I AM ALL FOR FUN, BUT THE CRAZY PROGNOSTICATORS ON BOTH SIDES of this political race are going a bit far (and yes, I'm going to overstate my case, just for fun).

It is Halloween tonight, and soon I'll have little goblins and dwarf Dick Cheneys, George Bushes, and John Kerrys here to collect candy. Normally, this is a night when rationality can be suspended and superstition given its time on the calendar. No harm done.

However, my friend Mark Goldberg text-messaged me from a large coffee bar in Adams Morgan called Tryst here in Washington with some interesting news. He said that he was really caught off guard and confused that the entire crowd (and it's a very large place) of Washingtonians were rooting AGAINST the Washington Redskins.

I am not a football fan. I had far too much exposure to football as a kid, and I grew up in a fun but typical Republican military family which always rooted for the Washington Redskins. One of the fun battles we had inside the family each year was visiting the grandparents at Thanksgiving and watching the Redskins and Dallas Cowboys go at it. My grandparents, their siblings, and my million and one second cousins were all for the Cowboys. I have to admit I really never cared who won, but I liked the idea of perhaps one day owning a franchise.

From Mark Goldberg's comments, I just assumed that all of his Tryst coffee house mates were opposing the Redskins because of some silly notion that the Redskins were a Republican team. I think that it was Nixon who dubbed the Redskins "America's Team." In these crazy times, I could regrettably imagine that we have become such a polarized society that a funky neighborhood in Washington might be able to draw 100% Democrats who perceived the Redskins as a 100% Republican icon.

I know that this is silly, but there is a lot of silliness out there right now as we ramp up to November 2nd.

My response to Mark was: "That is what is wrong with Democrats. They always want to oppose Republican symbols, like the Redskins, and not take them over or co-opt the team."

Well, I read it all wrong. The reason for the widespread hometown opposition to a Redskins victory over the Green Bay Packers had to do with one of these old, irrational presidential outcome indicators.

"The Redskins and the Vote" ran as an editorial today in the Washington Post, and it reads:

Ever since 1936, the year before the team moved to Washington, the last home game before the election has predicted the winner. If the Redskins won, so does the incumbent party in the White House; if not, not. This rule has held good for 17 straight elections. If you needed an extra reason to watch the team take on the Green Bay Packers this afternoon, you now have one.

The article's last graf reads:

. . .there is the Halloween factor. Since Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, the candidate whose mask sold the most has won. According to the Goldman Sachs team, Bush was winning as of one month ago. But neither candidate can match the hapless Richard Nixon. His mask outsells them both.

Here's a question. Is Karl Rove out stacking the deck and having his agents buy thousands of George Bush masks? It might be considered by some an ingeneous move.

Seriously though, the race is real close between Bush and Kerry. And just like I don't approve of the subordination of rationality to faith by anti-enlightenment religious zealots, I think that liberals and progressives who try to look at irrational benchmarks to determine this election are just as silly.

Just so you know, Green Bay beat Washington, 28-14. But Bush's masks are dominating on the streets of Washington tonight, at least by my count here handing out candy.

Still too close to call.

-- Steve Clemons

THOSE WHO THINK THAT COMMERCIAL AIRLINES ARE NOT SENDING back the remains of soldiers have outdated information or are wrong it turns out. I have been been flooded with information over the last day about the Department of Defense regulations regarding shipping back a soldier's remains to the United States.

Here is some of what I have learned. The U.S. Army Human Resources Command maintains a good website designed to help those who have lost someone as a casualty in war. (ed note: Thanks to KS for sending this.)

Army Regulations 638-2 (Care and Disposition of Remains and Disposition of Personal Effects), Section 11-8 (2) reads:

Commercial transportation is the preferred method except when impractical, not available, or cost prohibitive.

The PDF that goes through the rules and regulations is very long, but I have it -- and if anyone would like to have a copy -- email me and I will forward it. The person who pointed out this regulation also noted that there may be other qualifications that modify or trump this regulation, such as classification of war dead.

My guess is that those of you who believed that the military always transported war dead to Dover, Delaware for processing, military honors, and the like may be correct in most cases -- and this may still fit with normal regulations. Very few U.S. airlines are flying in and out of Iraq or Afghanistan.

The United Airlines crew members I was speaking to were flying in from Germany, and the soldier on this plane may have died from some injuries sustained in a war zone after which he died in a hospital in Germany or could have been a U.S. soldier who just had something happen to him or her in Germany. United personnel did tell me that they fly soldiers for the U.S. military in and out of Kuwait frequently.

Another note from JS, who I happen to know is a well placed guy in military and intelligence circles shared this:

You will recall the case in April of this year of Maytag Aircraft Corporation whose employee photographed some flag-draped coffins leading to a Pentagon effort to ban further such photographs. Maytag is one of six charter freight carriers with a DoD contract for the Gulf/Iraq theater that is not limited to, but includes, transport of military coffins.

So it does not seem in any way unusual that an American carrier from Europe would be handling a coffin from a DoD medical facility in Germany under a DoD freight contract.

Another note about the soldier-to-soldier side of war death reality comes from "K":

Regarding the body of the soldier on the United flight -- it's possible that this was the case. The treatment for KIAs (Killed in Action) is what we see at Dover, but not every dead soldier gets that level of treatment.

I'd be that the soldier died from natural causes in Germany or during training there, but not in combat.

Another reader, TWB, sent this interesting note:

United States Army Memorial Affairs Activity Europe (USAMAA-E) in Landstuhl no longer sends all caskets to Dover for final preparations, but will in many cases send them directly to the families (according to the wishes of the Person Authorized to Direct Disposition, PAD). I don't know the logistical specifics, but it would make more sense to send them direct-to-point via commercial air. So I have no trouble with the casket story.

I spent some time looking into this issue about the casket on the flight because I received numerous emails from people showing "A Soldier's Story" to others who instantly rejected the story not about what the soldier told me -- but rather about my comment that a deceased soldier was being transported back to the U.S. on that commercial flight.

I hope that this post provides useful detail to those of you who got mugged by friends saying that caskets just are not sent back to the U.S. the way I described. I think that this other material -- but most importantly, the army regulation -- clears that up.

I am still working on the subject of the DNA probes.

Two days to go.

-- Steve Clemons

AFTER I PUBLISHED "A SOLDIER'S STORY," A THREAD of extraordinarily interesting and useful comments by others has developed on topics ranging from whether the soldier I was speaking to was feeding me material that was part real and part rumor, all real, or entirely contrived.

My judgment is that this guy gave me a snap-shot of his view of things. That's all. It's always a mistake to generalize from a single anecdote, but at the same time, it is clear that the Pentagon is so wrapped up in information control that collective anecdotes often aggregate into the 'real' history of an event.

There are two points I would like to seek some further commentary from people if you know of anyone who would like to either publicly post commentary or send me a private email. The first has to do with a private airline transporting a soldier's remains back to the U.S. The second has to do with the DNA probes used to try and find certain individuals in the rubble at Tora Bora.

First, I know that the military transports bodies, in coffins, to Dover, Delaware. That's well-known. That is why I was surprised to hear (not from the soldier by the way) but from several people who were working on this airplane that there was a coffin on board with a soldier's remains. In as respectful a way as possible, I confirmed that this was true with the captain who was walking the aisles and who talked with the stewards and stewardesses (and me) at the back of the plane for a few moments.

I didn't dig into this. But there have been many who have written that it is just impossible for a United Airlines flight from Frankfurt to have a body of a soldier on board.

My question to all of you is: is it impossible? Are there cases, or not, where soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, or who have died because of sustained injuries, may be flown back commercially? I would really like to know whether or not collective awareness out there dismisses this possibility. If so, then there is an interesting story here -- because there are at least several United Airlines employees quite convinced that there was a coffin and soldier on board being transported back.

I look forward to responses from people who may be in a position to know something beyond the conventional.

Secondly, some people have gone nearly apoplectic at the story the soldier shared about long probes being shoved through rock and dirt to take blood and tissue samples from some killed at Tora Bora. He described long pole like probes with a puncture prick at one end and a box reading device on top. Science fiction writers have even written to me saying that the notion of something like the soldier described was too incredible to believe.

I really have no doubt that the soldier I spoke to believed that these were in-the-field DNA readers and recorders. Whether they were or not is a different question.

Since then (thanks to a reader -- badtux -- of The Washington Note), I have stumbled across this firm, Nanosphere, which seems to be developing or marketing something exactly along the lines of what the soldier tried to describe but had a tough time articulating.

As the reader of my blog shared, it would be interesting to know whether such a probe as the one from Nanosphere was available after the bombing of Tora Bora. Would this device have been available as a prototype or secret device then?

It would be useful to hear from others who were in the aftermath of Tora Bora and may have been involved in body collection and processing, the search for bin Laden, or other intelligence-related activities to contact me regarding whether these probes are fictional, or real.

I will post some other questions related to "A Soldier's Story" soon.

Remember to vote.

-- Steve Clemons

LAST NIGHT, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY'S NEWLY ACQUIRED G. JOHN IKENBERRY celebrated his 50th Birthday and his brilliant wife, Lidia Usami, performed in a chamber music recital for about 100 of their Washington friends to whom they wanted to say good-bye.

A lot of folks were discussing bin Laden's latest video message to Americans. However, Eminem got more play at this party than bin Laden. Even if you aren't into rap, watch Eminem's latest music video here. I think it's the most powerful piece of politically directed art I have seen (or heard) in years.

Brooke's Story, a short ad that has been running in battleground states but also over the internet, drew some healthy discussion last night.

No one talked about the wolves controversy, but I liked this comment from some of the Bush ad wolves who are protesting in their own "Wolf Packs for Truth" ad.

-- Steve Clemons

I JUST SAT NEXT TO A VERY TOUGH SOLDIER FROM THE 82ND AIRBORNE on a flight back from Europe. I have been thinking for two days about how to share some of the things he told me without compromising him.

This guy I met is not one prone to talk; he was very serious, very mellow -- and comes from a family of enlisted military men. His dad was in Vietnam.

He has had one rotation in Afghanistan, one in Iraq. He is now in Germany but will soon be transferred back to Iraq. He was at Tora Bora and has seen a lot of Iraqi, Afghan, and American dead.

According to him, 75% of all soldiers want Bush defeated in the election and don't care who defeats him; anger and resentment are high. He says that 90% of the officers remain far out of harm's way. From lietenants all the way up, there is general understanding that the officers are hiding in holes, or holding back in well-defended buildings and quite cavalier about sending troops out for assignments and errands that are frequently stupid, poorly planned, and dangerous.

He has said that he has experienced good and bad commanders to whom he reported -- but that when it came to taking the anthrax vaccine (which a judge has just said that the military can no longer order its soldiers to take), he quietly refused. He told his commander that he just wouldn't take it -- and that many, many soldiers have avoided taking this anthrax vaccine without incident. He said that a friend of his took it and his nervous system was severely affected and is now permanently disabled. He said he would rather have "an Article 15 (non-judicial punishment) than be dead."

I asked him about Lariam, an anti-malarial drug which I have written about before. Lariam, also known as Mefloquine, can, according to drug warning labels cause aggression, psychosis and suicidal tendencies.

He told me that he had been issued seven tablets to take over a week -- and stopped after the second because of incredible negative physical reaction to the drug. He said that several people in his unit became deeply depressed, others very sick. And he said that most people in the military have had to become somewhat accustomed to the idea that the Pentagon looks at the soldiers as "guinea pigs" to test drugs on.

At Tora Bora, he reported on the massive bombing that went on there and said that during the clean up period, they used sensors to detect the remains of those killed and then would punch large poles down into the dirt with pricks that would suck blood up to test the DNA of the victim there on the spot. He said that it surprised the soldiers that they had DNA testing capabilities that were advanced enough to give readings immediately -- and said that they scoured everything that was bombed to try and find bin Laden.

At this time, I learned from one of the stewards on the flight that there was the coffin with a dead American soldier on the plane. The person to whom I was talking just reacted by saying, "everyone wants out -- everyone."

I asked him what he thought happened at Abu Ghraib and the handling of prisoners in general. He blamed both the people in the prison and their superiors. He says that everyone knows that the adrenaline rush and completely new experiences these young Americans are having lead to scary behaviors. He also stated that it is well known among the troops that al Qaeda takes (or keeps) no prisoners.

Early in the Afghanistan incursion, he said that he was on one of the last helicopters out of a very scary incident in which about ten U.S. soldiers were killed in a well-planned diversion and ambush by al Qaeda and the Taliban. He was at a fueling station between Kandahar and Shkin, very close to the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. A group began firing on U.S. soldiers at the fueling station, and some choppers and soldiers went after them. From behind, from the mountains on the Pakistani side, a massive number of al Qaeda and Taliban forces were streaming down behind the Americans -- and the soldier I was talking to could see this from the air in the chopper he was in.

Black Hawks were called in -- and the Taliban took out one or two -- but basically everyone just retreated. According to him at least ten soldiers surrendered to al Qaeda, and they were found later. One of the soldiers had had his penis castrated, and then this was stuffed in his mouth (sorry for the graphic detail, but it's important). The other soldiers were all shot in the head. Several others were "cut up," he said. To him, it was clear that they had been tortured.

He said that these experiences have been repeated in other encounters with al Qaeda -- and thus many of the soldiers who feel on the front lines of a war they don't understand and can't figure out -- have them so incredibly on edge that it's not surprising that they could come undone in a prisoner-holding situation. What he said though is that all of the officers know this to be the case and probably expected this kind of behavior from the soldiers and MPs.

He said that at night, when they are moving people or supplies, or making deliveries, they are scared -- and drive at 80 or 90 miles an hour with their lights off. He said lots of innocent people are killed by this night-driving and while the troops are supposed to report any damage or harm they do, almost none do -- no one wants to stop. This confirms an anecdote about the same kind of killer-driving that Seymour Hersh recently shared with me.

Interestingly, he said that all enlisted men or officers in command positions have orders not to talk about their war experiences with the junior and fresh troops. He refuses -- and tells those people under him everything he knows because he thinks it will help save their lives. When he went to Afghanistan at the beginning, basically nothing was told to them; he kept repeating "nothing." And he said that their basic training in North Carolina was 180 degrees opposite of what they really needed to know for this kind of combat.

He said morale is very low among the troops and that they all want out -- few believe in the war or Bush, and he thinks that many of these troops' negative feelings are being transmitted back to extended family networks that have traditionally been supporters of the Republican Party, like his own family.

He shared quite a bit more, including that his military commanders are planning for at minimum an eight year deployment in Iraq, maybe longer. He also shared an interesting anecdote that about a year ago, certain commanders in the 82nd Airborne had been told to prepare for a quick incursion into Cuba. I was stunned.

He said, "Yep, we couldn't believe that on top of everything else, Bush thought he could go take out Castro." The Navy Seals were going to go in and do the dirty work, he said, and the "82nd was going to go in for clean-up." He said that he never heard more about it but that the orders clearly didn't go forward -- but they were prepared for that possibility and told that "Bush just wanted to take out Castro."

Another thing he shared was that after this incident at Shkin, mentioned above, the Navy Seals were sent in to go find the al Qaeda and Taliban troops hiding in the Pakistan mountains. He said that they were all through those mountains in Pakistan and what he told me was probably classified. But they found nothing, packed their bags, and went home.

I don't want to analyze all of this -- but I want to emphasize that the guy who spoke to me was someone who quite genuinely believed in his country and in military service. He looked like the kind of guy who kept to himself and was clearly not used to articulating the kind of feelings and experiences he was sharing. He said he is just a very stable kind of guy, someone who doesn't react much to all the death he has seen -- though he feels for people. But he says that few of the soldiers he knows and with whom he works has the detachment from events and this horrible situations he generally has.

He said that in contrast to Vietnam where U.S. soldiers were killing other U.S. soldiers and officers whom they didn't like -- that is not happening in Afghanistan or Iraq. But he said people are getting depressed and disillusioned. They don't know what their objectives are -- and they see lots of dead children, dead innocent men and women, grieving families, whose early appreciation for Americans has given away to profound hate and resentment.

He said that if he were one of the Iraqi citizens experiencing what an occupying force was doing, he'd be fighting too. He said that the only way to win is to get out of there -- let the Iraqis resolve the issues they need to resolve internally. Give them money, give them resources, give them advice if asked -- but get the U.S. troops out.

Needless to say, my mind has had a hard time detaching from the grimness of this brave soldier's assessment.

-- Steve Clemons

AP REPORTS THAT AN ARMED INSURGENT GROUP, THE AL-KARAR BRIGADE, says that it worked with various U.S. military and intelligence officers in moving the massive amount of explosives that has become a major pre-election controversy.

Clearly, there are problems believing the assertions of an armed and hostile group, but on the other hand, this is the first reasonable scenario for how such a huge cache of weapons-making material could be moved without our intelligence operations seeing it.

After all, Colin Powell provided extensive photo evidence and other intelligence in his UN testimoney of truck movements of weapons and related materials. One would think that we would have been even more successful in monitoring movements around real rather than imagined weapons.

Could our intelligence services have somehow been involved in moving and hiding the materials that somehow fell back into hostile hands? There must be more to this story.

AP reports:

A group calling itself Al-Islam's Army Brigades, Al-Karar Brigade, said it had coordinated with officers and soldiers of ``the American intelligence'' to obtain a "huge amount of the explosives that were in the al-Qaqaa facility."

Josh Marshall has been following this affair closely, and another little birdie tells me that it was none other than Bill Clinton who pulled Kerry aside and told him to go after this issue hard and tenaciously -- and to stay on it.

Good call.

-- Steve Clemons

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S OBSESSION WITH ESCAPING from the norms of the Geneva Conventions seems bizarre to me.

One would think that lessons might have been learned by this point from America's experiences at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. By ripping up this sacrosanct commitment that all nations have committed to -- a commitment to treat all prisoners with a standard level of dignity, not subject to harm or torture -- this administration is assuring that future American prisoners are subjected to the same treatment that we are extending others. Rather than being known as upholders of rule of law -- America is becoming known around the world as the lawyers who find the loopholes in the law or who behave arrogantly beyond the reach of law.

Douglas Jehl writes in the New York Times:

A new legal opinion by the Bush administration has concluded for the first time that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, administration officials said Monday.

They said the opinion would essentially allow the military and the C.I.A. to treat at least a small number of non-Iraqi prisoners captured in Iraq in the same way as members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan or elsewhere, for whom the United States has maintained that the Geneva Conventions do not apply.

I am returning to the U.S. today from Geneva, the namesake of these important in-times-of-war commitments to humaneness and sanity.

I suspect that many other major nations in the world are preparing to distance themselves further from the United States.

They increasingly realize that Bush may not be an anomaly or accident and that their calculation of self-interest requires new bets on alternative alliances and the development of new competencies to constrain the power and behavior of the U.S. which Anatol Lieven has so aptly said was king of the hill and then "kicked down its own hill."

-- Steve Clemons

AP IS REPORTING THAT CHIEF JUSTICE WILLIAM RENQUIST is in intensive care, hospitalized for treatment of thyroid cancer.

The next president of the United States may appoint THREE justices, and maybe four, to the Supreme Court.

Four more years of the Bush administration may galvanize a more cohesive and organized Democratic Party than is the case today -- but a balanced Supreme Court, women's right to choose to have an abortion, and our privacy writ large may be part of the irreparable damage of these times that cannot be reversed.

Rehnquist's illness should sober up some voters. I still wish Chief Justice Rehnquist a speedy recovery.

-- Steve Clemons

EUROPE IS WORRIED ABOUT THE TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONSHIP, and I am in Geneva now making sure that they know that there is indeed a lot about which to be concerned.

This meeting which involves a broad cross-section of Europeans, including Russians who at this meeting have defined themselves as Europeans, has a handful of Americans. Strangely enough, this conference and the list of attending Americans were assembled by Catherine Kelleher who is now at the Naval War College and a former senior Department of Defense official, and all have the name Steve: Steve Clemons, Steven Simon of RAND, Steven Kull of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, and Stephen Szabo of the Bologna Center of the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

The most interesting thing for me in this conference is how supportive the Russians are of Bush. Practically everyone else is mystified by the resilience of George Bush's support and dumbfounded that most Americans don't seem to care that the rest of the world is very fearful of what four more years of the Bush team at the help will do to the global system.

One of the tasks we have yet to fulfill at this meeting is to generate some suggestions on how to get the Transatlantic Relationship back on decent ground. I'm pessimistic that the crowd we have here will be able to coalesce around something that would be seriously considered -- but for my part, I have decided to submit Zbigniew Brzezinski's New York Times piece, "How to Make New Enemies," today to serve as our basic outline.

I think Brzezinski diagnoses our current situation unsentimentally and brilliantly. He writes:

Both candidates have become prisoners of a worldview that fundamentally misdiagnoses the central challenge of our time. President Bush's "global war on terror" is a politically expedient slogan without real substance, serving to distort rather than define. It obscures the central fact that a civil war within Islam is pitting zealous fanatics against increasingly intimidated moderates.

The undiscriminating American rhetoric and actions increase the likelihood that the moderates will eventually unite with the jihadists in outraged anger and unite the world of Islam in a head-on collision with America.

After all, look what's happening in Iraq. For a growing number of Iraqis, their "liberation" from Saddam Hussein is turning into a despised foreign occupation. Nationalism is blending with religious fanaticism into a potent brew of hatred. The rates of desertion from the American-trained new Iraqi security forces are dangerously high, while the likely escalation of United States military operations against insurgent towns will generate a new rash of civilian casualties and new recruits for the rebels.

Pan-Arab nationalism, or what Steve Simon at this conference has called a new global, transnational Muslim awareness, is a far different global challenge than small groups of terrorists. The great tragedy of this so-called war against terror is that we have allowed, even helped, al Qaeda to morph into a movement that looks legitimate to far too many in the world who would otherwise be tilting towards modernity.

On Bush, Brzezinski writes:

If President Bush is re-elected, our allies will not be providing more money or troops for the American occupation. Mr. Bush has lost credibility among other nations, which distrust his overall approach. Moreover, the British have been drawing down their troop strength in Iraq, the Poles will do the same, and the Pakistanis recently made it quite plain that they will not support a policy in the Middle East that they view as self-defeating.

In fact, in the Islamic world at large as well as in Europe, Mr. Bush's policy is becoming conflated in the public mind with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policy in Gaza and the West Bank. Fueled by anti-American resentments, that policy is widely caricatured as a crude reliance on power, semicolonial in its attitude, and driven by prejudice toward the Islamic world. The likely effect is that staying on course under Mr. Bush will remain a largely solitary American adventure.

But he doesn't let Kerry off either:

Unfortunately, the predicament faced by America in Iraq is also more complex than the solutions offered so far by the Democratic side in the presidential contest. Senator John Kerry would have the advantage of enjoying greater confidence among America's traditional allies, since he might be willing to re-examine a war that he himself had not initiated.

But that alone will not produce German or French funds and soldiers. The self-serving culture of comfortable abstention from painful security responsibilities has made the major European leaders generous in offering criticism but reluctant to assume burdens.

What Brzezinski writes is on target. I have conversed with most of the leading European Ambassadors to the United States -- and nearly all of those who do not already have forces deployed in Iraq admit that there number one task should Kerry find himself elected is to prevent his incoming administration from asking for their respective nation's troops to be deployed in Iraq.

They don't want to explicitly reject Kerry's request and thus feel the need to try and preempt the request.

Brzezinski sees that for the U.S. to extract itself from this mess, some arrangement is going to be needed that involves a broader alliance of players -- and knows that the price of German and French involvement will be very high.

To get there, Brzezinski suggests a new bargain:

To get the Europeans to act, any new administration will have to confront them with strategic options. The Europeans need to be convinced that the United States recognizes that the best way to influence the eventual outcome of the civil war within Islam is to shape an expanding Grand Alliance. . .that embraces the Middle East by taking on the region's three most inflammatory and explosive issues: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the mess in Iraq, and the challenge of a restless and potentially dangerous Iran.

While each issue is distinct and immensely complex, each affects the others. The three must be tackled simultaneously, and they can be tackled effectively only if America and Europe cooperate and engage the more moderate Muslim states.

. . .A comprehensive initiative along these lines would force the European leaders to take a stand: not to join would run the risk of reinforcing and legitimating American unilateralism while pushing the Middle East into a deeper crisis. America might unilaterally attack Iran or unilaterally withdraw from Iraq. In either case, a sharing of burdens as well as of decisions should provide a better solution for all concerned.

Brzezinski has put a proposal on the table that has some flaws but also has a lot of sense. He has elevated the question about America's future foreign policy engagement from one not just of whether or not the U.S. should be engaged in Iraq -- but rather to how to fix the mess we are in and preempt greater damage to our and the world's mutual interests.

I highly recommend the Brzezinski piece -- and will try to get the Europeans I am meeting here in Geneva, and the Russians, to recognize the merit in his proposal.

-- Steve Clemons

AMERICAN ACCOUNTING PRACTICES USED TO BE THE ENVY OF THE WORLD. Then came the crimes of Enron and Arthur Andersen, foreshadowed and followed by hundreds of cases of fraud and malfeasance cases of illegal collusion between corporate management and those hired by stockholders to be the watchdogs.

There are revelations today in the New York Times that the firm Custer Battles repeatedly billed the Coalition Provisional Authority for non-existent services.

After a few years of news about how bad it is to fix prices, rig deals, and distort market forces, I find it remarkable that Eliot Spitzer seems to have no difficulty finding giant firms to shake to their foundation. Now, AIG Chairman Hank Greenberg and his son Marsh & McLennan CEO Jeffrey Greenberg may find themselves tied up in yet another huge case of corporate criminality. The son may be on the way out real fast.

What does the American brand name mean anymore?

I have a lot of respect for Claudia Rosett who deserves enormous credit for breaking the oil-for-food scandal that swirled between Iraq, the United Nations, and major nations around the world, including U.S. firms. Regrettably, she works as journalist-in-residence at the Fund for Defense of Democracies, but she does great investigative work.

My problem though is that she is writing nothing about the staggering fact that America's corruption rivals that of the U.N. The corrupt practices of blue-chip players in American society that are self-dealing and those who dip into the U.N. cookie jar for self benefit are similarly disgusting and similarly neglected until the cases fester so much that ignoring the corruption doesn't work any more.

I am traveling now, and it is tough to search and link the countless stories on missing money under the Coalition Provisional Authority's watch. But this floors me. After all the controversy about the single-bid, forced down-our-throat contract with Halliburton, Reuters reports:

The U.S. Army is laying the groundwork to let Halliburton Co. keep several billion dollars paid for work in Iraq that Pentagon auditors say is questionable or unsupported by proper documentation, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

According to Pentagon documents reviewed by the Journal, the Army has acknowledged that the Houston-based company might never be able to account properly for some of its work, which has been probed amid accusations that Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root unit overbilled the government for some operations in Iraq.

Even if I wanted to give Bush the benefit of the doubt on some of his idealistic crusading around the world, I can't.

When our example is deep corruption abroad and at home, when we can't manage to hold senior leadership accountable for Abu Ghraib, and when deceiving the public by withholding or classifying information that could help us make better policy choices, America has no moral standing. . .none.

-- Steve Clemons

JAMES WOOLSEY'S MOST RECENT RECORDED CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS:

KLAYMAN, LARRY
VIA FRIENDS OF LARRY KLAYMAN
01/16/2004 250.00 24020212665

(information from the Federal Elections Commission)

At first, I didn't see much that interested me here. Supporting McCain, Jane Harman, the RNC, Dick Lugar, Joe Lieberman, and even the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Political Action Committee sounded normal. However, I didn't know much about Larry Klayman, who ran in the Republican Primary for Senate.

He lost -- but his roster of endorsements includes former Congressman Bob Barr, Illinois Senate candidate Alan Keyes, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, Pat Boone, Morgan Brittany, and Chuck Norris. Paul Weyrich made the list too.

The guy Jim Woolsey gave $250.00 to markets himself as one of the "leading enemies" of Bill & Hilary Clinton. His website is fun to look through. Here's one of the first grafs:

Honest. Reformer. Public Servant. Watchdog. Tough But Fair. Citizen Activist. Reagan Conservative. Man of Integrity. Self-made Man. Believer and Embodiment of the American Dream. Thinker. Man of Deeds. Leading Enemy of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their "comrades" like Senators Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, and Charles Schumer of the "great left wing conspiracy". These are but some of the words that have been used to describe Larry Klayman, Florida's next United States Senator.

This from Alan Keyes' endorsement:

Dr. Keyes in his endorsement promised to campaign with Larry across Florida. He will also be assisting Klayman with fundraising. Dr. Keyes has a nationwide following from his presidential bids as well as his fights for the Ten Commandments and for Terri Schiavo in Florida.

"Dr. Keyes will play an important part of my campaign," said Klayman, "I will call upon him for advice not only during the campaign but after my election."

Much of this won't surprise people, given Woolsey's buddy-buddy relationship with Chalabi, his role heading the Committee on the Present Danger, and the neocon cluster he is running with nowadays. But I have to admit that I still find myself astonished by the company our former CIA Director keeps lately.

Now, if I could only find the direct link between Woolsey and Alan Keyes. . .

-- Steve Clemons

CARL LEVIN GOES AFTER DOUGLAS FEITH IN A NEW REPORT drafted by the minority staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee accusing the Defense Undersecretary of misleading, well really lying to, Congress.

In the New York Times Douglas Jehl reports:

The report said a classified document prepared by Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, not only asserted that there were ties between the Baghdad government and the terrorist network, but also did not reflect accurately the intelligence agencies' assessment - even while claiming that it did.

In issuing the report, the senator, Carl M. Levin, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said he would ask the panel to take "appropriate action'' against Mr. Feith. Senator Levin said Mr. Feith had repeatedly described the ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda as far more significant and extensive than the intelligence agencies had.

I have been uncomfortable with the fact that I have been one of many voices, indeed I think a majority, who can't believe that Douglas Feith still has his job. I'm a natural contrarian, or at least perceive myself to be.

So, now I need to spring to Douglas Feith's defense for a moment. Isn't it possible that Feith is the Lyndie England of the Hussein-al Qaeda connection story? Well, if not Lyndie England -- then at least only a henchman for far more powerful pols who have been devoted to perpetuating this connection between not only Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda -- but Saddam Hussein and 9/11?

The Alpha-dog at the top of this chain is Vice President Cheney. Isn't Feith's best defense regarding his obfuscation of facts, distortions and lies to Congress that he was just doing what his big boss, Dick Cheney, was doing?

But on the other hand, if Lyndie England and her young friends who are undeservedly being shackled with the entire responsibility for Abu Ghraib as Rumsfeld enjoys the perks of being above it all, then I'm all for Doug Feith spending some time paying for his sins too.

-- Steve Clemons

ELECTORAL-VOTE.COM HAS BUSH AND KERRY TIED TODAY 264-264, with ten Minnesota votes still without a home.

An Associated Press poll has Kerry up by 3 points over Bush, but Fox News is tilting towards the majority of polls that are calling it dead-even.

Tradesports.com still has Bush at 60% chance of winning over Kerry at 40%.

-- Steve Clemons

MAYBE IT'S TIME TO GO BACK TO CASH AND JOIN MEMBERS OF CONGRESS who refuse to hold a passport.

Bruce Schneier reports on these new RFID passports (that's radio frequency identification chips in your passport) that continually broadcast your personal information to whatever reader picks up the signal.

Schneier writes:

RFID chips are like smart cards, but they can be read from a distance. A receiving device can "talk" to the chip remotely, without any need for physical contact, and get whatever information is on it. Passport officials envision being able to download the information on the chip simply by bringing it within a few centimeters of a reader.

Unfortunately, RFID chips can be read by any reader, not just the ones at passport control. The upshot of this is that anyone carrying around an RFID passport is broadcasting his identity.

Here's more, and more, on the Ashcroftian nightmare that we seem to be sleep-walking towards.

I'm concerned enough about credit cards, cell phones, and all the other digital fingerprints I leave in nearly everything I do. I'm going to Geneva tonight -- and while I don't have a broadcasting chip in my passport yet -- this deterioration of privacy is weighing on me.

Thanks to Nigel for forwarding this.

-- Steve Clemons

MARK SALTER, JOHN McCAIN'S ABLE CHIEF OF STAFF AND CO-AUTHOR with McCain of three books -- Worth the Fighting For: The Education of an American Maverick, and the Heroes Who Inspired Him; Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life; and Faith of My Fathers -- protested Mark Goldberg's critique of Tony Blair's American lap-dog tendencies.

In Mark Salter's note to Prospect today, he writes:

perhaps i shouldn't be, but i was quite surprised by mr. goldberg's admonishment of tony blair for supporting american offensive operations in Iraq. i take it his point is that a good ally would let us lose in iraq. hard to find even a trace of patriotism in that. mark salter

I like Mark Salter and Mark Goldberg and think that this exchange is intereesting.

What got Mark Salter's ire going was Goldberg's passage:

We've known for years now that Tony Blair is a true believer in George W. Bush's plan for Iraq; nonetheless American liberals are somewhat comfortable with Blair because we have always assumed that he exists in our own "reality-based community." Unlike Bush, we thought, Blair uses his intellect to analyze empirical data, reason if necessary, and make an informed decisions based on discernable reality.

Blair's acquiescence to this newest manifestation of Bush's hopeless strategy for Iraq should seriously question any lingering love for Blair among American liberals.

I have a few short thoughts.

First, what would have been more patriotic in the case of George Custer at the Little Big Horn? (I recognize the limits of this metaphor...but just hear me out.) Would the "patriotic" thing have been to send in more reinforcements to support a reckless excursion? Or would the patriotic action be to help enable a retreat from disaster -- sending in troops or whatever supplies were needed to help move Custer's troops into a position where the long-term battle could be won? I think that the latter would be the patriotic thing to do.

But on the other hand, after recently spending some time at No. 10 with a foreign policy aide to Tony Blair, I do understand the importance the UK assigns to standing by the United States in good times as well as bad -- and that kind of unconditional support deserves thanks. But my contact there said that what Blair needs to do when bucking the base of his party in favor of Bush's policies is to show that Britain made some difference in American policy, helped direct it to more enlightened ends, rather than just being a lap dog.

Mark Goldberg argues that Blair failed to secure any "noticeable concessions from the United States" in its decision to redeploy troops. If he's right, and Blair is using none of his political capital to help the U.S. get on a more rational course of action in Iraq, then all he is doing is sending in more troops to enjoy Custer's proverbial fate.

These soldiers won't be wiped out as in Custer's case, but I don't think that we are on a course to win this war -- and what the patriotic thing for Mark Salter and Tony Blair to do is to help get America on a course where its actions can lead to some kind of stability, which we can call victory.

But as it is going, American action is radicalizing much of the Iraqi population against us, firebranding a new pan-Arab nationalism, and making brutal, primitive terrorist thugs look legitimate in the eyes of the very people we are trying to save.

The problems in Iraq are complex, but Blair needs to use his capital with Bush to get us on a more enlightened course. And Mark Goldberg is patriotic for pointing that direction.

-- Steve Clemons