seeing the meeting -- and that depended on the performances before the camera.

Walesa said that though Clinton could be frustrating, he learned the most from him, particularly about the politics of communication.

This is all leading somewhere. Somehow, and I am not sure how, I have been receiving internal emails from Department of Homeland Security staff that I don't think I should have received. Clearly, after this posting, I'm going to be cut off. I've called a lawyer and don't think I can be tossed in jail for posting what I am about to share with you.

Besides, what I am going to post is a cool thing to know -- rather than something devious or dark. And frankly, if I were helping to run one of the units at the Department of Homeland Security, I'd be thinking about movie and television branding too.

To cut to the chase, various officials at Customs & Border Protection at the Department of Homeland Security are worried that Heather Locklear and NBC's new show (scheduled to premiere on September 13th), LAX, will feature border control authorities in the wrong uniforms with the wrong patches, and so on.

Does anyone think that the premiere date coming just two days after 9/11 is just coincidental?

NBC's promo blurb for the show reads:

Television favorites Heather Locklear and Blair Underwood are teamed as intense rivals in this dramatic series centered in a world unto itself: a major international airport. Security breaches, terrorist threats, illegal immigrants, missing children, drug busts -- when it comes to stories to tell, well, the sky's the limit. Each week will feature compelling dramas, from chance encounters to surprise reunions to the ongoing power struggles and romantic misadventures between the people who keep LAX running smoothly.

Clearly, lots of intense homeland security action and terrorist tension are planned each week if the show makes the cut -- which is all a great opportunity for DHS Customs and Border Protection personnel to get some good branding and air time on commercial television.

Again, nothing cosmic follows in these three emails -- and reportedly, the show's producers have promised everything under the sun (short of compromising artistic license) to make sure that DHS/CBP is happy with the image of CBP officers generated in the show.

I have censored certain names to protect the innocent and those who may have inadvertently sent this to me. Email number one reads:

Subject: 'LAX' - NBC series

XXX (initials removed)

Email number two follows:

We don't want to endorse the show. we want the pubic, however, to know that we are the unified border agency for the U.S. We need to be careful here.

XXX (name removed),
Please advise on any "landmines" here re our conversation with the show.

The final email I am probably going to receive on this reads:

I think it is extremely important that we work with them to get our agency right. I got a strong feeling that they will work with us if we are cooperative...anyway..branding a new agency is difficult enough without having a television show watched by millions as unbranding us by calling us something different and making us look different..xxx (name removed)

This clearly isn't a major national security item, but I think it does provide some insight into the marketing concerns and priorities of evolving government agencies which know that they will be depicted in entertainment shows.

Heather Locklear assures that this will get some attention.

And who knows -- maybe some of the folks on the email list I have will end up advising the show like former Clinton White House National Economic Advisor Gene Sperling does for The West Wing.

-- Steve Clemons

DID YOU KNOW THAT REP. RANDY "DUKE" CUNNINGHAM (R-CA-50) was an official attendee at the scandalous 1991 Tailhook Association Meeting in Las Vegas? I had no idea that this repugnant ideologue in the House of Representatives was part of that misogynist mess.

I just received a powerful and very informed email from Chalmers Johnson, author of the best-selling books Blowback: The Costs and Consequence of American Empire and Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic, that does a great job exposing the seediness of this member of Congress. Chalmers is supporting a Democratic Party challenger who lives in Cardiff, California -- Francine Busby.

The entire email is too long to post, but I'd be happy to forward to any interested parties. Just send me a note at steve@steveclemons.com, and I'll send it off.

I should add that I am not opposed to all Republicans -- just those who don't believe in the Enlightenment. I really like moderate Republicans and have been a supporter and advisor to the Republican Main Street Partnership, which Amo Houghton (R-NY-29) founded. But moderate Republicans are currently an endangered species, regrettably.

Here is an excerpt of Chalmers Johnson's email:

Cunningham's most famous naval exploit occurred after he had left the Navy and was a freshman Congressman. In 1991, Cunningham was a member of the board of directors of the Tailhook Association, a private group of active duty, reserve, and retired Navy and Marine Corps aviators, defense contractors, and their supporters. (The name 'tailhook' comes from the device that halts aircraft when they land on aircraft carriers.)

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune of March 11, 1998, he referred to such efforts as "B.S." and "political correctness." In 1998, Cunningham insulted his fellow congressman Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, who is openly gay, causing Frank to reply that "Cunningham seems to be more obsessed with homosexuality than most homosexuals."

Earlier today I encouraged the media to ask James Schlesinger not whether Rumsfeld should be fired -- but rather would Schlesinger himself resign from the Defense Secretary job if he were in Rumsfeld's shoes?

If personal integrity won't move Rumsfeld to do what is right -- then both the media and Congress need to compel him to do so.

But guys like Duke Cunningham (and Tom Delay) have warped the system of checks and balances that so many during our long history have fought to establish and preserve.

How can a guy who thinks Tailhook was just all good fun be counted on to responsibly legislate or investigate matters related to Abu Ghraib. If a House Member cannot be part of an accountability action plan in the U.S. government, then he or she needs to be voted out.

Check out Busby and send her some support if you can. Most of Cunningham's financial support comes not from his constituents but from DC and New York -- whereas Busby's comes from those she hopes to represent in Cardiff, Rancho Santa Fe and the San Diego metro region.

Maybe some folks reading this can balance out Cunningham's Northeast Corridor fundraising advantage.

-- Steve Clemons

"ABUSE REPORT WIDENS SCOPE OF CULPABILITY" blares over the full top page of the Washington Post this morning. One of the subtitles reads "Generals Point to Contractors, Military Intelligence Soldiers."

The author, Josh White, writes:

Gen. Paul J. Kern, Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones and Maj. Gen. George R. Fay flatly reported that they had found "serious misconduct and loss of moral values" in the ranks of Abu Ghraib and explained that abuse occurred both in the chaos of the military police-run nightshift and also during official interrogations by military intelligence soldiers. Tactics employed by military intelligence set the stage for a subsequent escalation of maltreatment."

What these generals are saying is that they do not accept responsibility for being in charge or for establishing the values system operating in the prison.

It's hard for me to believe that any of those of the 372nd Military Police Academy could be responsible for establishing the norms and rules of handling prisoners; nor were they in command. They followed others, be they professional intelligence extractors of the 202nd Military Intelligence Battalion, other CIA officials, and apparently some military officers. Those being tried for prison abuse and torture are small time compared to those really responsible.

The Schlesinger Report goes a long way in at least speaking about the importance of accountability -- but then disappoints when it gets to its punch line. Donald Rumsfeld was the overlord of this entire operation and meddled in the rules for managing detainees. I cannot understand why both Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner and former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger pull their punches when it comes to the real issue at hand: Rumsfeld failed to manage his responsibilities well and presided over a climate that led to the humiliation and torture of people in custody. I happen to know Schlesinger, not well but well enough to know that he would be resigning now if he had Rumsfeld's job.

All of the reporters are asking Warner, Schlesinger, and others if Rumsfeld 'should' resign. The better question I hope reporters ask Schlesinger next time (or today??) is "Would you resign if you were Secretary of Defense and this had happened during your watch?"

What I dislike about the report and the coverage of it is that it deals with the detention abuses at Abu Ghraib and other facilities as isolated from fundamentally deeper questions about military values and culture. I realize that this is a complicated subject for many, particularly those who believe that the core values embedded in military organization and service are those to which society should aspire. I grew up as a military dependent and am familiar with the positive and negative aspects of military life.

One of the things I learned when growing up in a military household is that enlisted men and officers, and their families, are inculcated to a great degree "to not make waves," to not challenge authority, to just go along with what is instructed and expected. This creates a climate where those at the top set the rules and norms, and those in lower ranks either contribute to the values architecture promulgated from above, or they drop out of the system and are often harassed for resisting and not going along.

Abu Ghraib is a small blip on a long list of military culture questions I have.

In July 1999, Private First Class Barry Winchell, stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was murdered by two soldiers who thought he was gay. An investigation later found that Winchell had endured taunts for four months prior to this murder. The Commanding Officer of that installation, Major General Robert Clark, was nonetheless promoted and not found responsible for the behavior of his troops or for presiding while a hateful atmosphere thrived under his watch.

Why are the generals not in charge? These incidents do differ in some ways, but they are similar in the sense that generals in both circumstances are denying responsibility -- when they are in fact paid by taxpayers to be those responsibly charged with important duties.

During the Nazification of Germany, there were numerous German generals who tried to maintain their charges and follow their duties as they believed them to be. They were often demoted, transferred, imprisoned, or shot if they crossed instructions coming from informal authorities in the SS, which were loyal to Hitler rather than to the military's command structure.

I am not implying that our military system is being Nazified, but I think it is legitimate to question why responsibility and accountability seem to be disappearing from the historical code of conduct and honor of the military forces and the civilian leadership that manages them. Why aren't the generals responsible when those beneath them do bad things? Why isn't the president responsible when his Defense Secretary fails to take responsibility for the military he is managing?

Remember the rape scandal and cover-up at the U.S. Air Force Academy? Or the rape of a 12 year old girl in Okinawa by three U.S. military troops? In that case, the presiding Admiral in charge, Richard Macke, at least apologized. Remember Tailhook?

I am not anti-military and was proud of my own father's service in the Air Force. However, when I lived overseas (in particular), I never could quite understand why the military police -- which was often harassing us high school students -- turned a blind eye to prostitution, public drunkenness, rapes, and petty crime that servicemen would engage in along "the strip" near the air base where we lived. I soon learned that these "strips" existed around nearly every U.S. military base abroad, at least in Asia -- and I saw them at Yokota Air Base near Tokyo, around the bases in Okinawa; and also South Korea, the Philippines, and Guam. Our military police were complicit with the host nation's military police in "managing" the rebelliousness of 18 and 19 year old (and often older) troops and keeping most of the problems hidden -- short of murder and really violent rapes.

The Schlesinger Report does not delve into the bigger question of what has gone wrong in military culture where evil things occur but those in charge aren't held accountable. There is something wrong in a "don't make waves" military culture where so few feel empowered to blow the whistle on abuses. Even Joseph M. Darby, the young reservist who blew the whistle on Abu Ghraib is now in military protective custody because of death threats.

In the future, the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate as a whole -- when considering senior Pentagon appointments -- needs to inquire of those they are charging with important responsibilities whether or not they will readily accept responsibility for the failures as well as the successes of people and institutions under their command.

That is clearly not happening today.

-- Steve Clemons

AS IF THE COSTS OF THE IRAQ WAR WEREN'T HIGH ENOUGH, the battle over a new roster of permanent UN Security Council members may add to the tally. Some of America's allies see their cooperation with America in Iraq as enhancing their bona fides for possible permanent Security Council membership.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has said that he will announce his campaign to secure a permanent seat for Japan at a speech before the UN next month. Germany is working hard at this too.

What is disturbing is that Sylvio Berlusconi is lobbying President Bush to make sure that if Germany is added, Italy gets its place too. Since Italy and Japan have both sent forces to Iraq, they hope to capitalize quid pro quo on support from Bush to make their way towards a coveted permanent Security Council membership.

I am not a specialist on UN reform, but it seems to me that global governance schemes ought to rank above petty sentimentalism about who stood with America, or not, in a single controversial war. If this Pandora's box is opened, the final Security Council membership list will be decided through a brutal consensus-building process, but America should support those nations that give it the most long term leverage in building trusted and stable regional centers of power.

I can easily contain my enthusiasm for the United Nations, where pretension outstrips competence and credibility far more regularly than in Washington -- as bad as it has been there lately. The world is better off with the United Nations, however, with the U.S. straddling both engagement with the UN as well as willing to pursue its interests independent of the UN when necessary.

Long term, I can envision Japan's permanent membership -- if it somehow comes to terms with its historical amnesia in a manner that is not just a function of American pressure. Otherwise, a more empowered Japan remains too destabilizing in the Asia Pacific region. But for many other reasons, Japan's membership makes sense.

China and Russia are already in the club, but the obvious missing candidates are Brazil and India -- regional powerhouse nations whom America needs to cultivate to help maintain stability in their respective spheres.

Europe, though, is the biggest impediment to reform. France and the UK already have memberships; and other European nations float on and off the non-permanent roster of Security Council members. Germany arguably belongs if one is considering current nation states because of its economic weight, population size, and its heavy contributions in men, materials and money to international stabilization projects. If Italy were to succeed in maneuvering a seat if Germany is added, and there are no other forfeitures of position, then Europe would have four permanent seats.

Poland and eventually Turkey would feel that if Italy made a revised membership cut, then they too should be added.

I am sure that others have much better ideas than me on how to reform the Security Council, but Europe (old and new) needs to pull the plug on its own anachronisms and step up to the plate to propose a single European seat in a revised Security Council.

Besides Europe and the United States, China and Russia should keep their seats. Brazil and India need to be there too. South Africa should be considered. There are probably others like Turkey, Iran, Nigeria and Indonesia that should one day be considered, but in my view, not for many years and not until they become more stable democracies committed to regional and global stability.

Japan is a real toss-up case. It has a powerful military and huge economy, but at this point -- it behaves too much like a supplicant of the United States -- which means that its behavior when less tethered to America is harder to predict.

I'm of a mixed mind on Japan, but very clear-headed on the importance of all European nations sharing a single permanent Security Council seat. It's time for Europe to decide that it is indeed Europe.

To help promote global stability, America will need responsible centers of power around the world, allies or occasional collaborators, to help achieve this objective. Having the world's obvious regional superpowers at the table is not a celebration of the UN as an institution but good common sense furthering U.S. national interests.

-- Steve Clemons

STILL NOT ABLE TO GET ON LINE HERE IN LONDON, but I have had an interesting week, some of which is worth reporting. . .discreetly.

First of all, the British are overall not pleased with Bush or the U.S. One of my well-placed government friends commented that while many Europeans regretted earlier episodes of fanatical anti-Americanism and were swinging back towards a "collaborative spirit" with the U.S., the opposite is unfolding in Britain.

Whereas the UK stood by President Bush and the U.S. in the Iraq War and many felt that the special relationship with America required Britain to take that stand, even in a bad war, polls show that the British really detest Bush. Apparently, polling is showing that, over time, this anger at the American president is morphing into full-fledged anti-Americanism.

My friends -- who are pretty close to Tony Blair though don't speak for him -- worry that the re-election of George W. Bush will dramatically energize these currents of anti-Americanism and significantly harm this important relationship.

Tony Blair was in Tuscany vacationing these last several days but stayed close to his staff on national security matters. The British have lost three military staff in Basra these last several weeks -- after not having had any killed for several months (in dramatic contrast with the U.S.) -- and are seriously worried that the conflict in Najaf could incite Shia sympathy and insurgency throughout Iraq.

Several senior officials repeated the same fear that this stand-off between Iraqi national guardsmen (guided and backed by U.S. military detachments) and Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has all of the ingredients of a "Middle East Waco." They fear that any assault by the Iraqi National Guard and U.S. troops could trigger al-Sadr to blow up the Najaf Shrine, making it look like the U.S. did it.

As I am currently on a plane back to Washington, I have no idea whether there has been further action in Najaf, but many in Blair's world are worried that the price of being America's most dependable ally is becoming very high.

Working through these themes, my colleague Michael Lind has a thoughtful op-ed in the 23 August Financial Times, "The Atlantic is Becoming Even Wider" in which he argues that while America and Britain are converging in a lot of cosmetic ways, geo-strategically, they are set on divergent courses. Lind, like Charles Kupchan, and many others believe that the forces driving a wedge in the transatlantic UK-US relationship are fundamental and not sensitive to a personality switch in the White House.

However, many over in London see Kerry as the only potential relief on the horizon who might set the special relationship back on some positive course.

One of the interesting observations shared by another government friend is that those in British circles most sympathetic to neoconservative thinking are those who want the UK to preserve full British sovereignty and avoid further entanglement in what they see as the mess evolving in Europe. Those most opposed to neocons support the European project and think that the best way for the UK to maintain influence is to become a greater part of the rule-writing and management process evolving in Brussels.

While the British don't really have neoconservatives, their British nationalists have made common cause with our neocons. Strangely, those Brits who want John Kerry to be the next president are those most committed to a strong Europe and to a demotion of the American relationship.

The UK-US relationship is clearly headed for greater complexity. I'm going to need to call Andrew Sullivan when I get back.

-- Steve Clemons

REMEMBER WHEN GEORGE SOROS BET AGAINST THE BRITISH POUND and raked in more than one billion dollars for his efforts? I do. I was in London at that time, and the currency was going through the floor.

Although the pound is much higher against the U.S. dollar today than it was at that time (when holding dollars in my pocket felt good), I bet Soros is placing wagers not only against George Bush but that the dollar is going to sink to even lower levels.

I'm at the Starbucks on Victoria Street, not far from the Houses of Parliament. I don't see any political celebrities here like I saw recently at the Starbucks near the White House. They seem to hang out at pub down the street. In fact, I think that the EU's successor trade minister to Pascal Lamy, Britain's Peter Mandelson may be down at the Red Lion Pub trying to convince members of the House of Commons that he won't become too European in his new job.

Starbucks is just beginning to get T-Mobile wifi installed at its European locations -- but service is spotty. The pub barristas (ok, bartenders), like at the Red Lion, get pretty addled if you ask for wireless while ordering a pint. I am having a very difficult time getting on line here, mostly because of a computer problem, so I may have to upload these posts when I return to Washington.

A cup of venti size coffee of the day at Starbucks at Connecticut and R Streets in Dupont Circle in Washington costs $1.87. Here in London, a venti coffee is 1.75 pounds, which is approximately $3.50. Shockingly, a gallon of gas is about $7.00 a gallon here, about 75% of which goes to the national treasury. And if one drives a car into central London -- just driving through -- the charge, or congestion tax as it is called, is 5 pounds a day, or roughly $10.00.

Tokyo used to seem expensive to me -- but now seems like a dream destination compared to the prices in London. Last year, Tokyo's central bank spent nearly $200 billion buying dollars and dumping yen to keep the dollar from drastically dropping in relative value and crippling the ability of Americans to buy Japanese exports. My guess from my experience thus far in London is that Britain's central bankers meddle less in markets (other than gas consumption and car useage) and did not worry about the dollar's fall.

During the 80s and 90s, America's current account deficit as a percentage of GDP basically wavered between 2.5% and 3.25%, but recently, the current account deficit has surged to nearly 5% of GDP and is projected to rise to about 6% in the near term. Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf has written some superb commentary regarding America's worsening macroeconomic conditions, and sensibly argued that "the high and rising U.S. current account deficit is one of the most remarkable features of the world economy."

I have never worried that much about the absolute dollar value of the current account deficit -- but when GDP ratios begin changing quickly over short time spans -- I get concerned. Wolf agrees that deciding whether this current account deficit surge matters or not "is of some significance."

An array of structural imbalances in the American economy is making America feel like a richer nation than it is. U.S. savings levels have reached all-time lows. America is exporting the least in memory in comparison to that which it imports. And as Martin Wolf writes, "foreigners are now funding close to three-quarters of net U.S. investment." In commentary that Wolf offered a week ago (on August 18th), he writes "unless trends change, 10 years from now the U.S. will have fiscal debt and external liabilities that are both over 100 per cent of GDP. It will have lost control over its economic fate."

Despite this worrisome data, Japan and China continue to finance America's current account gluttony to keep U.S. consumers intoxicated on their exports. At some point, however, the only way out of America's dysfunctional binge is that it consumes less or exports more; that it buys down debt and external liabilities by working harder without near term rewards because these rewards were enjoyed yesterday and paid for through a mortgage. At minimum, when accounts revert to historical trendlines, American living standards will certainly flounder but more likely fall.

I'm getting a glimpse of what this will feel like as I spend two dollars here on every British pound.

President Bush's Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, N. Gregory Mankiw, is duking out the real state of the economy with President Clinton's former Chair of the same Council, Laura D'Andrea Tyson, who is here in London as Dean of the London Business School. In the International Herald Tribune (and perhaps the New York Times which I haven't seen -- just found it and link is here), Mankiw reports that Tyson has said that this is "the worst economic recovery period in terms off job creation that the nation has experienced since the Great Depression."

Read the article if you would like to learn more about the job creation debate. Tyson, it seems to me, is talking about job levels as compared to the unusually low level of unemployment since the period of Clinton's second term whereas Mankiw is arguing that today's unemployment rate of 5.5% is the same as 1996 when Clinton was running for a second term, arguably an easier goal post for the Bush administration to compete with than the very best unemployment rates achieved during Clinton's tenure.

But back to exchange rates and current account deficits. When one gets hit in the pocket book with the macro realities of a U.S. economy that will purchase less from abroad because the value of the dollar is sinking in real terms against most other economies, it's clear that Americans will be compelled at some point to work harder (though they are arguably among the hardest working when compared to other OECD countries) but receive fewer returns for their labor so as to offset foreign liabilities.

Since the Chinese yuan has been fixed to the dollar, and the Japanese have been manipulating their currency's market value with massive government intervention, we have not felt the high price of world purchases across our consumer sector. But if America hopes to have any manufacturing or services industry left (in the long run), the Chinese are going to have to float their currency. The Japanese are going to have to stop overdosing on dollar purchases.

And the price of nearly everything from abroad will rise for Americans, thus correcting some of the excesses manifested in our surging current account deficit.

Mankiw doesn't address this fundamental reality. There is not only anxiety out there about job and retirement security -- but there is some sense that people are beginning to notice that America is becoming a less rich nation. With oil now hitting $50 a barrel (well, $49.40 as of the time of this writing), how can Mankiw and his boss, President Bush, think that they can get away with the headline that ran here: "The U.S. Economy is Strong and Getting Stronger."

What is their definition of a weaker economy? Would they know it if they saw it?

-- Steve Clemons

I AM IN LONDON FOR A FEW DAYS, meeting people and sorting out to what degree the American foreign policy debate is the U.K.'s as well. I just spoke to a friend, who will remain unnamed, in circles close to Tony Blair. He likes the blog (!), and I asked if there was some sort of neocon civil war going on over here as well.

His response basically was that they "were having a civil war, but without the neocons."

I will be writing more these next several days about what an enlightened and compelling foreign policy vision for the U.S. might look like. In fact, I am working on a New America Foundation foreign policy program funding proposal in which pieces of this effort may prominently figure, so I'll look forward to any thoughtful responses.

In the mean time, I would like to share an email that I received from a distinguished journalist that mirrors a lot of my own thinking about how America's failure to implement early on a stakeholder scheme for Iraqi citizens has dramatically enhanced the instability rampant there today.

He discusses the insurrection in Sadr city in the context of Douglas MacArthur's management of the Japan Occupation, something close to a piece I wrote some time ago in the New York Times that suggested that an Alaska Permanent Fund model for managing Iraq's oil might help tie Iraqi citizens closer to the success of their next government and make them less cynical about American intentions (of course, a lot of our performance deserves such cynicism).

He writes:

I am watching the development of the Sadr rebellion in Iraq with alarm. This is a classic case of an originally warm reception of American troops gone horribly sour.

Actually, army units in combat, since they are concerned about their own security and because of the nature of Americans, tend to try to help local communities in order to find friends therein, but this has to receive a powerful push from the center and given top priority from the very start of the occupation, and not be left up to the discretion of individual units. . .

These are hindsight comments that nonetheless seem important to me, particularly if America has any plans to stay in the nation building business, which I think we do.

More from London soon.

-- Steve Clemons

RON ASMUS HAS AN INTERESTING OP-ED IN THE WASHINGTON POST today. Early in his article, he writes:

The president proposes something that generations of U.S. diplomats and soldiers fought to prevent and that our adversaries sought unsuccessfully to achieve: radical reduction of U.S. political and military influence on the European and Asian continents. The Bush message, delivered at a campaign rally, also smells of political opportunism. Under pressure but unable to withdraw troops from Iraq, the president has instead reached for what his advisers hope is the next best thing politically -- a pledge to bring the boys home from Europe and Asia.

I buy what Asmus writes about Bush's political opportunism, but that doesn't change the fact that when the president raises any issue during an election season that the best strategy is to endorse bad policy. Europe is fixed. Those troops should be directed to new roles, and the increasingly competent Europeans should become more responsible for their parochial and regional security.

There is no reason why this development must be perceived to be a net negative in transatlantic relations. In fact, greater European military capacity and competency partnered with American capabilities and objectives elsewhere may make the world a more stable place.

The "generations of soldiers and diplomats" that Ron Asmus is referring to were fighting the Cold War. Today, we are dealing with two sorts of threats. The first is the long term concern of a peer competitor (perhaps China) or a league of other countries arising to balance or challenge American power in the world. The second is a blurred threat from transnational terrorist networks. Both of these sets of challenges require a re-ordering and new calibration of America's base assets overseas.

Asmus and others -- including many who wrote to me yesterday -- argue that this election season is no time to discuss foreign policy and basing issues. Some have written that our allies are being undermined yet again by unilateral pronouncements by the Bush administration that were not informed by strategic coordination with allies.

This may be true -- but I have several responses. First, America's global deployment strategy is anachronistic and has been for a long time. A smart strategy would consider what kinds of force structure and assets the United States would prefer to maintain abroad as the so-called "revolution in military affairs" evolves. I have long assumed that naval and air assets seem to be quite important for maintaining power projection capacity abroad. On the other hand, the utility of the manpower part of the equation has diminishing returns over time -- particularly when American transportion capacity of troops to hot spots all over the world is so robust and makes the home base siting of these troops irrelevant.

With regard to my long debate with colleagues and friends over U.S. bases in Okinawa who tended to skew the debate towards a shallow and simple-minded, hegelian choice between keeping all U.S. troops there now or removing everything America has on that island, there are many other preferable choices. America should remove and negotiate away those parts of its oversease base structure which carry high costs (including the costs of eroding local support)and which have diminishing utility to American security needs in the future. The Marines on Okinawa fit this equation in my view.

Secondly, we should have started this discussion during Bill Clinton's tenure and didn't. I had hoped that when Bill Clinton and the G8 leaders were driven around Okinawa for the 1998 G8 Leaders Summite and saw U.S. military installations in every nook and cranny of that island that there might have been some enlightened consideration of this after the summit.

Thirdly, we should have seen a foreshock of this debate years ago when then Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen instigated hot debates in South Korea, Quatar, and Saudi Arabia by modifying the rhetoric by which we referred to our bases in these respective countries. In South Korea, Cohen (perhaps inadvertently) caused an uproar and student protests by arguing that U.S. bases would remain permanently in Korea even after a reunification of the South and North. Perhaps this is logical -- but this strategic commitment was made without consultations with the U.S. Congress or with our ally, South Korea.

In Saudi Arabia and Qater, Cohen stopped referring to our bases in the region as "temporary bases," and instead called them "semi-permanent bases." After watching several years of civil protest in Okinawa, Japan; also seeing a lot of local frustration around American bases in South Korea; and then watching the normally docile press organs of Saudi Arabia and Qatar convulse over Cohen's comments, I began to see that America just didn't have a good sense of how potentially destablizing its base deployments could be, particularly when the original rationale for the bases had been eroded over long periods of time.

I don't particularly like criticizing my progressive friends on this issue, but their own critiques of Bush would be enhanced if they got out of the mindset that ALL U.S. assets abroad are useful and began to build into their arguments the importance of doing new deals with host nation citizens to resecure support of American troops if we are going to keep them there.

Bush's motivations are wrong -- I agree. But can't Democrats embarrass him on the merits of the argument and then put a better global engagement strategy on the table?

-- Steve Clemons

CNN'S LOU DOBBS IS REPORTING ON THINK TANKS each night this week. He is looking at which tanks are most influential and why -- as well as looking at the question of whether non-transparent funding is inappropriately using think tanks to push various agendas. His show is called "Thought Leaders."

I know that Gary Schmitt of the Project for the New American Century will appear tonight as he had signed in at CNN for his interview shortly before I got there. Despite many intellectual and policy differences I have with PNAC, the organization's influence has been enormous -- and despite Bill Kristol getting a lot of cash from Rupert Murdoch to help float The Weekly Standard, the Project for the New American Century started with a small staff, mostly volunteer, a fax machine, and a bunch of like-minded policy intellectuals who were paid by other institutions. Many don't like PNAC -- but the model they have used is impressive, and many should learn from it in my view.

But I will also be on tonight, 6 p.m. eastern, in case any are interested in this subject.

-- Steve Clemons

WESLEY CLARK AND RICHARD HOLBROOKE ARE MAKING A MISTAKE in their criticism of President Bush's military realignment plan. Clark went the farthest in a DNC arranged conference call, by saying that the proposal "will significantly undermine U.S. national security." All of a sudden, leading national security democrats are becoming base-huggers, and this is bad for the Democratic Party and country.

There are more than 750 U.S. military installations outside of the United States -- and many of these are anachronistic remnants from the Cold War. Many in Europe and Japan are just not necessary any longer, and many underestimate the negative impacts that long term U.S. bases can have on local host populations.

Bush's own proposal is confused and has many wrong-headed points, particularly in focusing on troop withdrawals from South Korea when in fact we should be focused on scaling down our presence in Japan, particularly by withdrawing the 3rd Marine Division from Okinawa -- and consolidating those functions into Guam, Hawaii, or San Diego. Japan, despite a well-known anti-war clause (Article 9) in its constitution, spends more on military armaments and defense than any other nation in the world except the United States. It even beats China for the time being.

But the U.S. has maintained bases in Japan since 1945, and many Japanese argue that to some degree America's occupation of Japan (which officially ended in 1952; and ended in 1972 in Okinawa) never fully ended because of the continued presence of about 47,000 U.S. troops there.

In 1995, then Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Joseph Nye launched what came to be known as the "Nye Initiative," which was to reassure allies in Asia and Europe that America would not draw down troops beyond roughly 100,000 in each region. This shocked many in Japan, and particularly Okinawa, a small island, which hosts more than 80% of the entire American troop presence in 39 separate military facilities there. Okinawans, and particularly then Governor Masahide Ota, had wanted the U.S. presence on Okinawa to shrink because the Americans simply occupied too much of the available land and air space on the island. Until just a few years ago, the U.S. military controlled 85% of the air space around Okinawa.

Things began to change, slightly, after the brutal rape of a 12-year old school girl by three American servicemen. The largest civil protests in Japan against the U.S. presence since 1960 were ignited by this incident and other crimes by American military personnel -- and America agreed to a set of base reduction commitments that have gone significantly unfulfilled.

One of the worst grievances that Okinawans have with American bases is the controversial Futenma Air Station, a Marine facility located in the middle of Ginowan City near Naha, Okinawa. I have been to this base -- and the congestion of overcrowded urbanization surrounding this air installation is quite remarkable. The noise which the Okinawans complain about is no joke. I could not speak with or hear my guides while standing on a small hill overlooking the installation -- and the chance of accidents by helicopters or other aircraft is huge -- and this just happened this last week on August 13th when a Marine helicopter crashed into Okinawa International University.

The point is that there have been numerous high quality analyses that the 3rd Marine Division ought to be moved off of Okinawa -- and even Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Japan desk National Security Council advisor to the President Michael Green, and even Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz intimated that such flexibility with regard to the Marines should be pursued in the so-called "Armitage Report," which was published just before the 2000 election. I will link both the report and my own critique of it, but the point remains that these policy hands signed on to a strategy that pointed to the importance of Japan being at the forefront of some serious realignment.

Instead, it seems that Bush's team has mostly avoided Japan; and to the degree that realignment is being discussed, they are proposing that base functions from some Okinawa installations be moved into Japan's main islands. This will make local populations on Honshu and elsewhere explode as they worked for decades to get the U.S. military largely moved off of the main islands of Japan and squeezed down into Okinawa. These kinds of discussions only further the sense that many in Japan have that the country is not really sovereign and is in fact a subordinate to rather than a partner of the United States.

When bases are established abroad, there may be very understandable rationale for those basing decisions -- which both host nation and the U.S. understand. But over time, that rationale erodes. Over time, the bases that seem at first to be anchors of stability in unstable regions later become instigators of instability and flash points that radicalize host populations.

This was clearly the case in Saudi Arabia -- but the same is true in less toxic terms in Okinawa. Okinawa was once an independent nation and is historically, culturally, and linguistically distinct from Japan. It has the poorest economy of all Japan's prefectures and carries 80% of the hosting responsibility for U.S. troops. This seems to me to be an unhealthy situation -- particularly when the U.S. troop presence has been there for nearly 60 years.

Michael O'Hanlon and Michael Mochizuki did a good study some years ago of U.S. troops in Japan and noted that when American forces were on high alert during a 1994 crisis involving North Korea, which Jimmy Carter later diffused, the Marines on Okinawa were not on alert and would not have been used in a conflict in North Korea, other than clean up operations. Instead, forces at Camp Pendleton and in Hawaii were being mobilized -- thus exposing the irrelevance of these Okinawa-based troops.

We need to get out of our Cold War architecture -- and a modernization and realignment plan, the right one, makes sense.

Wesley Clark, Richard Holbrooke and other stalwarts of the "we believe in a strong military" wing of the Democratic Party need to debate the details of a base realignment -- not whether to do it or not. The dollars that American taxpayers pump into the Pentagon amount to nearly 55% of what the entire world spends on defense, which means that we spend more than all other countries in the world on defense. We should get greater returns for our investment -- which means changing how we achieve stability and security.

Bush gave no sense of what basing priorities matter most in his VFW speech and has a big blind spot when it comes to weighing the irrelevance of bases in Japan vs. the more symbolically and substantively important deployments in Korea. He disingenuously criticized Kerry for calling for U.S. troop levels to be drawn down in Iraq after six months and then argues himself for a global troop draw down and pull back to U.S. based installations.

So Democrats, run with this and beat Bush to the punch. Get behind Department of Defense reform and base realignment that generate greater security deliverables for the nation.

Bush still hasn't articulated this well -- and John Kerry and his advisors could score some important points here.

But bland base-hugging is stale, outdated, and a losing strategy.

-- Steve Clemons

JOSH MARSHALL AND KEVIN DRUM HAVE BOTH ADDRESSED KERRY'S IRAQ WAR resolution problem -- and I don't really want to pile on. Josh basically agrees with Kerry's position that he voted for a process that gave the president the power to go to war as part of a suite of efforts to keep pressure on Saddam Hussein to support weapons inspections.

Drum also thinks that Kerry's comments on the war and war resolution are consistent with many other of his earlier statements, and that this is "not so hard to understand at all."

I think John Kerry is making a mistake similar to the one John McCain made over the debate about South Carolina's Confederate flag. McCain was drawn into a litmus test of his views that would clearly divide one group of South Carolinians from another, and unfortunately took the bait and responded with "a statement echoing the language of white Southerners trying to keep the old battle flag flying over the Capitol in Columbia." McCain called the confederate flag a "symbol of heritage."

I have great respect for John McCain and wish he had trounced Bush in the 2000 primaries -- but he got drawn into a trap that he could have evaded. The way he should have responded, had I been advising him, is that the only flag he and his fellow prisoners of war cared to see from the gulag of the "Hanoi Hilton" was the stars and stripes, the American flag -- and that was the only flag he felt worth talking about. So much for hindsight.

Kerry is allowing himself to be drawn into seeming as if he supported this mess in Iraq. That way, liberal and independent hawks who supported the war will be with him -- and those opposed to the invasion can parse the resolution into arguing that he really didn't support it -- but rather supported a regime of forced weapons inspections that would have ultimately kept us out of war.

I wish Kerry had said that he should have guessed that Bush was going to short-circuit the "process" that the Iraq resolution called for and that in hindsight -- he would not have given the president such latitude.

Kerry might have stated that rather than voting for the resolution -- he should have called on Bush to send 100,000 troops after bin Laden in Afghanistan.

And Kerry might have offered further counsel to President Bush -- "Mr. President. . .Come back to Congress when you finish this task and shut down al Qaeda, and then we can talk about Iraq; but frankly Pakistani nuclear materials proliferation and North Korean and Iranian weapons programs ought to rank higher on your priority list."

To some degree, the distraction of resources toward regime change in Iraq gave the opportunity to bin Laden & Co. to regroup. Saddam Hussein deserves to be reviled -- but he was a rational, self-interest maximizing thug who was rational in terms that we could understand. I believe that we could have found a complex of penalties and opportunities to keep Hussein in place until it made sense for us to deal with him, with allies aligned with us.

Bin Laden, in contrast, is rational in far scarier ways -- so rational that he has brewed up a movement that thus far seems undeterrable.

Kerry and other members of Congress, the media, and the blue chip members of America's civil society should not have allowed the seamless jump of attention from bin Laden and Afghanistan to Saddam Hussein.

Thus, in hindsight, Kerry should be saying that all of our muscle should have been focused on making bin Laden style terrorism a minor punctuation point in our nation's history -- rather than the enormous clause it has now become.

-- Steve Clemons

AFTER 9/11, THERE WAS SO MUCH ANGER AND DEMAND FOR REVENGE that raising questions about how and why a group of highly educated, middle class mostly Saudis would be willing to sacrifice their lives and inflict such horrific damage on America was considered to be unpatriotic. The lemming-like, group think of Washington public policy intellectuals following bin Laden's attack was a time of shame for the approximately 1,500 think tanks in Washington. These policy institutions receive tax exempt status for serving the public good in their role as idea incubators and as the collective conscience of policy debate in the nation's capitol; but our industry mostly failed during this time.

The climate of fear that existed then, the sense that asking the "root cause" question would label one an apologist for bin Laden, kept many sensible voices quiet during a time when the Bush administration was planning its war against Saddam Hussein.

To some degree, the same is now happening among those at odds with the administration. There is such anger today at George Bush and the neocons who guided America into a troubling war with and occupation of Iraq, that there is a recklessness that has pervaded a lot of the left's commentary on what neoconservatism is and who the neocons are. Many wrongly think that all of Bush's advisors, except Colin Powell, are neocons; or they add to the roster of known neocons people who are clearly not neocons.

Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice are not card-carrying members of the neoconservative movement. In my view, they are realists who have been outfoxed, outrun, and co-opted by a movement that they did not take seriously.

Rumsfeld really brings out the worst in my progressive, centrist, and even reasonably conservative friends; they just see a pre-enlightened Robert McNamara-like defense secretary taking a 'total systems' approach to war, like we tragically attempted in Vietnam. I subscribe to many of Rumsfeld's pre-9/11 efforts to reform the Pentagon and feel that one of the great tragedies of this so-called war on terror is that Pentagon reform has been preempted. Stalwarts of the Democratic Party and the Project for the New American Century seem mutually committed to greater defense budgets for an already bloated defense bureaucracy that has failed to generate the security deliverables that the nation deserves.

And to be clear about my views of Rumsfeld, I think that the Abu Ghraib disaster so completely undermined America's ability to wage a hearts and minds campaign that Bush's failure to demonstrate the importance of accountability and fire Rumsfeld, as well as Rumsfeld's reluctance to accept responsibility by resigning, multiplied this disaster by an order of magnitude. But Rumsfeld is not a neocon. Neither is Condi Rice -- who I think is taking loyalty to her president and this administration to perverse levels that I would have hoped her character and intellect would not have allowed.

The trigger for my thinking today is a superb review of an interesting book in the Washington Post's Book World by Stanley Kutler titled "On How Neocons Grabbed the Opportunity to Create a New World Order." Kutler is reviewing America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and The Global Order by Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke. I recommend reading the review for its own merits, as well as the book.

Stanley Kutler writes:

In America Alone, they document the neoconservative capture of American (and British) foreign policy, under the guise of a War on Terror, to reorder Middle East politics and initiate a newly proclaimed doctrine of preemptive war. . . levels a broad indictment against the Bush administration, which in the name of the war on terror has launched the Iraq war, mounted an assault on personal liberties at home, engaged in a purposeful deceit of the media and the public (both of which suspended any critical judgment) and, above all, has inflicted terrible damage on U.S. moral authority and international legitimacy. The chief culprits for the authors are the neocons, who are depicted as conspirators who hijacked American foreign policy.

He continues in his review:

Today neocons are the key players in the Bush administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney; his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; and his assistant Paul Wolfowitz. They are seconded by National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice and influential academic intellectuals and writers who preach warnings and celebrate their alleged triumphs. Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute has somberly described the French as a "strategic enemy." Max Boot, author of a book celebrating the United States' "splendid little wars," said that the American sweep through Iraq made "Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian seem positively incompetent by comparison". . .Boot loves war so much that he envisions a United States like the British Empire of old, always fighting some war, somewhere, against someone.

Kutler and the two book authors get a lot right in their book and this review -- but they cast the net too broadly when it comes to defining who the neocons are. This is important because what neoconservatives achieved after 9/11 was a successful coup against realists and liberal internationalists who had both commanded the helm and key staff positions of foreign policy making for democratic and republican administrations for decades. But by painting those who don't share the creed of neoconservatism as part of this group, I think that orchestrating an effort to displace their influence becomes muddled.

On March 19, 2001, then New America Foundation Senior Fellow and colleague Robert Kaplan, author of such books as The Coming Anarchy, Balkan Ghosts, and Warrior Politics; spent a little more than an hour with President George W. Bush, Condoleeza Rice, and Andrew Card. Bob Kaplan was scheduled to depart that Monday morning for Europe for a book tour for his recently released Eastward to Tartary, which President Bush had apparently spent the weekend reading at Camp David. The President even had his own copy, highlighted and sections underlined, some pages dog-eared, when he met Kaplan. Suffice it to say that Eastward to Tartary is one of Kaplan's more complex books -- and despite Bush's self-proclaimed ignorance of daily newspapers, his reading this book impressed me as I'm sure it did Bob Kaplan.

But what was most interesting about this meeting was the language used when Bush greeted Kaplan personally in the Oval Office. Kaplan was awed and a bit intimidated by the surroundings and Bush reportedly said "relax, we are all realists here." In fact, what Condi Rice was doing by orchestrating this meeting with Robert Kaplan was to set up tutorials for Bush on what 'modern realism' or neo-realism would look like. In contrast to Nixonian/Kissingerian realism when America was perceived to be in relative global decline, this was a time of perceived American ascension in the world. But that did not mean that institutions of the past or basing strategies or our system of old alliances were organized to meet the new breed of threats and challenges brewing in this post-Cold War period.

Kaplan, more than any other thinker or writer, is a modern day Machiavelli -- and I mean in the good sense -- trying to advise the prince on how best to conduct affairs of state in the broad self interest of the nation. I don't know about the number or frequency of other meetings between Bush and Kaplan, but I do know that there were other such sessions.

The reason that this pre-9/11 meeting matters is that Robert Kaplan is detested by neoconservatives. I didn't know this until I debated Richard Perle and Tucker Carlson on the tv show, Crossfire, on the impact of the EP-3 spy plane incident on U.S.-China relations. When I was trying to make nice with Perle after the show and before an internet chat session that CNN organizes between show watchers and show panelists, I mentioned that Kaplan was one of the stars at New America.

Perle pretty much exploded, at Kaplan rather than me. He felt Kaplan was amoral and responsible for many deaths because of his book Balkan Ghosts which delved into the historical and cultural enmity that had existed in the Balkans for dozens of generations. To be fair to Perle, others like Richard Holbrooke have made similar comments about Bob Kaplan and this book.

When I reported this to Kaplan, I had my first lesson from him on what he called the "Wilsonian right wing."

Thus, well before 9/11, it was apparent that there were three schools of thought -- really two schools and one individual -- competing in the administration. Perle, William Kristol, Robert Kagan and some other prominent neocons served as co-Chief Ideology Officers of the movement. But allies and long-term fellow travelers Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and others were the government-embedded neocons.

Condi Rice, in contrast, was trying to teach Bush to be a realist -- using Kaplan and probably others to educate him. Rumsfeld, from my perspective, was a defense reformer, a technocrat, and a realist who never bought into the "democratizing agenda" of the neoconservatives. Clearly, both Rice and Rumsfeld got coopted as time went on -- but only because Rice, particularly, lost the battle with neocons.

Colin Powell seems neither a realist nor a neocon, but is rather the cautious general in the room, who matters when he is there and not when he is absent. There is a huge Colin Powell fan club that has emerged in recent years -- but no one knows Powell's world view or can articulate anything other than his low risk views toward conflict.

The EP-3 incident was the first attempt by neocons to take over the foreign policy helm, but ultimately Wolfowitz -- leading the charge -- was rebuffed by President Bush who was himself counseled about his early rashness in this China incident by his father and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft. Wolfowitz gave an impressive speech in 1998 in Arizona before what was termed the Congress of Phoenix of AEI's New Atlantic Initiative in which he basically argued that the most important foreign policy decisions ahead -- from supporting the expansion of NATO and potentially embracing common cause with Russia -- would deal with either containing or engaging China's growing influence in the world. Wolfowitz clearly tilted towards the containment part of the equation in his remarks -- but they were as important in my view as Wolfowitz's and Perle's articulations on returning to Iraq to rid the world of Saddam.

On Friday, March 23rd, 2001, the same week that Kaplan met Bush, the Washington Post ran an article by Steven Mufson noting the administration's language about new realism. Mufson pondered before most whether the sprinking of the word, "realism," in commentary by Ari Fleischer and Condi Rice indicated the direction Bush foreign policy would go.

But what Condi Rice never did is to tend to the next generation of thinkers and writers that would follow her views. She basically arranged a one-on-one meeting between Kaplan and Bush (as I heard that Rice and Card stayed silent during the entire meeting). Bill Clinton, in contrast, used to arrange big think fests drawing in many from his administration to meet with intellectuals -- as a strategy in part to get his administration to share an understanding of his own world view and to draw together perspectives rather than to have them diverge in completely different directions.

The neocons took personnel staffing seriously and got lots of people appointed to important positions throughout the administration. The above list just includes the stars. What is truly impressive about their movement is that many lesser known acolytes populate Bush's government today. No such cultivation of a next generation of realists seems evident.

Rice lost the battle with the neocons, and perhaps has been co-opted by them. But her early instincts were driving Bush a different direction. Perhaps someone else needs to pick up where she dropped the ball.

-- Steve Clemons

"THE NEOCONSERVATIVE MOMENT" BY FRANCIS FUKUYAMA is an important new essay in the latest edition of The National Interest. The link only provides an excerpt -- but a subscription to this magazine is a cheap price to pay to read what may be the beginnings of a civil war among neoconservatives.

I attended a dinner last week hosted by The National Interest and the Nixon Center featuring Francis Fukuyama discussing this article. The rules for the meeting were not presented, but I am going to respect the non-attribution rule of many such in house discussions as I want to make sure I'm invited back. It was one of the most fascinating roundtable discussions I've participated in in quite a long time. Among those in attendance at the 25 person dinner were Nixon Center President and former Nixon advisor Dimitri Simes, former Defense and Energy Secretary James Schlesinger, U.S. News and World Report's Michael Barone, Eisenhower Institute President Susan Eisenhower, former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, Georgetown University's Charles Kupchan, former National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, National Interest Editor John O'Sullivan, and recent Department of Defense Comptroller Dov Zakheim -- who now works in the same firm of Booz Allen and Hamilton with James Woolsey, who has received some attention in this column.

I mention these folks not to name drop but to make the point that these are serious people -- most of them realists, but not all. Kupchan classifies himself as a liberal internationalist, which some think is pretty close to enlightened realism anyway. But Jeane Kirkpatrick and Francis (Frank) Fukuyama were the only two who declared themselves to be "dyed in the wool" neoconservatives (this doesn't violate the non-attribution rule, as they have both said this in plenty of other venues). Michael Barone may be a neocon but left just before the juicy part of the discussion got going.

But The National Interest has long been the journal of record for both neocons and realists. Irving Kristol long held The Public Interest and The National Interest as important engines in his neoconservative movement -- but under the editorship of Owen Harries, National Interest incrementally diverged and became the home of important commentary on modern foreign policy realism. Realists like Henry Kissinger, James Schlesinger, Dimitri Simes, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, and Josef Joffe partly populate the magazine's editorial board and management. But neocons Eliot Cohen, Francis Fukuyama, Charles Krauthammer, Richard Perle, and Daniel Pipes are also there. John O'Sullivan who long led National Review worked alongside William F. Buckley -- who himself said that he would have stood completely against the Iraq War had he known all that he knew today about the intelligence gaps -- also co-founded the neocon project, The New Atlantic Initiative, which is housed at the American Enterprise Institute. O'Sullivan makes a perfect editor and overseer of the dominant new currents of realism and neoconservatism as he has long straddled both worlds.

Back to the civil war. Fukuyama's article was born from his irritable reaction to a major speech by another neoconservative elder, Charles Krauthammer, "Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World," the 2004 Irving Kristol Lecture at the annual dinner of the American Enterprise Institute.

Let me share (with permission) a couple of paragraphs from the introduction of Fukuyama's essay:

One of Washington's most exclusive clubs during the 1990s was the annual board dinner of The National Interest. Presided over by founding editor Owen Harries and often kicked off with a presentation by Henry Kissinger, the group included Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Irving, Bea and Bill Kristol, Samuel Huntington, Paul Wolfowitz, Norman Podhoretz, Daniel Pipes, Charles Krauthammer, Marty Feldstein, Eliot Cohen, Peter Rodman and a host of other conservative thinkers, writers and doers, including just about everyone now characterized as a "neoconservative."

It did not have to be this way. One can start with premises identical to Krauthammer's, agree wholeheartedly with his critiques of the other three positions, and yet come up with a foreign policy that is very different from the one he lays out. I believe that his strategy simultaneously defines our interests in such a narrow way as to make the neoconservative position indistinguishable from realism, while at the same time managing to be utterly unrealistic in its overestimation of U.S. power and our ability to control events around the world. It is probably too late to reclaim the label "neoconservative" for any but the policies undertaken by the Bush Administration, but it is still worth trying to reformulate a fourth alternative that combines idealism and realism-but in a fashion that can be sustained over the long haul.

Fukuyama, throughout his article, argues with Krauthammmer over both the ideological substance of neoconservatism as well as the implementation of neoconservative vision. Fukuyama argues that legitimacy of American values and institutions is not automatic in the eyes of those around the world -- and a certain degree of realism requires us to acknowledge that since India thinks that a UN resolution is the only thing that can make a war legitimate, then we need to respect that reality if we want a nation like India's support. There were some in the room during the dinner who thought that Frank Fukuyama's remarks didn't really define true neoconservatism because he didn't acknowledge the universalism of American ideals and institutions and acknowledged that America's predominant power would breed rival balances of power in the future -- which these observers feel doesn't hang with pure neoconservatism.

I'm convinced that Fukuyama is a major stakeholder in neoconservative circles -- mostly because he thinks he is and makes a claim to some degree of ideological stewardship of this movement. But it's clear that Krauthammer and he disagree strongly on ideology and on its practice in Iraq. I have been informed by the editor of National Interest that Charles Krauthammer will have a counter-point article in the next issue of the journal.

I hope you are still with me at this point in this long entry. This battle matters as the neocons populate many important positions throughout the Bush administration -- and knowing that they may be divided, or even that they could be divided, may present significant opportunities for advancing U.S. foreign policy thinking towards a more enlightened direction than now is the case. This is particularly true if the Bush team loses to Kerry -- but even if we have a new President next year -- these battles over American grand strategy and the debate between neoconservatism, realism, and liberal internationalism are still going to rage.

-- Steve Clemons

JIM PINKERTON GETS CREDIT for pointing out a fascinating and, one would think, conflicting set of references in the latest Memorandum to Opinion Leaders by the Project for the New American Century's Gary Schmitt.

Gary Schmitt spends his page poking holes in John Kerry's statement "I know I can run a more effective, smarter, more productive war on terror... I will do it by bringing to our side the allies that we used to have which should have been with us in the first place. I'll take the target off American troops. . .and we're going to get our troops home where they belong."

I don't share Gary Schmitt's views on how to fight the war on terror -- but I do think that there is a strange gap between John Kerry's hindsight-informed willingness to go to war against Iraq and the view that a better president might have had more success getting European allies to see this Iraq mess as their war. But that topic will wait for another day.

What Gary does is fault Kerry for both Nixonian and McGovern-like thinking in back-to-back paragraphs.

Paragraph three reads:

Moreover, Kerry continues, in Nixonian fashion, to promise that he has a way out of the struggle that takes the burden off the United States and passes it on to France and Germany and other reluctant nations. On the one hand, that is hardly a revolutionary idea. Germany and France are already helping in Afghanistan, one critical front in the war on terror. But as for Iraq, another front in the war on terror, Kerry will not succeed in convincing those allies to send troops. (emphasis added)

Paragraph four reads:

The bottom line is that Kerry sounds more like McGovern every day. The call to bring the troops home "where they belong" is straight out of the Democratic Left's playbook of the 1970s. (emphasis added)

Frankly, I don't think Kerry's views are sufficiently Nixonian or that influenced by McGovern. Nixon was a champion of 'enlightened self interest' as the driver of U.S. foreign policy. Nixon's misfortune was, that in contrast to Bush, he inherited a U.S. foreign position perceived to be in global decline and while retreating from many commitments that America had around the world while deploying rather shrewd realist instincts to preserve those assets most significant to American interests.

McGovern spoke not just about bringing troops home from a war that he felt illegitimate -- but wanted to reengage America in a positive comity with leading nations of the world through the United Nations and other multilateral institutions. The key point is that McGovern saw Vietnam as a huge mistake.

George Bush, in contrast, inherited an America perceived to be in ascension, an America that many have argued has the strongest, largest economy and most capable military in world history. Bush could have been a realist/internationalist president using buoyant American power to generate stability and new opportunities for many in the world into the next generation. Bin Laden clearly wanted to dent the sense of imperviousness and triumphalism that America enjoyed -- just as he did with the Soviets in Afghanistan. My difference with Schmitt and his colleagues is that George Bush & Co.'s Iraq adventure burst the bubble of American mystique and demonstrated our "limits," limits which I believe were pretty well concealed before this conflict.

In the mean time, vital American interests remain at dire risk from the real threat of bin Laden-inspired transnational terrorism.

This Iraq War would not in my estimation have been supported by either Richard Nixon or George McGovern.

But as John Kerry has stated, he is with Bush on Iraq -- but frankly, though I still have my doubts about the Democratic contender, I'd rather spend four years with Kerry explaining to him why his hindsight views need some more adjustment.

-- Steve Clemons

JOSH MARSHALL DOES NOT NEED REFERRALS from my site. I owe him a great deal for giving the world some notice of what I've been doing.

That said, I really like his post today exploring the ethics of journalistic discretion about sources. With regard to the Valerie Plame affair, he expressed admiration for Matt Cooper who went to jail and posted bond for refusing to testify about whether they knew if White House sources had exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. In contrast, Tim Russert agreed to meet with the grand jury. Josh, with some interesting commentary drawn from Mike Kinsley, gets into the subject of when and when not the responsibilities of a journalist to protect sources ends.

There has been a great deal written about Joe Wilson and the Valerie Plame disclosure -- and I'm going to add to this in coming weeks. I spent an hour and a half with Joe at the Starbucks near the White House on the 1700 block of Pennsylvania Avenue yesterday. (U.S. Trade Representative Bob Zoellick said hello and said that the New America Foundation, where I work, was generating "great stuff.")

What interests me about this incident overall is that it seems to be about the only game going for legally constraining this presidency. The tussle over Vice President Cheney's energy briefing roundtables with industry leaders never really rose to the level of serious consequence for the administration. The only other challenges came by way of challenges of incompetence or distraction from reality by people like Paul O'Neill or Richard Clarke.

But only the Valerie Plame affair raises the possibility of systematic cover-up by this White House. And as presidential administration after administration have taught us, it's never the crime that mattered as much as the cover-up. I once exchanged emails with Sidney Blumenthal about whether he might speak at the New America Foundation on the subject, "How to Construct Presidential Deniability." I still think it would be a great topic to learn more about -- but the program never came about.

When we find out who made those calls to Robert Novak, Matt Cooper, Tim Russert, Andrea Mitchell, and others -- then the question needs to be (and hopefully U.S. Attorney Pete Fitzgerald has already posed this question to President Bush and his newly hired consulting attorney)"What did the President know? And when did he know it?"

Perhaps "West Wing" could delve into this topic -- or we could ask the Washington Post to consider a feature piece on the topic of the presidency and deniability.

-- Steve Clemons

THE IRS SHOULD DISENFRANCHISE CHURCHES that comply with the Republican National Committee's requests to turn over parish rosters and contact information. The blurring of the lines between the religious and the secular didn't start with the Bush administration, but they have certainly taken this to new heights of sophistication and systemization.

To be fair in my criticism, Bill Clinton has always been comfortable at the pulpit and used churches not only in his own political campaigns but actually endorsed the failing recall efforts of then California Governor Gray Davis from a church lectern. I think Clinton's use of churches was inappropriate, but many friends and associates of mine completely disagree with me and argue that Democrats need to become more comfortable with faith and the mix of politics and religion. For some persuasive commentary on this subject, see Amy Sullivan's "Do the Democrats Have a Prayer?" in the Washington Monthly.

But today, Melissa Rogers set it all straight in a terrific article that ran in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, "When Faith and Politics Meet." Rogers is former director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and is a visiting professor of religion and public policy at Wake Forest University Divinity School in Winston-Salem. She also happens to be married to one of Washington's smartest tax policy guys, with whom I had the pleasure of working when I was in the Senate. I'm not sure, but my hunch is that Rogers is devout about being a Democrat and a regular Christian church-goer.

In her article she writes:

As has been widely reported, the campaign to re-elect President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney has produced materials informing "coalition coordinators" that one of their "duties" is: "Send your Church Directory to your State Bush-Cheney 04 Headquarters or give to a BC04 Field Rep." The Associated Press recently reported that "the Republican National Committee confirmed it had asked Catholics who back Bush to give parish directories to the RNC as a way to identify and mobilize new voters."

There are some legitimate ways for political campaigns to try to reach religious people. Soliciting directories isn't one of them. Churches and other organizations that are tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code are prohibited from participating in any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.

She concludes:

What would be surprising and disappointing, however, is if church members were to follow these instructions rather than heeding ethical and religious teachings. After all, the most important reason for refusing to give our church directories to political campaigns is found in the Bible. Jesus said: "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." The church is a not a creature of the state or of any earthly power -- it is a creature of God. Before and beyond November 2004, may people of faith reject every entreaty that asks us to give to Caesar that which belongs to God.

The exact wording of the IRS 501(c)(3) exemption statement is unambiguous. It reads:

To be tax-exempt as an organization described in IRC Section 501(c)(3) of the Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for one or more of the purposes set forth in IRC Section 501(c)(3) and none of the earnings of the organization may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate at all in campaign activity for or against political candidates.

The Republican National Committee has responded that it is requesting parishioner guides for non-partisan, voter registration efforts. But this "strains credulity" as Melissa Rogers writes -- and only adds another dimension to the corruption of American civil society which we have seen manifested in major newspapers, blue chip corporations, the New York Stock exchange, the Catholic Church, both political parties, and so on.

The RNC may be in legal bounds to ask churches for parish rosters, but the churches need to know that the Internal Revenue Service forbids this. Read the law carefully. And frankly, despite the trend among some of my Democrat friends encouraging greater capacity building in the party with religious circles, I'm all for keeping the lines of faith and the secular order as divided as possible, particularly when it's no longer clear that some Christian sects influencing this White House believe in the Enlightenment.

Christians who can handle faith and rationality at the same time encourage me -- but those who subordinate rationality to faith, as some in this administration seem to advocate are undermining the fabric of the country at large.

-- Steve Clemons

TO GET TO MY SMALL VACATION CABIN at Deep Creek Lake, Maryland -- right at the very tip of the Maryland pan handle and bordering West Virginia and Pennsylvania, I drive through the Allegheny mountain town of Cumberland, Maryland.

Cumberland is a great, simple, working class town with a distinctive mini skyline of very thin and dramatic church steeples which I enjoy seeing as I drive in from the east on the 68 Freeway. It's the town where William H. Macy of "Fargo," "Magnolia," and "Boogie Nights" -- and more lately, "Seabiscuit," was reared.

Cumberland is also home for seven people charged in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal who were deployed as reservists in Iraq as part of 372nd Military Police Academy. Whenever I stop at one of the local restaurants up there or stroll the aisles of Lowe's Hardware, I look around and realize that the folks caught up in this scandal are really just like us -- well not like well-heeled, inside-the-beltway types -- but they are from and of core American life.

I think America lost what little moral authority it had (not that we ever had much) in this Iraq mess when the disturbing photos of these in-prison crimes came to light, but I want to know why America did not demonstrate how important 'accountability' is in our form of democracy. Don Rumsfeld should have been fired -- and if the president wanted to continue to have his counsel, there is no shortage of advisory posts, public and private, that Rumsfeld could have been appointed to. But small town folks from Cumberland who allegedly dreamed up these torturous conditions for prisoners under their watch are pretty much being hung out to dry alone by those above them.

What is really sad is the news that a detachment of Oregonians, from the Oregon National Guard, "disrupted prisoner abuse by police at the Iraqi Interior Ministry on June 29 and were ordered to remand the detainees back to Iraqi custody."

According to a UPI report and the Portland Oregonian:

Capt. Jarrell Southall, who provided the Oregonian with a written statement describing the incident, said the armored guardsmen pushed into the detention yard "basically unchallenged," where they found prisoners who said they hadn't eaten in days and "were barely able to walk." He added Iraqi police soon became defiant and hostile toward the Americans.

After interrupting the abuse, distributing water bottles and discovering a cache of potential torture devices including metal rods, rubber hoses, electrical wires and bottled chemicals, Lt. Col. Daniel Hendrickson of Albany, Ore., radioed the Army's 1st Cavalry Division to report the incident and receive further instructions. An unidentified general then ordered the Americans to leave the prisoners and withdraw from the area.

This incident took place the day after the United States transferred formal sovereignty back to the Iraqis. However, our 135,000 troops give America clear informal sovereignty over Iraq -- but why when it matters in these symbolically important abuse cases -- can't American generals get it right? We certainly have little compunction about pulling strings regarding the appropriate political leadership for the country (or is it now a protectorate?)

I applaud the Oregon National Guard for trying to do what was right -- and while appalled by Abu Ghraib, I believe like many others who have reported on this that the real culprits are high up in the defense command structure.

In the late 90s, it was popular to discuss the civil-military gap, the gap between what was considered to be the social norms of the military and that of the society. John Hillen, then of the Council on Foreign Relations and then CSIS, was an active participant in this discussion and argued that new-fangled notions about the role and status of women and homosexuals should not be applied to military culture.

I don't know the answer to why there may have been divergent behaviors between the reservists from Oregon as opposed to Cumberland, Maryland -- but I do know that what makes sense for the country is that the norms of the military not be buffered or held distinct from the evolving social norms of America's citizenry.

The generals running and perpetuating the military code of conduct seem to have been as off base at Abu Ghraib as they were when they forced these thoughtful Oregon National Guard reservists to return torture victims to their torturers.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has demanded an explanation from the Pentagon, so we should hear more soon.

-- Steve Clemons

WALTER F. ROCHE JR. HAS AN ILLUMINATING PIECE TODAY in the Los Angeles Times on the clan Woolsey -- exposing some of the Iraq contract connections of Suzanne Woolsey, the former CIA Director's wife. In January 2004, she became a director of Fluor Corporation, which has $1.6 billion in Iraq related contracts. She also serves as a director of the Institute for Defense Analyses which also has war interests, and received modest compensation for that role according to the article.

James Woolsey serves as Vice President of Booz Allen Hamilton with at least $89 million in Iraq defense contract interests. Roche's article also points out that Suzanne Woolsey is also affiliated with Paladin Capital Group, a venture capital firm where her husband serves as a principal and director.

A reader of The Washington Note entry on Woolsey tipped me off to James Woolsey's Paladin connection last week -- and I was somewhat stunned by the brazen language of the "Paladin Homeland Security Fund" that Woolsey helps direct. I realize that many intelligence and military officials make natural fits for defense related firms when they leave public service -- but I think that big, inappropriate lines get crossed when individuals help fan wars, in which people die, and financially benefit from the result. A recusal from war profits should be standard for talking heads and policy commentators when it comes to sending American men and women into harm's way.

Here is the "statement of concern" for the Paladin Homeland Security Fund:

The end of the Cold War has proven not to be the end of global conflict. Today, conflict often manifests itself in a new form of guerilla warfare: terrorism. This form of conflict extends vulnerabilities beyond military institutions to civilian populations and commercial infrastructure. As the emergence of sophisticated communication and information networks blurs many of the past separations between government and industry and between domestic and global interests, security needs transcend traditional borders between nations and between governments and industry. The events and aftermath of September 11 highlight the need for both governments and industry to address these security concerns. As a result, recognition of the need for homeland security products and services to address these threats is growing. The nation and the world now look to find new ways to take advantage of the shared concerns between governments and industry and to develop new methods to collaborate for security and for technological and economic benefit. These concerns, together with the changes in the global business environment, offer substantial promise for homeland security investment.

Roche's article hits the bull's eye on the increasing web of interests between those who blur the lines between their public and private roles, something we heard a lot about regarding Richard Perle -- but Woolsey adds much more texture to this trend since he was the first to allege the still unproven connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

Roche writes:

The Woolseys' overlapping affiliations are part of a growing pattern in Washington in which individuals play key roles in quasi-governmental organizations advising officials on major policy issues but also are involved with private businesses in related fields. Such activities generally are not covered by conflict of interest laws or ethics rules. But they underscore an insiders network in which contacts and relationships developed inside the government can meld with individual financial interests.

Antonin Scalia went duck-hunting with Vice President Cheney who had pending business before the Supreme Court -- and while Scalia didn't recuse himself, the turmoil that erupted will probably deter the Justice from such other poorly chosen excursions. But the conflicts of interest between our Saturday morning talking heads who fanned the flames of war and their private bank accounts needs attention.

One of my recent emails recommended that I reacquaint myself with the history of Tammany Hall -- something I actually know quite a bit about -- and it seems to me that we are in an era of profound structural corruption.

Congrats to Roche on exposing these seedy relationships. The parents, spouses, and children of the nearly 1,000 Iraq War and Occupation killed and the many thousands more wounded deserve better. The families losing health care as their fathers and mothers lose private jobs because of extended National Guard duty deployments in Iraq deserve better.

Perhaps Fluor and other defense firms should set aside "stock options accounts" for service men and women who have gone off to fight for this country so that they can share in the blurring of private gain and public sacrifice that the Woolsey clan is showing us.

-- Steve Clemons

I FEEL SORRY FOR DC TAXI CAB DRIVERS. If I am driven from where I live in Dupont Circle, near U Street, to the U.S. Capitol, I've stayed in one taxi cab zone, and the fare is just $5.00 during non-rush hour times. But lately, navigating through all of the new check points and closed streets around the Capitol, as well as near the IMF, World Bank, and Federal Reserve, has added more burdens for the driver with no increase in compensation. I just glanced at the Washington Post and found a story making exactly this point.

But here is the bigger story. . .perhaps. I received the following email from a trusted source, and while much of the note is speculative, it indicts the inaction about pre-9/11 intelligence even further:

"A little bird told me that the information on the Citibank Tower, the World Bank, etc. -- the stuff that Ridge trumpeted on Sunday -- also included info on the World Trade Center.

So maybe we should stop worrying about reminding Americans to acquire duct tape and bottled water -- and consider the question of what ELSE the Homeland Re-Election Department might be concealing for obviously damage-control purposes."

If the recent intelligence about potential attacks on U.S. financial centers does predate 9/11, then should we feel good that we got away with several years of relatively smooth taxi cab rides to Capitol Hill? Or should we be dismayed that we should have had these inspection points and closed thoroughfares all along?

-- Steve Clemons

THE FLORIDA REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION DELEGATION members are being kept secret. A UPI newstrack story reports that Florida Republicans have refused to release the names of the state's delegates to the national convention in New York.

According to the story, Florida party spokesman Joseph Agostini reported to the Miami Herald that "some delegates are not comfortable speaking and don't want their information given out, and we've honored their requests. Our priority is putting the interests and welfare of our delegates first."

Florida Republicans seem to be having real troubles getting the democracy thing worked out. The state delegation to the Democratic National Convention did provide reporters and editors a roster of delegates with contact information -- but the issue here is not that the Democrats in Florida believe in transparency and civil society and the Republicans not. What seems to be unfolding since the last election is that the leadership of the Florida Republican party is rapidly undermining the legitimacy of that state's democratic operation.

Some readers are going to scold me and argue that all of this became completely obvious in the weeks following the Gore-Bush race; or that electoral manipulation was evident when tens of thousands of mostly black, mostly Democratic voters were knocked of voting rolls in the 2000 race (which is happening again before this election!), or in the shoddy management of computer data lost, then found, of electoral returns in the 2002 election.

Despite all this, I have remained perhaps a naive optimist who believes that there are moderate Republicans who believe in checks and balances, the pull and tug of politics and ideas between parties, and in fair elections. I have just spoken to some friends who are active in Florida's Republican circles as well as to a good friend who used to work for Florida Senator Connie Mack -- and they are genuinely dismayed by the ongoing shenanigans that make Florida look like a cesspool of 21st century electoral corruption.

The Florida Republican Party moderates who value America's democratic roots and believe in the health and strength of American civil society have got to toss out these loony power-obsessed and paranoid leaders in their party who are really poisoning the well for everyone in that state.

I was struck some years ago by the penetrating comments made by Sonia Picado at the annual retreat of the Pacific Council on International Policy. Sonia is the former Costa Rican Ambassador to the United States and is now Chairman of the Board of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights.

Her comments addressed the rapidity with which America adopted secret military tribunals to process foreign and some domestic enemy combatants. She said that the examples of American liberty and freedom, the right of due process if arrested, a robust and free media and right of expression, all helped inspire Latin American 'believers in democracy' to take their governments back from totalitarian thugs.

America's overnight reversion from transparent justice to secret tribunals gut-punched our democratic allies in Latin America. A political system's norms can never really be understood until times of stress because that is when one will see if societies are willing to pay the high price for shared values that supposedly espouse.

These tribunals, hardly used and now mostly invalidated by the Supreme Court, still undermined to some degree the moral and political standing of democrats abroad and strengthened the hand of lurking fascists, communist guerillas, narco-gangs, and violent religious zealots in troubled states around the world.

What seems to me to be absolutely essential in any effort to inspire or transplant democracy abroad is to get it right at home.

Florida Republicans -- please get off your secrecy kick. Publish your delegate's names, embrace an open competition, and stop making it seem legitimate for political forces here in America or abroad to lurk in the shadows, unaccountable to their own societies.

-- Steve Clemons

RICHARD HAASS IS A NO NONSENSE REALIST about foreign policy issues. He is as blunt and straight shooting as they come and has on many occasions had no problem admitting his errors -- or alternatively taking credit for a successful policy he designed. Of significant foreign policy hands in the Bush administration, he was the first to depart -- leaving the competing team of neocon staffers one man stronger after he became President of the Council on Foreign Relations.

That is why I am astonished by the Council on Foreign Relations release today of a new video and cd-rom titled "Terrorism: Don't Get Scared. Get Prepared." I have not seen the production, but it is described as the Council's collection of advice and practical tips, designed to help organizations be ready for emergencies.

The CFR stands ready to provide expert analysis as well -- and here are the people the "CFR This Week" press release proposes you call:

David Braunschvig, Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow and Director, Business and Foreign Policy
Contact: 212-434-9782 or david.braunschvig@lazard.com

Stephen E. Flynn, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow, National Security Studies; Author, America the Vulnerable: How Our Government Is Failing to Protect Us from Terrorism.
Contact: 212-207-7362 or msiwi@cfr.org.

Gideon Rose, Managing Editor, Foreign Affairs Contact: 212-434-9629 or grose@cfr.org

Benn Steil, Acting Director, Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies
Contact: 212-434-9622 or bsteil@cfr.org

I know Benn Steil and Gideon Rose and bet that they are going to be surprised when they find that their phone messages and email jammed with queries about whether they should get 3M or generic duct tape and how many back copies of Foreign Affairs ought to be set aside while waiting out the attack. Gideon doesn't go for gimmicks. I can't believe he knew about this release today -- but these are strange times.

To be fair to Richard Haass, this well meaning security program may have been conceived by the earlier CFR regime as the video is blurbed not by him, but his predecessor. Council President Emeritus Leslie H. Gelb said "Homeland Security and the safety of our employees and their families are priorities for the Council on Foreign Relations."

Now I'll never get my membership in the CFR, but this was just too funny. I bet Tom Ridge sends the Council a plaque though.

-- Steve Clemons

THUS FAR, THE COST FOR INVADING AND OCCUPYING IRAQ (not counting lives lost) is approximately $166 billion. The President has just asked for an extra $25 billion on top of his FY2005 defense appropriations request -- and most expect another $25 billion request during the next fiscal year, bringing the conservative estimate of accumulated Iraq related costs to approximately $216 billion.

When one considers that there are 14.38 million working age Iraqis, the per capita working age costs thus far amount to $11,548.00 -- and will soon rise to $15,026.00 after this next year's expenditures.

In a country where per capita GDP is $1,600.00 (and this is an overstatement since the broad swath of non-elite Iraqi society that lives closer to the $500 per year level), the amount spent just in defense dollars is staggering, nearly ten times the per capita income levels. If any significant portion of these defense resources were leaking out to average citizens and improving lives and choices, support levels for America would be far better. What is going on?

While I think that just pumping money into another country creates unhealthy dependencies, clearly American planners could have found ways to provide business loans, micro-credits, family support credits and grants, education vouchers, and other high quality social impact investments that might have won back the affections and support of Iraq's citizens. One of the reasons for the relative success of the American occupation of Japan is that we engineered land reform, breaking up aristocratic estates and getting much broader distribution of rice producing land to farming families. America knew at that time that it had to leave a new class of economic and political winners in Japan; something we have not done at all in Iraq.

The real tragedy of this situation is that despite Iraq's debt problems, and its substantial potential as a generator of hard currency through oil exports, the U.S. has nonetheless spent a vast amount of money in Iraq -- though see today's Washington Post story, "$1.9 Billion of Iraq's Money Goes to U.S. Contractors -- and not achieved security or stability there and has not succeeded in winning the support and affections of the Iraqi public whom we helped liberate from Saddam Hussein. All this money seems to be going into a black hole with little accountability for the poor returns on this investment.

At a macro level, America has 5% of the world's population and is spending roughly half of what the entire world spends on defense but is not getting the security deliverables it deserves from the Pentagon. In the case of Iraq, the U.S. is spending about 10 times the per capita GDP of the average Iraqi citizen and is largely reviled and unappreciated.

Clearly, we are not getting good returns on this taxpayer money -- and our thinking about what constitutes security and stability -- and what the U.S. should spend money on to achieve its foreign policy objectives needs to be seriously rethought. More on that soon.

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-- Steve Clemons

JAMES WOOLSEY IS AT IT AGAIN. He is now spearheading the revived Committee on the Present Danger which was a mainstay of national security hawks during the Cold War and served as the platform for the late Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson's iconic ascent as the Democratic Party's toughest national security voice. But now he's lining up distinguished Americans, mostly neocons but not all, to stand tough against terror. You can find the list and more information at www.fightingterror.org. (One question, does anyone NOT want to fight terror?)

Woolsey has recruited Scoop Jackson wannabes Senators Joseph Lieberman and Jon Kyl as honorary chairs. And on the surface of it, the organizing statement of the Committee says some sensible things:

America faces its gravest threat in a generation: an organized global movement -- assisted by rogue regimes -- has adopted mass terror as a weapon to achieve political goals. And, the prospect that this deadly collusion will involve weapons of mass murder is at hand. . .Victory over terror inspired by radical Islamists -- fought in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere -- will also be a long struggle. It will involve waging a war of ideas and educating the American people on the nature of the anger.

At first glance, I had little problem with much of what appeared in the full page ad placed by the Committee on the Present Danger -- except that one should remind the signers that poor planning by American and allied forces contributed to Iraq becoming a cesspool of fighting radical Islamists. The original fight in Iraq -- against Hussein -- was a regime change effort against a secular fascist that morphed into the kind of war with America that bin Laden actually wanted. But those are just fading details now.

What does greatly concern me in the statement is the righteousness of it, the notion that a "unified voice" against terror is the path to winning this long battle:

Yet, in the course of time, and with success diluted by weariness, some would diminish the scale of the threat that America and our allies must confront. We know, however, that with denial, the danger only grows. This is a war not of fixed formations and battlefield, but of unpredictability both as to time and place of action. . .When faced with a clear and present danger, Americans have always set aside partisan politics to secure this nation and to affirm our common values. The War on Terrorism requires no less.

This letter seems designed to stifle dissent and to preempt the diversity of voices fundamentally required to win a long term battle against radical Islamic terrorists. Hasn't our problem in Iraq thus far been a paucity of views and voices around the president about the costs and consequences of attacking Iraq as an expanded part of the battle against bin Laden?

And to make matters worse, the letter perpetuates the military dimension of American toughness and resolve while not really embracing the reality that long term success is going to depend on economic and cultural leaps between Americans and citizens of other nations, so as to steal the global audience away from the terrorists playing to it.

But there is more to this Committee on the Present Danger than stifling voices or alternatively and less cynically, of providing yet another vehicle for patriotic, security concerned citizens to help the nation maintain its "resolve." The issue is James Woolsey himself.

On September 11, 2001, Woolsey became the first to allege a possible connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. By September 12th, the former Clinton administration CIA Director was appearing on every major network posing the same argument: that Iraq had contacts with al Qaeda and that the terrible terrorist assaults in New York and Washington were likely to have had state assistance. He argued that Iraq was a likely candidate behind the tragedy but, to be fair, also mentioned Iran but with the notation that it was a less likely player.

While Woolsey, a real patriot by many accounts from those who know him, may have been pointing a finger of suspicion at the most obvious thug in the Middle East, he should have pondered the many other competing scenarios -- involving potentially the Saudis, rogue elements in Pakistan, or the possibility that al Qaeda was itself the first major transnational terrorist network with the sophistication and complexity of a multinational corporation (Peter Bergen's thesis in Holy War Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden). There were many other scenarios to consider as well -- but Iraq became his and the president's focus after 9/11. What explains the former Director of America's Central Intelligence Agency becoming so tenaciously focused on Hussein?

First of all, though it was allegedly a pro bono relationship, Woolsey was the lawyer and Washington adviser to Hussein's enemy and princeling abroad in waiting, Ahmed Chalabi.

Shame on Woolsey and the media for failing to disclose the conflict of interest that Woolsey held when pointing the finger at Iraq for collusion in 9/11. To shore up his credibility, his relationship with Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress should have been made more public. The distraction of resources, financial and military, away from closing down al Qaeda in Afghanistan and losing bin Laden early in this war on terror by the United States has proved so costly that the "mystique of American power" in the world has been punctured and seriously so. Too many bad guys now see that despite pretensions of global power, the United States is at its limit in ability to project power, armaments, and troops anywhere else in the world. A hot conflict in Asia today, one of the other world's hot spots, would be devastating as America is obviously overstretched because of Iraq commitments.

Besides lack of transparency about his client's motives, Woolsey also brought previously unknown baggage to the table when he linked Hussein to radical Islamists. Between August 2000 and February 2001, James Woolsey and one of his early cohorts in the assertion of Saddam Hussein's connection to al Qaeda, Laurie Mylroie (see Peter Bergen's "Armchair Provocateur," in the December 2003 Washington Monthly) participated in an important scenario building exercise at Sandia National Weapons Laboratories that raised some interesting security risk scenarios for the nation.

The project was to look at what they termed ultra-terrorism and the possibility of an organized, asymmetric attack on the U.S. One of these scenarios -- deemed unlikely in the end by the Sandia organizer -- was that Iraq creates a "false flag operation using fundamentalist Muslims to carry out infrastructure and biological attacks in the U.S." that might seed "widespread suspicion of Muslims and blacks in the U.S., create the perception that the U.S. government was over reacting, and radicalize the world's Muslim community." A second scenario starts with Iraq working through Osama bin Laden, who spawns many attacks and violent incidents, "escalating to bio and radiological weapons." The scenario included publicly tying incidents to bin Laden, America vacating the Middle East, and Iraq declaring final victory. The organizer also deemed this conclusion "unlikely."

This kind of scenario building is exactly what America's national security labs should be doing with smart people like Woolsey, but what became a problem is that this former CIA Director may have let scenarios dreamed up in a simulation harden into realities in his own mind. The scenarios also helped validate the fantastic and disproved allegations made by Mylroie in her book, The War Against America: Saddam Hussein and the World Trade Center Attacks.

Woolsey's scenario about Hussein had taken shape even before the 9-11 attacks occurred as he played ultra-terrorism war games with other colleagues. Like so many others, Woolsey jumped way too far ahead in his conclusions and steered the nation in a direction that has undermined American power and interests -- and he won't admit it.

In addition, Woolsey's client Ahmed Chalabi secured Woolsey's services in 1998 clearing from an INS detention center in Guam six Iraqi National Congress associates of Chalabi that the INS (and CIA) believed to be threats to American interests. As it turned out, the INS and CIA were right as one of the detainees, Aras Habib Karim, became Chalabi's Chief of Intelligence and was a sieve of sensitive and classified American information to Iran, now under investigation by the FBI. Woolsey successfully freed these Chalabi acolytes, paved ways of so-called defectors from Iraq whom Chalabi lined up to feed false information to American intelligence services, and may have become the first American CIA Director clearly duped by a foreign government (Iran) to take out its number one enemy, Iraq. Normally, these wouldn't be good career moves.

Despite the failure to be transparent about his early conflict of interest and the problem of bringing preconceived notions to a complex national security problem, Woolsey can not be faulted for his patriotism but rather for just being regularly wrong and imperviously blind to evidence. His spearheading the Committee on the Present Danger seems to be driven by the toxic combination of vanity combined with the politics of distraction for his earlier failures.

Now with President Bush advocating an Intelligence Czar, consistent with the proposal made by the 9-11 Commission but without real hiring and budgetary authority, Woolsey is on a short list being discussed for that job.

If Woolsey does want to remain valuable to his nation -- shouldn't he begin to fess up for some of these errors of judgment and transparency? Part of being a good leader is being accountable for one's mistakes, changing course, and moving on.

Jim, we are waiting. . .

-- Steve Clemons