President Bush will no doubt be talking about this new National Strategy for Victory in Iraq Report.

I am reading it now but wanted to get it out quickly to TWN readers.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

UPDATE: George Bush's speech this morning is almost entirely a counter-point response to James Fallows' important cover story in the Atlantic Monthly this month. Bush seems to be asserting that Fallows' assessment and math are wrong.

I'll be commenting on this later, but my sense is that Fallows went into extensive, nearly tedious detail about the thus far failed effort to train and "stand up" Iraqi security forces. The President's assertions about the great successes training Iraqi forces do not stand up to scrutiny. SCC

TWN has just secured a copy of a letter from Al-Jazeera Managing Director Wadah Khanfar to Prime Minister Tony Blair about the secret memo which allegedly outlines President Bush's intent to bomb Al-Jazeera's headquarters and Blair's efforts to dissuade him.

Here it the text:

TO THE ATTENTION OF:

The Right Honourable Tony Blair
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Date: 26 November, 2005

Dear Prime Minister,

It is with a great deal of concern that I write to you regarding the alleged statements made in the memo reported in the Daily Mirror this past week. The statements were to have occurred between President Bush and yourself regarding our organization, Al-Jazeera Channel. As alleged in the report the memo states that President Bush disclosed his plan to target Al-Jazeera at a White House face-to-face meeting with you on April 16, 2004. The report goes on to state that you subsequently dissuaded President Bush from doing so. On hearing about the memo we were astonished but we reserved our judgement on the statements until we could verify the claims being made by the report. Consequently, we were hoping that the memo would be made public to clarify the situation. However, we recently learned that the Attorney General has placed an order not to disclose the contents of the memo.

We are troubled and deeply concerned that this latest development is only increasing the outrage and shock felt by both our organization and news organizations across the world as well as by the public. Our profession is built on the value of the freedom of speech, and institutions such as ours struggle hard to maintain and champion these values.

We are calling upon you and your government to put an end to this widespread speculation and to set the record straight. We hope that you would agree with us that disclosing the contents of the memo would be in the best interest of the truth. The idea of either seriously or humorously suggesting the targeting of civilian news organisations is to us abhorrent in an age where the world is struggling for the ideals of democracy and freedom of speech. This is especially critical as the alleged discussion is supposed to have taken place between Mr. Bush and yourself, two world leaders who have stated their public commitment to these values.

Dear Prime Minister, we therefore call upon you to bring transparency to this situation in the best interest of the public good. I request a meeting with you to discuss this urgent matter directly.

Sincerely,

Wadah Khanfar
Managing Director
Al-Jazeera Channel

This "bombing memo" matter is going to continue to boil for a while, and the UK Attorney General is apparently intent on prosecuting two bureaucrats for leaking the contents of the memo.

Eventually, the memo will be made public, and it will add yet another few news cycles of attention to this matter and potentially implicate all of those who said that Bush said no such thing.

Obsession with secrecy and covering up mistakes is characteristic of the Bush administration, which now seems to be paying a high price for this undemocratic behavior.

-- Steve Clemons

For those of you in Washington, feel free to stop by at 4 p.m. for a program on Sino-Japanese Relations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, organized by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation.

Charles Kupchan will be moderating a session featuring University of Tokyo Professor Akio Takahara. Yang Bojiang of Brookings and I will be offering reactions and comments.

And later this evening, I will be talking about the latest on John Bolton on Air America Radio's Majority Report. I'll be on at about 8:30 p.m. ET.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Former State Department Chief of Staff Col. Lawrence Wilkerson continues to hammer the White House over torture and detainee abuse revelations -- but is also suggesting that as he learns more from various sources, his original views that the White House was not involved in duplicity regarding Iraq WMD intelligence is evolving.

In a very important BBC interview this morning, Wilkerson speculated that the White House did cherry-pick and try to manufacture intelligence estimates that matched its biases.

From an AP report on CNN:

"You begin to speculate, you begin to wonder -- Was this intelligence spun? Was it politicized? Was it cherry-picked? Did in fact the American people get fooled? I'm beginning to have my concerns," Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff for former Secretary of State Colin Powell, said in an interview broadcast Tuesday.

And more commentary on WMD Intel:

Wilkerson said he had believed that intelligence supported the view that Iraq had or was seeking to build weapons of mass destruction, and when none were found he accepted the argument that the administration had simply been fooled.

Lately, however, he said he had been troubled by disclosures that an informant known as Curveball, who supplied information about alleged mobile biological laboratories, was not reliable, and new information casting doubt on statements made by Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an al Qaeda military instructor, claiming support from Iraq.

Al-Libi's information, Wilkerson said, "led Colin Powell to say at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 that there were some pretty substantive contacts between al Qaeda and Baghdad."

It now appears, Wilkerson said, that al-Libi's statement "were obtained through interrogation techniques other than those authorized by Geneva (Conventions)."

"More important than that, we know that there was a Defense Intelligence Agency dissent on that testimony even before Colin Powell made his presentation," Wilkerson said. "We never heard about that."

Wilkerson is getting real traction in his criticism of White House war planning.

Hopefully, his leadership will inspire others inside the administration to find ways to make public what they know.

-- Steve Clemons

I can't attend today, but Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Peter Pace are giving a media briefing at 1:15 p.m.

One of the topics I am sure that they are going to cover -- or at least be queried about -- will be Joe Biden's oped this weekend which asserts that without serious adjustments in the deployment norms we have in place now for active duty military and the national guard, we will be compelled to draw down our Iraq-based forces simply because we don't have enough people to rotate in to maintain current force levels.

Senator Warner, on Meet the Press this weekend, challenged Biden's view stating that he had gone over the Biden oped word for word with General Pace. He said that Pace called the oped's assertions "inaccurate." However, as the discussion continued, even Senator Warner was compelled to concede that "serious adjustments" would have to be made to get either more National Guard over, or alternatively, to train troops for Iraq deployment who were trained for other tasks. Biden said that that kind of step was, in fact, a serious adjustment.

The other item that may come up in discussion is whether or not field battalion commanders have asked for more troops or not. This is important as Rumsfeld has harped on and on that he always gives his generals what they ask for to accomplish their mission. There are many in Washington who think that General Abizaid and Pace and others censor their requests for more troops because they know Rumsfeld wants them to. Again, on Meet the Press this weekend, Senator Biden made the case that he has yet to meet a field commander who has NOT asked for more troops.

So, let's wait for Don Rumsfeld's "aw shucks" excuses and side-stepping today, but still it should be an interesting meeting.

-- Steve Clemons

Today in a long interview session with a number of Associated Press correspondents, former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson offered important commentary on the White House's role in establishing a permissive environment that led to detainee abuse and torture.

This from a breaking AP report by Anne Gearan, which has just hit the wires:

A top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees arose from White House and Pentagon officials who argued that "the president of the United States is all-powerful" and the Geneva Conventions irrelevant.

In an Associated Press interview, former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson also said President Bush was "too aloof, too distant from the details" of postwar planning. Underlings exploited Bush's detachment and made poor decisions, Wilkerson said.

Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and likeminded aides. He said Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard."

On the question of detainees picked up in Afghanistan and other fronts in the war on terror, Wilkerson said Bush heard two sides of an impassioned argument within his administration. Abuse of prisoners, and even the deaths of some who had been interrogated in Afghanistan and elsewhere, have bruised the U.S. image abroad and undermined support for the Iraq war.

Cheney's office, Rumsfeld aides and others argued "that the president of the United States is all-powerful, that as commander in chief the president of the United States can do anything he damn well pleases," Wilkerson said.

On the other side were Powell, others at the State Department and top military brass, and occasionally Condoleezza Rice, who was then national security adviser, Wilkerson said.

Powell raised frequent and loud objections, his former aide said, once yelling into a telephone at Rumsfeld: "Donald, don't you understand what you are doing to our image?"

Wilkerson said Bush tried to work out a compromise in 2001 and 2002 that recognized that the war on terrorism was different from past wars and required greater flexibility in handling prisoners who don't belong to an enemy state or follow the rules themselves.

Bush's stated policy, which was heatedly criticized by civil liberties and legal groups at the time, was defensible, Wilkerson said. But it was undermined almost immediately in practice, he said.

In the field, the United States followed the policies of hardliners who wanted essentially unchecked ability to detain and harshly interrogate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, Wilkerson said.

Read the rest.

Lawrence Wilkerson is a powerful critic of the administration -- not only because of his proximity to then Secretary of State Colin Powell -- but also because he was diligent about keeping records of interactions with and directives from the White House on the subject of prisoner treatment.

-- Steve Clemons

I thought that Frank Gaffney's outrageous comments last week that, under certain circumstances, it would be laudable for U.S. forces to bomb Al-Jazeera's Doha headquarters were the first time he had suggested destroying this important Arab media network.

However, I just ran across an article by Frank Gaffney titled "Take Out Al Jazeera," which ran on Fox News on September 29, 2003.

In the piece, Gaffney argues:

Under present wartime circumstances, though, the United States has the ability -- and, indeed, an urgent responsibility -- to take more comprehensive action against Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. Unless the two networks adjust their behavior so as no longer to act as the propaganda arm of our enemies, they should be taken off the air, one way or another.

To those who will decry this as censorship, they should be reminded of President Bush's injunction shortly after we were attacked two years ago: In the War on Terror, you are either with us or with the terrorists. It would be no more sensible for us to construe the masquerading of enemy propaganda, the communication and amplification of its calls to jihad and the legitimacy that attends transmission of such messages and images via television than it would be for us to regard bin Laden's messages, or Saddam's, as mere "news."

Luckily, saner heads prevailed, and we did not bomb Al-Jazeera's headquarters -- but as other posters on TWN have noted -- the U.S. did bomb (. . .accidentally?) Al-Jazeera's offices in Baghdad and Kabul.

Those who have promoted the Iraq War have been obsessed with information control -- afraid that a free media in the U.S. or abroad would undermine the will of American citizens to support the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

I am not really supposed to write about it as I recently saw a pre-screening of an important film that addresses the government's effort to control journalistic commentary.

The film is called "Why We Fight," and it will be extremely important -- opening around the country on January 20th. I will write more later about this -- but the so-called Bush-Blair memo about bombing Al-Jazeera is only relevant in that it is a tangible manifestation of the kind of dangerous thinking that those who have been the biggest proponents of this war, like Frank Gaffney, have engaged in and sold to this country.

-- Steve Clemons

The repugnant Duke Cunningham -- who was involved as well in the old Tailhook scandal -- has finally resigned his House seat after admitting that he took bribes.

An Associated Press report just posted on the New York Times website:

Rep. Randy ''Duke'' Cunningham pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy and tax charges, admitting taking $2.4 million in bribes in a case that grew from an investigation into the sale of his home to a wide-ranging conspiracy involving payments in cash, vacations and antiques.

Randy Cunningham "enriched himself through his position and violated the trust of those who put him there," U.S. Attorney Carol Lam said.
Cunningham, 63, entered pleas in U.S. District Court to charges of conspiracy to commit bribery, mail fraud and wire fraud, and tax evasion for underreporting his income in 2004. Cunningham answered "yes, Your Honor" when asked by U.S. District Judge Larry Burns if he had accepted bribes from someone in exchange for his performance of official duties.

Cunningham, an eight-term Republican congressman, resigned after his guilty plea. He had announced in July that he wouldn't seek re-election next year.

Here are two posts on TWN from August 26, 2004 and October 4, 2004 on Cunningham's race against Democrat Francine Busby -- who will hopefully now take this seat in 2006.

I have spoken with Busby in the past -- and can vouch for the fact that California's 50th District desperately needs someone of her caliber and character to clean up the damage from years of neglect and corruption by Cunningham.

Progressives had best not get over confident, but momentum certainly is on the side of those who want to restore health to America's system of checks and balances.

-- Steve Clemons

UPDATE: Laura Rozen has a great Duke Cunningham timeline that interested folks should check out. Also, a mutual friend of mine and Laura Rozen's, JR, sent this:

I didn't "know" Cunningham, but I flew with him.

In 1983 I was in the Phillipines for an exercise and then-CDR Randy Cunningham was there flying in it as well. He was revered as a national hero for being one of only two pilot aces of the Vietnam War. (The USAF ace was basically "set up" with repeated trips to Hanoi until he got five kills).

Later, in 1984 Cunningham was squadron commander of an A-4 aggressor squadron in a huge exercise in the California-Nevada desert that was a practice for a showdown with the Soviets in Iran. Our two squadrons, based at Nellis AFB, were the "Red" air simulating the bad guys, and again we Air Force fighter pilots lionized this legend.

I have no sympathy for him, given what he has done, and it has been a long time coming. However, it is a national tragedy nonetheless, that someone who performed so heroically in combat could allow himself to become so corrupted by Washington. I think it speaks to the corrupt environment as well as to the man.

-- Steve Clemons

UPDATE II: Media Matters just sent out this fascinating bit of empirical work on the amount of coverage some of the news networks gave to the Duke Cunningham resignation. According to their report, CNN devoted 17 minutes to Cunningham between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. today (Eastern time).

During the same period, MSNBC gave the Cunningham announcement 4 minutes of air time -- and Fox News just 3 minutes. That's Fox for you -- fair and balanced. . .not.

-- Steve Clemons

I think that they hate us for not making clear that "their" lives matter.

Read this clip in the Sunday Telegraph that only compounds the damage done by prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. It looks like private defense contractors under contract with the United States government have serial killers out just randomly shooting people.

Who is to blame for this?

It has always been under Donald Rumsfeld that these abuses have occurred. He should have been forced to resign two years ago, but he still stands strong -- giving his "aw shucks, it's not my fault" responses to these disasters.

Over the weekend, Tim Russert pushed Senator John Warner on the subject of battalion commanders' alleged requests for more troops to accomplish their missions in Iraq. Warner would not comment on what was said in a private meeting with these field commanders, but word leaked out that nearly all field commanders have been requesting more troops -- and made a major plea for such troops in August 2005.

Rumsfeld continues to say that he has not been asked by his commanding officers for more troops and would give them whatever they need. This is clearly a political optics game. Rumsfeld is lying and knows that U.S. commanders on the ground do not believe that they have the troop levels to do the job being requested -- and that their commanders in the Pentagon are not asking for more troops because Rumsfeld does not want them to.

Rumsfeld is destroying the U.S. military, its morale, and its nuts-and-bolts operations.

Because of Abu Ghraib, this Aegis Defense video, and many other incidents that have exposed immoral behavior by American operatives engaged in what appears to average Iraqis to be an occupation and not a liberation -- our soldiers cannot do much more than flounder in current circumstances. To really get hold of Iraq again would take, according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, 500,000 troops -- four times what we have currently deployed.

The situation is a genuiune mess -- where greater deployments are no longer politically acceptable, and about which Rumsfeld has been lying anyway. A gradual withdrawal -- which some are calling a "strategic redeployment" of Iraq-based U.S. troops -- will not help matters unless the mission of those forces left behind is also radically decreased.

We need new management at the Pentagon and have needed such for a very long time -- but the morale of the United States as a nation is being sacrificed because of the massive ego and constant missteps of Donald Rumsfeld.

Fire him.

-- Steve Clemons

John Bolton is having a public feud with Great Britain over his effort to withhold the UN's budget until various reforms are adopted. This was a classic Jesse Helms tactic of the past and shows that Bolton is tipping towards bludgeoning the United Nations rather than using diplomatic skill to achieve his objectives.

From the Daily Telegraph:

Britain has angered John Bolton, America's combative ambassador to the United Nations, by breaking ranks with him over the need for reform.

The rare public disagreement between the two close allies comes as the showdown over reforms at the UN's New York headquarters becomes increasingly acrimonious.

Britain has rebuffed a Bolton move to join him in refusing to pass the organisation's 2006 budget until member states approve wide-ranging management reforms.

Hopefully, the recess-appointed U.S. Ambassador to the UN will drop the feuding theatrics and get back to diplomacy -- but in the words of one high-ranking State Department official with whom I spoke on Wednesday, "We are lucky Bolton is no longer here (at headquarters)."

If you would like a refresher on Bolton's views of the United Nations, click here.

-- Steve Clemons

The Los Angeles Times editorial page is sizzling with anger today about the Bush administration's missteps in Iraq.

The piece starts with the sardonic note that although Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish leaders all agree on one thing: America has to leave, the Bush administration has not yet tied them to Michael Moore (as they did with Congressman Murtha) because they have not yet set a departure schedule.

Read the entire editorial, but it opens:

IRAQ'S SUNNI, SHIITE AND KURDISH leaders have finally found an issue on which they agree: a timetable for the U.S. to leave Iraq. That's fine. They have also agreed it's permissible for insurgents to kill U.S. soldiers. That's dreadful. But it's also the realization of prewar fears that if the aftermath of the invasion went poorly, American troops would be viewed not as liberators but as occupiers.

The politicians did not spell out an exact date for U.S. troops to leave. That may be the reason the White House so far has not linked them to filmmaker Michael Moore, as it did 10 days ago in smearing decorated combat veteran Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) when he called for a immediate withdrawal of troops.

Although President Bush long ago declared victory in Iraq -- remember that "Mission Accomplished" banner? -- both the fighting and the administration's campaign against its critics continue at a torrid pace. The death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq topped 2,100 in the same week that Vice President Dick Cheney called some critics of the war "dishonest and reprehensible."

The editorial also exposes to greater public daylight the administration's obsession with finding evidence, even bad intelligence, that made its case for war:

Last Sunday's Times report on the Iraqi informant with the apt nickname "Curveball" was a devastating portrait of the deeply flawed prewar intelligence constantly promoted by the administration as it lined up the tanks, planes and troops in 2003.

The report quoted German intelligence officials as saying they warned U.S. colleagues of the unreliability of Curveball, a defector who was critical to the administration's claims that Saddam Hussein possessed biological weapons. If those red flags did not get to top officials, who hid them? Who's accountable?

Cheney's speech on Monday worked in the usual reference to 9/11 in the same sentence as Hussein. Yet once again it's necessary to point out that Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. The vice president also cited the prewar declarations from many nations that Hussein probably had the most devastating weapons. But he neglected to say that Hussein at the eleventh hour allowed U.N. weapons inspectors into the country, that the initial inspections turned up nothing and that the administration refused to wait for more complete searches.

Only after the successful military campaign did the thorough search occur; as everyone now knows, Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. That was the selling point for the war. Later justifications of removing the dictator and transforming the nation into a beacon of democracy shining throughout the Middle East were runners-up in the explanation derby.

The administration used too few troops for postwar reconstruction, misunderstood how occupation forces would be viewed, did not dispatch enough who understood the language and culture and refused to listen to those experienced in nation building.

The world understood the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, the source of the 9/11 attacks. The Iraq war has squandered the goodwill. A survey of 16 nations in June found the U.S. "remains broadly disliked" in most countries surveyed, with the Muslim world "quite negative." Even more ominous was another survey that found 42% of Americans agreeing that the U.S. should "mind its own business internationally" and let other countries do as best they can.

So far, George W. Bush has traveled off to major summits in Latin America and Asia -- both failed trips from the perspective of securing U.S. deals the administration hoped to secure. Such trips are often used to "change the topic of conversation" with the American public, or to distract Americans from some other issue.

But the Bush administration, thus far, has been unable to get away from the now constant drum beat from critics angry about the administration's abuse and misuse of Iraq-related WMD intelligence, its efforts to cover up this abuse, and its arrogance in matters like the Valerie Plame affair. Even nominating an anti-abortion conservative to the Supreme Court has made only a modest dent in the public's anger about America's Iraq mess.

-- Steve Clemons

. . .but two quick items.

First, I posted this short piece on Joe Biden's Washington Post oped this morning over at TPM Cafe.

Also, I don't know what to think of this, but check out the Durex global sex issues survey.

It seems that the Japanese public is the most undersexed in the world, with an average number of sexual sessions per capita yearly at only 46. America is at 111, and the French are at 137. Wow.

-- Steve Clemons

Fascinating. A British Parliament Member has offered to do jail time to get the controversial Bush/Al-Jazeera memo into public view.

Someone please slip him a copy.

-- Steve Clemons

Yesterday in a Wall Street Journal article, "Plan for Iraq: Shareholders Don't Shoot Each Other," Charles Wolf, Jr., a long-time economist with the RAND Corporation, suggests something similar to an April 2003 article I wrote suggesting that the Alaska Permanent Fund model might create more cohesivness among Iraqis, prevent the return of kleptocracy in Iraq, and build a class of political and economic winners that is an essential part of any successful occupation (and there are very, very few).

Here is part of Wolf's article:

Privatizing Iraq's oil assets, and vesting all citizens with shares, can provide incentive for every Iraqi -- including Sunnis, the insurgency's core -- to view commerce as a better path than violence. Ownership would provide 28 million citizens with a prospective increase in per-capita income of about $5,800, substantially raising their present income. This is unlikely to persuade hard-core terrorists to change course. But turning all Iraqis into stockholders of the nation's oil wealth can win over the support of the bulk of the Sunni population that now backs the insurgency through provision of foot soldiers, intelligence, cover, safe houses or passive acceptance.

Iraq's oil reserves, estimated at 115 billion barrels, are the world's third-largest after Saudi Arabia and Iran. However, the geographic location of these reserves within the ethnically divided federal Iraqi state presents a problem: 80% of the oil is located in southern Iraq where the Shiites, who constitute 60% of the population, predominate; 15%-18% of the oil is in northern Iraq where the Kurds, who constitute 20% of the population, are concentrated.

Less than 5% of reserves are located in Al-Anbar, Nineveh and Salahuddin provinces, where most of the 20% of the population that is Sunni lives.

In a federal, democratic Iraq whose majority is Shiite and whose most lucrative assets are located in areas where Shiites and Kurds predominate, the future appears gloomy for Sunnis when benchmarked against the Saddam years, in which Sunnis had it all: privilege, status, as well as the oil assets regardless of their geographic location.

A readily, though perhaps not easily, available innovation can go a long way toward redressing this portentous Sunni outlook. At present, oil assets are a government monopoly.

Privatizing them and giving every Iraqi an equal share in ownership can be accomplished by turning over the assets to private companies -- two in the south and one each in north and central Iraq -- and vesting all citizens with equal shareholdings in each company, e.g., five or 10 shares issued to each Iraqi in each company. Shares could be traded at market-determined prices, but trading would be limited to Iraqis, at least for an initial period of 5-10 years, after which the market might open to foreign participation.

When I wrote my New York Times article, there was quite a bit of attention paid to the idea -- and many, many endorsements from both Republicans and Democrats and editorial boards around the country. According to the New York Times' John Tierney, who later did a story on the proposal, calling it a "wonky idea with mass appeal," about 3/4 of the then Iraqi Governing Council liked the notion.

What I learned later is that Ahmed Chalabi and his minions were lurking in the background preempting any serious move towards such a proposal. Some have recently reported that Chalabi, who now serves as Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, is now positively predisposed to the concept.

But be careful, if Chalabi now likes the idea, those implementing it must make sure that Chalabi's brand of structural corruption and fraud does not find a way to milk these privatized assets for Chalabi's corrupt purposes.

Wolf's proposal, in general, should have been implemented early in the occupation. But now, it may be too late. Forces have been unleashed that won't allow Iraq to congeal along old lines, once forcefully and ruthlessly held together by Saddam Hussein.

-- Steve Clemons

This is an interesting geographic depiction of George W. Bush's favorability levels.

It's not all that surprising that Bush's popularity is worst in "blue states" and markedly better in the south and midwest. However, if the election in November 2004 had been held tomorrow, George W. Bush could not win with a map like this.

-- Steve Clemons

Ed. Note: hat tip to CS for sending this graphic to TWN.

This is rather big news in Japan.

A senior government panel in Japan has decided that women should be allowed to ascend to Japan's imperial throne. This is a major hurdle cleared in the legal process of changing Japan's Imperial Household law to allow 3-year-old Princess Aiko -- the daughter of Crown Prince Naruhito and his wife, Masako (the former Masako Owada who worked on semiconductor trade issues in Japan's Foreign Ministry) -- to become eventually Japan's reigning empress.

Why so important?

For one, it finally brings into line Article 14 of Japan's Constitution and Imperial Household Law.

When Japan's current emperor Akihito ascended, a group of female Japanese attorneys filed lawsuit against the government arguing that the law asserting male-only heirs to the throne was unconstitutional. This case never saw the light of day and was probably thrown out by Japan's courts as I never found any action on the lawsuit.

Article 14:

All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin. 2) Peers and peerage shall not be recognized. 3) No privilege shall accompany any award of honor, decoration or any distinction, nor shall any such award be valid beyond the lifetime of the individual who now holds or hereafter may receive it.

I'm not a fan of Japan's imperial system, but I do think that allowing female empresses will have a positive effect on the treatment of women in Japan at all levels of society. Many of the most talented women in Japan get out of the country as soon as possible and enroll in foreign universities (as Masako Owada did), looking for opportunity and advancement outside their home country.

Perhaps Aiko-mania will shame Japan's institutionalized stunting of women in Japanese society.

If you read the article closely, you will note that one of the points of opposition to this imperial rule change comes from Prince Tomohito of Mikasa, often called "Prince Mikasa." This guy has many of the far-right in Japan lurking behind his shadow, hoping one day for the restitution of real imperial power in Japan. He has an arrogance about his position and role in Japanese society that the actual emperor and his children do not have.

Tomohito of Mikasa married Nobuko Aso, who happens to be the sister of Japan's current Foreign Minister Taro Aso as well as Asako (Aso) Arafune, who is an old friend of mine. These Aso children were the daughter of Kazuko Aso, the daughter of Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru who governed Japan through most of the period of U.S. occupation of the Japanese islands. Kazuko Aso served as Japan's first lady during the years that Yoshida ruled as prime minister.

I got to know Kazuko Aso when she visited Los Angeles frequently to meet her grandchildren there -- as her daughter and son-in-law, Kiyohiko Arafune (a Foreign Ministry official), were stationed there at the Consulate General of Japan in Los Angeles.

Kazuko Aso and I actually watched the marriage of Prince Ayanomiya -- son of the current emperor and brother to the crown prince -- and Princess Kiko on television in L.A. Her grandkids were into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Ultra-Man type stuff -- and I'd let them beat me up. But as we watched and the kids wrestled me, Aso showed me her daughter on television, with Prince Mikasa, and lamented what a "prison" the Imperial Household was. Aso had a good deal of disdain for the Imperial Household bureaucrats -- and though she was clearly a blue-blood aristocrat herself -- she was a tougher-than-nails independent woman who had extreme confidence in her abilities and views.

I think Kazuko Aso would be pleased by the thought that a woman might become Empress of Japan and break out of the role of being the person to stand "behind" her spouse. And I think that she didn't like the arrogance of the Imperial household bureaucrats and the way in which they preserved a veil of secrecy around the imperial family and its retainers.

Taro Aso has evolved into a clever politician and thoughtful economic policy force in Japan -- but he's also tethered a bit too much to deeply conservative, "old right" forces.

I don't know if Aso agrees with the crowd that his brother-in-law, Tomohito of Mikasa, runs with -- but those who watch Japanese politics and who are in touch with Taro Aso would do well to advise him to think of his ferociously independent and historically important mother -- who advocated women's equal rights and to discount those who flirt with ascendance of a more powerful, male-dominated imperial institution in Japan.

-- Steve Clemons

The White House has stated that claims that George Bush suggested bombing Al-Jazeera's Qatar-based headquarters are "outlandish."

Is the White House being truthful this time? Or is the President, through his spokesman, lying?

There allegedly is a meeting brief/memo that recounts Blair's efforts to dissuade President Bush from giving orders to bomb the Middle East media network.

Either the memo reflects this -- or it doesn't.

But while Britain's former Defense Minister Peter Kilfoyle has just called for the memo to be released and made public, the UK's Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has threatened legal action against any who make it public.

From the BBC:

According to press reports, the memo includes a transcript record of Tony Blair attempting to persuade Mr Bush not to take military action against the al-Jazeera headquarters.

The station is based in Qatar, a close ally of Washington and the location of US military headquarters during the Iraq war. The White House has dismissed reports of the conversation as "outlandish".

UK Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has warned media outlets not to publish the contents of the memo, citing the Official Secrets Act.

I had originally thought it "too crazy" to imagine George Bush himself having a discussion with anyone about bombing as important a media center as Al-Jazeera. I know many think that Bush thinks this way all the time, but I have not shared that view.

But I have to admit -- squarely -- that when the UK Attorney General goes to work to block a secret memo's publication with the ferocity Goldsmith has put into this, it affirms that there must be some serious basis for concern, and that the memo implicates Bush in a serious way.

Bush, himself, should call for the Brits to make public the secret memo and then stand by its contents. If Blair and Bush, through their discussion, came to a consensus that bombing Al-Jazeera was a rotten idea, then we should applaud that interaction, despite Bush's original intent.

But if Bush thought that such a bombing run was legitimate, he owes Al-Jazeera and the rest of us an apology for thinking it's appropriate, in any circumstances, to stab a dagger into the heart of journalism -- theirs and ours.

He should simply apologize -- and say we didn't do it. And then invite Al-Jazeera to an exclusive interview with the President in the Oval Office.

This is the first case I know of, if true, in which British Prime Minister Tony Blair actually got Bush to move on something. And it's not a small matter.

-- Steve Clemons