I'm taking the evening off to spend with some good friends in Philadelphia but wanted to underscore the point that this writer and The Washington Note are committed to trying to get this country's policy course on a much better track in 2006 than during these last several years.

2005 was a fascinating and important one for me personally and for this blog -- particularly after helping to keep John Bolton -- and his supporters George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove -- from having the legitimacy of a Senate confirmation in his role as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Be sure to watch for the launch of Bolton Watch in the next couple of weeks.

There is much we need to do next year, and we'll start tomorrow afternoon -- but the rest of you have a fantastic evening and great new year.

I'm in Philadelphia at the home of a great and whacky friend who also writes a creative, personal blog.

She's a dramaturg, and a nut, and a friend of mine (and also John Malkovich's. . .for a kick, see this link).

Now, I need to get back to the party and to discussing what the Founding Fathers here in Philadelphia would thing about our current wannabe monarch.

Happy New Year, seriously.

-- Steve Clemons

Over the next few weeks, you will notice design changes to the website. The first has been added today, just before New Year's.

I realize that these changes may have some kinks to sort out, particularly given the fact that people view them through different browsers. Just send a note if you are having problems.

More soon. Off to spend New Year's in Philadelphia, must to the consternation of an earlier reader in the last post.

Oakley the Weimaraner sends best New Year's greetings to all.

-- Steve Clemons

TWN hopes everyone is preparing for a safe and fun New Year's Eve.

I'm back in Washington and headed to Philadelphia for the next couple of days. I just learned that I'll be going to Saudia Arabia on January 5th for a few days and any insights appreciated.

The best news this morning is that the deal that fell apart last night between feuding Yemeni tribes and the Yemen government came back together, and the Chrobog family has been reportedly released.

That's good news -- enough for the moment.

-- Steve Clemons

I have received word this morning that two people, one whom I know, have had direct phone contact with Karim Chrobog, son of former German Foreign Ministry State Secretary Juergen Chrobog, who both along with three other family members have been kidnapped by Yemeni tribal clans.

While Karim Chrobog told both people that he and his family are well, even though they are being held against their will, he hoped that they would be released soon.

However, a dispute between two tribal clans about them has broken out, and the Chrobogs were moved this morning -- reportedly for their saftey -- when a group of armed men in several helicopters arrived in the area where they are being held.

This is an email I received today from a source whom I should keep anonymous:

I wanted to also let you know that I have just received an email from XXXX on the XXX film telling me that he spoke with Karim at 8.45 this morning - Yemen time.

Karim was calm and collected and he said he and family were all safe and sound, being treated as guests (even if involuntary ones) and awaiting an early release in sha Allah. Only a short call, but what a relief . . . ok just had this emailed interupted by a phone call FROM KARIM.

He does sound calm and collected. He said that they are being looked after well but are not able to leave. He said that it is complicated -- that it is a feud between two tribes that they are in the middle of.

They are being looked after well but he doesn't know when it will be over. He said that there was a moment of tension this morning when helicopters arrived and they were taken up to the hills -- for their protection.

I asked him if there was anything I can do and he said that he
is not sure but the more people that know about this the better.

Karim Chrobog and the Chrobog family have been important allies to many throughout the Arab world who have felt exploited or demeaned by Western nations.

The Yemeni tribes should consider carefully what they are doing to hurt their political cause by holding against their will people who many in the Arab world feel are great friends.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

(photo of Juergen Chrobog, former State Secretary of the German Foreign Ministry)

A loyal reader of The Washington Note and very good friend, Karim Chrobog, as well as four other members of his family were kidnapped in Yemen according to various news reports.

Juergen Chrobog, Karim's father and former State Secretary of the German Foreign Ministry as well as former German Ambassador to the United States, was invited to Yemen as the guest of the Yemeni Deputy Foreign Minister. He had his wife and three children traveling with him. His wife is Egyptian, and Karim is German-Egyptian by descent.

From a CNN report:

Juergen Chrobog, his wife and three children were in a tour group traveling from Aden to Shabua province when their vehicle fell behind and disappeared, German television network ARD reported.

Chrobog, 65, also was ambassador to the United States from 1995 to 2001.

ARD said kidnappers are demanding the release of jailed comrades.

Reuters quoted a kidnappper from the Abdullah tribe as telling the news service by phone that the five hostages are safe.

"Their life is not in danger, and they are guests of our tribe," the tribe member told Reuters.

"We were forced to do this to focus the government's attention to our cause," Reuters quoted him as saying. He added that he hoped the kidnapping -- the third involving Westerners this year -- would pressure the San'a government to free five of his tribesmen who are in jail for criminal charges, including murder, Reuters reported.

German sources told CNN that Chrobog and his family were on a private trip at the invitation of a Yemenese deputy foreign minister. The sources said the tour group reported the family missing.

Most of the news has focused on the profile of Juergen Chrobog, also a friend of mine and this blog, who recently became Chairman of the Herbert Quandt/BMW Foundation.

Chrobog is a candid, skillful diplomat -- particularly in matters involving the Middle East.

But Karim Chrobog's interests have not been profiled and should be noted by the kidnapping tribe of the Chrobog family. This family is one that is deeply concerned about enhancing self-confidence and pride among youth throughout the Arab world. I have spoken many times with to both Karim Chrobog and Juergen Chrobog about the systematic humiliation that average people in the Arab world have endured from both Western governments -- and their own governments.

It is quite likely that if the Yemeni tribesmen who kidnapped the Chrobogs are sincere that they are trying to bring attention to various grievances they have with their own government that they have taken people who are generally sympathetic with and useful to any efforts to improve conditions and political empowerment of Arab citizens in the Middle East.

Karim Chrobog is a film-maker and had two projects underway. One of these film projects is being funded out of Saudi Arabia and the UAE and focuses on the life and deeds of a 15th century Arab navigator and explorer Ahmad ibn Majid.

This film project is important to the Arab world because it helps tell the story of an Arab hero that few in the West and few in the Arab world have been introduced to. Major film productions on topics such as Ahmad ibn Majid -- as well as a set of educational films and tools that would be generated alongside this feature film project -- can help enhance a sense of self-worth among Arabs who have long felt that the West looked at them as a global underclass to be exploited.

Another film project Karim Chrobog was launching was a documentary film on political blogging. TWN is one of the featured blogs in the projecs, and the life of bloggers -- particularly hard-core, often young bloggers on the political right and left -- was one of Karim's interests. I recently introduced and took Karim to a couple of the progressive Townhouse blog meetings run by one of the country's top blog networkers, Matt Stoller.

In any case, the Yemeni tribesmen who kidnapped the Chrobog family need to know that they have people under their control who have been working hard to enhance conditions and self-determination for people throughout the Arab world. Juergen and Karim have both helped build economic opportunities for Palestinians in both the Arab world and in Europe.

To harm this family is to harm your own cause -- and that can only bring dishonor and shame to your goals in the eyes of others in Yemen and throughout the Middle East who are also fighting to bring attention to grievances that they have with their governments.

To hurt them, you undermine yourself and anger many others who are on the same side in your struggle.

Please consider this in your negotations with the Yemeni government -- and listen to Karim Chrobog on his thoughts about building up heroes for Arab youth to look up to.

-- Steve Clemons

Last August, I ran into Katrina van den Heuvel, editor of The Nation, who remarked to me after reading both something on The Washington Note and after Ari Berman's excellent article, "The Strategic Class," that "realism had become the new liberal ideology."

Her views are echoed in an interesting rundown of "The Most Valuable Progressives of 2005" by John Nichols on The Nation's website today.

Despite some naysayers who had a too little/too late attitude about former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson's revelations about the "flummoxed" national security decision making process inside the White House as well as the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal that took over the political helm after 9/11, The Nation has dubbed Wilkerson as its "most valuable progressive" in the Executive Branch this past year.

TWN supports that view. Wilkerson's comments have both real policy and historical importance -- and it is fascinating that the journal of record for the "left" in America sees it the same way.

Wilkerson is a conservative with a conscience and with a profound sense of duty and obligation to the nation, and it is a sad comment that in the climate we are in today, conservatives with a conscience are mostly abandoned by the right and are increasingly embraced by the left. This really does speak to a possible solutions-oriented, radical centrism that unites the Wilkersons and van den Heuvels in a serious discussion about national interest and foreign policy in the coming year.

From John Nichols' piece:

* MVP -- Executive Branch:

Yes, there was one. It's Lawrence B. Wilkerson, the retired U.S. Army colonel who served as chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell until Powell exited the State Department in January, 2005.

After leaving his position, Wilkerson began revealing the dark secrets of the Bush-Cheney interregnum, telling a New America Foundation gathering in October that during his years in the administration: "What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made."

Wilkerson warned that, with "a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either," the country is headed in an exceptionally dangerous direction. "I would say that we have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita and I could go on back, we haven't done very well on anything like that in a long time," Wilkerson explained.

"And if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence."

That is truth telling of a quality and a scope all too rarely witnessed in the Washington of Bush and Cheney.

Nichols is on the money.

On his roster of MVPs are:

U.S. Senate: Barbara Boxer, John McCain, and Russell Feingold

U.S. House of Representatives: Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders, Walter Jones, John Murtha and John Conyers

Executive Branch: Lawrence Wilkerson

Law Enforcement Branch: Patrick Fitzgerald & Ronnie Earle

Citizen Branch: Cindy Sheehan

Watchdog Branch: The "After Downing Street" Coalition

Cheers to all -- and more later on what is planned with Bolton Watch.

-- Steve Clemons

I don't have much time to write about this now, but TWN -- which was keenly focused on blocking John Bolton's confirmation as Ambassador to the United Nations -- will be launching a "Bolton Watch" division of The Washington Note in early 2006.

I have been keeping my powder dry on Bolton and decided some time ago to give Bolton time to prove his critics, and me, wrong about the fundamental reasons we opposed him.

He started off politely on the surface, but underneath, he's done a great deal to harm America's foreign policy portfolio, and his crusades in the name of U.N. reform are actually designed to undermine any chance of achieving reasonable and serious reform.

Because Bolton was not confirmed by the Senate, his days at the U.N. are numbered -- but those days and his work during them need to have a more consistent monitor. This will not be a Bash-Bolton blog, but will call his actions and behavior as they are. If he gets on a course that is positive for American and UN interests, then the blog will highlight that. But as I suspect, he continues to vigorously work to undermine both the United Nations and enlightened American diplomacy, then this blog will expose him.

There is more planning that needs to be completed before launch, but I wanted to give early word of this decision.

TWN will be hiring research staff to help in this endeavor -- so your financial support is appreciated. If you are interested in supporting, there is a paypal link above, or alternatively, you can write to me and I can give a mailing address.

I have really deliberated about this step -- and take it reluctantly. I feel that it was civil society's responsibility to debate Bolton's qualifications and my responsibility do all that one could to try and block Bolton's confirmation and appointment to the position he holds now as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

We succeeded in blocking confirmation, but the President has a right of recess appointment, even though that provision of the Constitution is not designed to skirt Congress as Bush did in this appointment.

I was hopeful that the pressure TWN and others put on Bolton in this process would produce a John Bolton who would be less damaging than he has been in this job. But it is only after having spent time with some very high-ranking former Republican officials recently -- who all share my perspective of Bolton -- that I have decided to launch this new "Bolton Watch" division of TWN.

I don't think Condi Rice can manage John Bolton, as she promised Senator George Voinovich. But I do think that more constant, micro-focus of this Ambassador's every move -- good and bad -- will help us survive his tenure there.

More on this later -- but this was news I wanted to get out to readers before New Year's Day.

So, if you are thinking of it, toast "Bolton Watch" on the 31st.

My friends and I will be.

-- Steve Clemons

I am in Los Angeles this morning and was drawn to two op-eds that ran in today's Los Angeles Times, one by Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations and the other by journalist Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent of Britain's The Independent.

I like Haass and often agree with him, but the "messy, barely a democracy" scenario he holds out as probably the best we can hope for in Iraq depends on U.S. forces being able to forestall the civil war he fears.

I have a different view as I believe that U.S. forces and the "brand name of America" have become so tainted in Iraq that we can't achieve our objectives, have become targets ourselves, and unless we internationalize the face of occupation, as well as institution building efforts and aid to Iraq, the civil war will rage anyway with Americans being targeted and blamed for the instability. His scenario is not necessarily wrong, but mine is plausible and perhaps even more probable.

Haass's piece though should be read because he is a serious analyst who is taking many far more conservative than he and walking them towards acknowledging less-than-rosy, more likely scenarios in Iraq than the White House has been portraying.

However, the stem-winder article today is "Telling it Like it Isn't" by Robert Fisk who has written the irreverent, honest piece I wish I had written on the subject of the Israel-Palestine conflict and on war coverage in general.

It's a devastating critique of how global media -- not just American -- have become complicit in the selling of wars, occupation, and colonization.

He opens with a vignette of his farewell to a Boston Globe correspondent and then writes:

"I used to call the Israeli Likud Party 'right wing,' " he said. "But recently, my editors have been telling me not to use the phrase. A lot of our readers objected." And so now, I asked? "We just don't call it 'right wing' anymore."

Ouch. I knew at once that these "readers" were viewed at his newspaper as Israel's friends, but I also knew that the Likud under Benjamin Netanyahu was as right wing as it had ever been.

This is only the tip of the semantic iceberg that has crashed into American journalism in the Middle East. Illegal Jewish settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land are clearly "colonies," and we used to call them that. I cannot trace the moment when we started using the word "settlements." But I can remember the moment around two years ago when the word "settlements" was replaced by "Jewish neighborhoods" -- or even, in some cases, "outposts."

Similarly, "occupied" Palestinian land was softened in many American media reports into "disputed" Palestinian land -- just after then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, in 2001, instructed U.S. embassies in the Middle East to refer to the West Bank as "disputed" rather than "occupied" territory.

Then there is the "wall," the massive concrete obstruction whose purpose, according to the Israeli authorities, is to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from killing innocent Israelis. In this, it seems to have had some success. But it does not follow the line of Israel's 1967 border and cuts deeply into Arab land. And all too often these days, journalists call it a "fence" rather than a "wall." Or a "security barrier," which is what Israel prefers them to say. For some of its length, we are told, it is not a wall at all — so we cannot call it a "wall," even though the vast snake of concrete and steel that runs east of Jerusalem is higher than the old Berlin Wall.

The semantic effect of this journalistic obfuscation is clear. If Palestinian land is not occupied but merely part of a legal dispute that might be resolved in law courts or discussions over tea, then a Palestinian child who throws a stone at an Israeli soldier in this territory is clearly acting insanely.

If a Jewish colony built illegally on Arab land is simply a nice friendly "neighborhood," then any Palestinian who attacks it must be carrying out a mindless terrorist act.

And surely there is no reason to protest a "fence" or a "security barrier" -- words that conjure up the fence around a garden or the gate arm at the entrance to a private housing complex.

For Palestinians to object violently to any of these phenomena thus marks them as a generically vicious people. By our use of language, we condemn them.

We follow these unwritten rules elsewhere in the region. American journalists frequently used the words of U.S. officials in the early days of the Iraqi insurgency -- referring to those who attacked American troops as "rebels" or "terrorists" or "remnants" of the former regime. The language of the second U.S. pro-consul in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, was taken up obediently -- and grotesquely -- by American journalists.

This is a powerful and important perspective that should remind journalists, bloggers, academics, and public intellectuals in general that their job is to keep the state from becoming a self-justifying system that undermines our liberties and democratic form of government. America is tilting towards a "national security state" that has too many vested interests that thrive from a "high-fear" world rather than one of lower fear and higher trust.

Candid and honest journalism have been undermined by scandals ranging from Stephen Glass to Jayson Blair to Judith Miller -- but there are worse out there. And the celebritization of journalists has also had disturbingly corrupting consequences as James Fallows once bravely wrote about in his book, Breaking the News: How Media Undermine American Democracy.

More later on this subject, but Fisk's piece certainly did inspire some hope that media might just be able to make its way back to the oversight function that it should play in our brand of democracy.

-- Steve Clemons

The Washington Note was the first to get out the news that Douglas Holtz-Eakin was leaving his post to accept a position at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Today, a talk that he recently gave at the New America Foundation was highlighted by the New York Times editorial writers as being the sort of "straight talk" that has largely disappeared from government agencies -- particularly from Republicans like Holtz-Eakin.

The Times writes:

As director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Holtz-Eakin has been Congress's top economist, handpicked by the Republican leadership. Recently, he had some advice for lawmakers - mostly Republicans - who insist that more tax cuts will foster economic growth and raise tax revenue: "Don't even think about it."

The occasion was the release of the agency's long-term outlook, which shows huge unending deficits. "You can't grow yourself out of this problem," said Mr. Holtz-Eakin. "It's just too big."

That's startlingly straight talk, given that Republicans are determined to pass tens of billions in unpaid-for tax cuts come January. But it is typical of Mr. Holtz-Eakin, who is retiring this week after three years as the director. In those years, he has delivered nonpartisan, data-driven research on some of the most controversial issues.

I'm glad that the New America Foundation was host to Holtz-Eakin's last major policy address in his official position.

However, he will be working on significant international economic policy questions at the Council on Foreign Relations and attempting to synthesize thinking about America's classic military, political, and economic dimensions of U.S. foreign policy -- much like the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation is doing. I suspect that Holtz-Eakin and New America will continue to work closely together to generate sensible policy proposals for future governments.

Congratulations Doug.

-- Steve Clemons

Anne Gearan's interesting piece on Condi Rice yesterday got me thinking about what structurally is enhancing or constraining the Secretary of State's success.

Gearan writes:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has become the most popular member of the Bush administration and a potential candidate to succeed her boss in the White House, even as Americans lose confidence in the president she serves and patience with the Iraq war she helped launch.

Entering her second year as the country's senior diplomat and foreign policy spokeswoman, Rice has improbably shed much of her image as the hawkish "warrior princess" at President Bush's side. The nickname was reportedly bestowed by her staff at the White House National Security Council, where Rice was an intimate member of Bush's first-term war council.

Rice resolutely defends the post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism and the expansive executive powers that Bush claims came with it. She has lately sounded more optimistic than Bush about the progress of the Iraq war and the future for that country.

Yet, it is unusual to hear anyone talk about Rice as an architect of either of those two defining undertakings of the Bush presidency.

By a mix of charm, luck and physical distance from the White House, Rice has managed to escape the fate of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who saw their public approval ratings fall to historic lows before rebounding slightly recently.

Kurt Campbell, director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, credits Rice's heavy travel schedule, an approach to diplomacy that is more pragmatic than other Bush advisers, and a measure of personal pluck.

"She appears to have sort of skated away" from controversies over U.S. intelligence failures and aggressive U.S. tactics in the hunt for terrorists, Campbell said, and from the perception that the United States is "slogging" along in Iraq.

"She appears at once to be close to the president but separate and detached from some of the foibles of the administration, and that's a very hard thing to pull off," he said.

Rice has been busy putting together small victories. For a while -- and perhaps still -- there looked like there was a breakthrough in negotiations with North Korea. She got the Gaza-Egypt border crossing open, and has been putting constant and regular pressure on Israel to follow through with commitments made when she pushed forward a post-Gaza framework deal. She has had other successes as well -- but frankly, without taking anything away from the way she is performing as Secretary of State, she is cutting a work agenda that is very Colin Powell-like.

Many are ready to call anything "realism" that doesn't look like 'Borg-ian assimilate or annihilate neoconservatism.'

Condi Rice was never a neoconservative. She just bent their way after 9/11. In fact, before then, she was trying to tutor George W. Bush in what "neo-realism" would look like in a world of America as the ascendant power -- in contrast to the Nixon/Kissingerian realism that managed American interests as America was in decline. In March 2001, she even arranged private tutorial sessions with America's most influential Machiavellian realist, Robert Kaplan, who was then my colleague as a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

At the time, there were three camps in the White House: neo-realists who had Rice at their helm; neoconservatives who had Paul Wolfowitz as their in-government high priest with many others inside the administration and a well-organized band of ideology officers embedded in civil society; and Colin Powell -- who was neither realist, liberal internationalist, or neoconservative -- but who was the cautious incrementalist who felt that America need to be far more careful with its political and military capital than these other camps called for.

Powell was apparently the guy in the room who mattered when he was there because he would usually bring up the part of the picture that others had conveniently neglected as they tried to sell their plans to the President. The problem was that Powell had to be in the room. If he wasn't there, his ability to influence the process was seriously diminished. Powell didn't have an "ism" he was championing.

Rice does not look like a doctrinaire realist today. She looks like a Colin Powell cautious incrementalist -- doing what she can here and there, nearly in an ad hoc fashion to promote global stability, encourage and nudge forward self-determination, and doing deals with some of the world's real bad guys -- particularly in North Korea and Syria.

If she embodies a new realism, then it is realism super-lite. Nonetheless, Condi's stock is rising in the eyes of many.

But she needs to be aware of a few things. First, she has the "latitude" to do what she is doing both because she has a personal relationship with the President that lets her call many of her own shots and because she does not have a Condi Rice at the National Security Council shutting her down.

Rice's biggest failure as NSC Advisor to the President is that she got swept up in the strong Cheney-Rumsfeld current following 9/11 and tilted the President and the national security decision-making process away from judicious analysis and consideration of all options and all consequences. Rice deferred to "the cabal" and made Bush's decision making easier and less complex than it should have been because she filtered out much of what should have been before the President.

In the past, Rice shut down Powell and his team. Today, Stephen Hadley -- though while a close devotee of Vice President Cheney -- is not taking on his former boss on any front whatsoever. Condi Rice is succeeding as Secretary of State because she doesn't have her clone shutting her down.

The other reason she is successful is because the President is weak. When Bush was at the height of his power, he chose to bully the world -- on everything from America's disdain for renewal of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to climate change remediation efforts and negotiations. When Bush was strong, America walked away from a deal that Colin Powell's team had assembled with North Korea, which had great continuity with the Clinton team's work in this arena, and which looks a lot like the deal that Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Christopher Hill put together earlier this year. The cost for Bush's arrogance and failure to move forward with North Korea: about 8-12 nuclear warheads that the North Koreans probably have today.

Bush negotiates when he is weak, not when he is strong -- and thus he is a miserable investor in global stability -- because he has taught the world that as he sees it, the powerful make all the rules, make all their own weather, and decide right and wrong. This is not what one would call a "democratic message."

So, Rice is succeeding because the President is weaker and because she has no Condi Rice to shut her down. But she still has to worry about Cheney and his torture-obsessed thugs.

For one, we still have the story that her own Ambassador to the United Nations, the recess-appointed and Cheney-vassal John Bolton, leaked the news of her diplomatically fragile effort to offer Syria a "Libya-like" makeover track. Bolton sabotaged Rice -- and thus far has gotten away with it.

David Addington, Cheney's chief of staff, is no fan of Condi Rice's and has fought her efforts vigorously inside the White House. So far, Rice is winning -- but if Cheney's power resurges which may occur, Rice could be chewed up in a tug-of-war over foreign policy. To this writer, Cheney appears to have successfully tossed off the negatives from the Libby indictment.

The other risk that Rice has is that if she covers up and flacks for White House misdeeds on illegal wiretaps, detention centers, and torture -- these will eventually undermine her with an American public that won't tolerate institutionalized dishonesty in the Oval Office.

But as things look today, Rice may not be readying herself for President as much as getting ready to be John McCain's vice presidential running mate.

That ticket -- if the Republicans were smart enough to put it together -- would be tough for any Democrat, Hillary included, to beat.

-- Steve Clemons

P.S. TWN is on the move again. Had a great Christmas yesterday and am enjoying "Boxing Day" in Claremont, California. Tomorrow, TWN will be in Las Vegas. Wednesday and Thursday in St. George, Utah. Friday in D.C. Saturday and Sunday in Philadelphia. Look for me on the running trails and say hello. To all the rest -- have a great week!

Be back soon, Steve Clemons

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!

Oakley and I wish you a fantastic holiday weekend. I'm working with my new Apple Powerbook and appreciate all of the advice from knowledgable Mac practitioners.

While Oakley has the blue ball, it seems that my powerbook does have the blue tooth -- so many things are possible.

And to cap off an interesting season of foreign policy work, the October 19th talk by Lawrence Wilkerson at the New America Foundation and Wilkerson's subsequent thoughtful and impassioned commentary on America's broken national security decision making "system" drew a great profile piece by Steve Weisman today in the New York Times.

Weisman writes:

"What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made," Mr. Wilkerson said in a well-publicized speech at the New America Foundation in October. "And you've got a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either," he added in the speech.

Mr. Wilkerson has also attacked the Bush administration for allegedly condoning torture and setting lax policies on treatment of detainees that led, he charges, to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the black eye they gave to the United States Army.

SINCE starting to speak out a few months ago, Mr. Wilkerson has become something of a Washington celebrity. He has given interviews and speeches, appeared on television, written op-ed articles and taken telephone calls from journalists and senators.

That talk Col. Wilkerson gave at New America was an event that "mattered", and my New Year's Resolution for 2006 is to make sure that we have more such occasions that "matter."

I salute Larry Wilkerson for what he has done these last few months with regard to getting this country's foreign policy back on track -- and I feel privileged to have worked with him and enjoyed make his speech a "well publicized" one as Weisman remarked.

Just a short note to Col. Wilkerson's wife, Barbara, who recently sent me some fantastic Christmas cookies. I had two of them -- and Oakley, the very crafty weimaraner, decided he deserved the rest.

Thanks on behalf of both of us for the cookies, and thanks from TWN's readers for supporting your husband during this complicated time.

Happy holidays to all -- and more soon.

-- Steve Clemons

P.S. Keep the Mac advice coming. I'm reading everything you post and send. Really appreciate it.

Greetings and happy Friday TWN readers.

I just bought a new Apple Powerbook G4 to move me into 2006, and this is a real departure from the Dell Inspiron I had which had two hard disks and four keyboards go out on me in 20 months.

I will post more later, or tomorrow morning -- but need to get some things worked out on this system. If there are any experts out there on Apple powerbooks, drop me a line. I'd love to ask a few questions about what one does without a right click.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

Besides holiday gift shopping, which I still do too much of on foot rather than on-line, I have been digging into as much detail as possible on the so-called "Bush Bombing Memo" that recounts George Bush's conversation with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair about bombing Al-Jazeera's headquarters.

TWN is going to be posting more about this in the first week of January. The Brit's prosecution of two bureaucrats involved in the leak of the memo's contents will resume on January 10th. This is one of the first -- and perhaps the very first -- serious prosecution of an individual under Britain's "Official Secrets Act."

The Official Secrets Act sounds to most Americans like it is trotted out all the time; maybe it has something to do with our James Bond fetish. But in fact, it's rarely actually applied in real legal terms -- and is used more as threat.

I have spoken with several senior American intel officials who think that if Bush did say something to Blair -- despite Scott McClellan's basic denial -- that it would have been in jest.

Would the Brits be prosecuting two guys over a joke? I don't think so.

There are ten lines that refer to this Al-Jazeera bombing topic in a 5-page memo on the Bush-Blair meeting.

Tomorrow I'll have more on this subject, but still trying to confirm one piece of this fascinating story.

Thus far, it is looking increasingly like the one who most benefited from the leak of this story was Tony Blair himself. Did he set things into motion? TWN is running some of this down.

And those in the right places know that TWN is prepared to run the relevant ten lines from the broader secret session, which dealt with Fallujah, if that material is leaked. It's not out of the realm of possibility.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

I have to admit that I have not spent a lot of time thinking about the succession scenarios in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, currently headed by John Negroponte.

But I've been hanging around Tom Clancy a bit -- not much, just a bit -- and this type of problem is one of those Clancy-esque scenarios which add such interesting grit to his stories.

But as of today, a line of succession directive has been ordered by President Bush.

If the Director of National Intelligence is not able to perform his functions and duties, and his principal deputy, General Mike Hayden gets knocked out of action as well, here is the order of those who would take over:

(a) Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Management;

(b) Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Collection;

(c) Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis;

(d) Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Customer Outcomes;

(e) Chief of Staff, Office of the Director of National Intelligence;

(f) General Counsel, Office of the Director of National Intelligence; and

(g) Chief Information Officer, Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

I like the bumper sticker slogans embedded in the ODNI organization chart.

Want It -- Know It -- Get It -- Build it!!

The first person to succeed Negroponte is the "Build It" guy, Patrick Kennedy.

Next in line, the "Get It" lady, Mary Margaret Graham.

Tom Fingar, who was one of the key players in the background investigation on John Bolton's abusive antics at the State Department, is the "Know It" guy and is third in line.

And the "Want It" customer-oriented Ron Burgess is fourth in line if Negroponte and Hayden prove unable to do their jobs.

There is no "link" yet to this Presidential Memorandum, so I will post in full here:

December 20, 2005

MEMORANDUM FOR THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

SUBJECT: Designation of Officers of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence To Act as Director of National Intelligence

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, including the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, 5 U.S.C. 3345, et seq., it is hereby ordered that:

Section 1.

Subject to the provisions of sections 3 and 4 of this memorandum, the officers of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence named in section 2, in the order listed, shall act as and perform the functions and duties of the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), during any period in which the DNI and the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence have died, resigned, or otherwise become unable to perform the functions and duties of the office of the DNI, until such time as at least one of the officers listed in this section is able to perform the functions and duties of the DNI.

Sec. 2. Order of Succession.

(a) Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Management;

(b) Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Collection;

(c) Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis;

(d) Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Customer Outcomes;

(e) Chief of Staff, Office of the Director of National Intelligence;

(f) General Counsel, Office of the Director of National Intelligence; and

(g) Chief Information Officer, Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Sec. 3. National Security Act of 1947.

This memorandum shall not supercede the authority of the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence to act for, and exercise the powers of, the Director of National Intelligence during the absence or disability of the Director of National Intelligence or during a vacancy in the position of Director of National Intelligence, (National Security Act of 1947, as amended, 50 U.S.C. 403-3a).

Sec. 4. Exceptions.

(a) No individual who is serving in an office listed in section 2 in an acting capacity shall act as the DNI pursuant to this section.

(b) Notwithstanding the provisions of this memorandum, the President retains discretion, to the extent permitted by law, to depart from this memorandum in designating an acting DNI.

Sec. 5. Publication.

You are authorized and directed to publish this memorandum in the Federal Register.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Speaking of intelligence succession, official secrets, and all that, I'll be posting more later. . .on the George Bush/Al Jazeera Bombing Memo.

-- Steve Clemons

(photo credit: The Australian)

Many analysts of President Bush's speech on Iraq last night noted that he has stopped insisting that things could hardly be better in Iraq and that victory was around the corner. He acknowledged high costs of America's Iraq effort and slightly flirted with realism.

However, in the view of TWN, Bush has modified his style a wee bit but kept his core message exactly the same.

Despite his admission that Iraq's parliamentary elections on December 15th would not end the violence, Bush's opening lines again reflected a lop-sided, sentimental, and self-serving perspective on Iraq's recent elections that fail to address or acknowledge the serious problems that lie beneath a "veneer of success.'

Bush has not become more 'real' by acknowledging the numbers of deaths or mentioning the fact that Iraq continues to violently boil. This new "style" is more tactic than substance. The tack towards the appearance of realism came because the White House knew that Americans were scoffing at a president who acknowledged no costs in this war and were embracing Congressman Jack Murtha's views that we are paying too high a price in Iraq and have no strategy to win or get out.

Bush's embrace of last week's election as yet another milestone of success in that "Mission Accomplished" style of his had him celebrating December 15th as "a landmark day in the history of liberty." He continued with his rosy overstatement that "a people who suffered in tyranny for so long will become full members of the free world."

To argue that Iraq has turned the corner and is now a "constitutional democracy at the heart of the Middle East", as Bush has, sounds too remote from realities on the ground to be taken seriously.

This morning in The Australian, I have an op-ed on this subject titled "The Jury is Still Out on Iraqi Democracy". The piece deals with how leading neoconservatives like Bill Kristol, Bob Kagan, and Lawrence Kaplan -- in addition to President Bush -- are interpreting Iraq's elections.

In my view, opponents of the Iraq War need to be careful not to co-opt every bad development in Iraq to justify assessments that are worse than reality. But the President is doing the opposite -- as are other leading neoconservative voices who are ignoring important factors that should be legitimately considered in their takes on what is unfolding in Iraq.

To get things right -- whether America stays or leaves Iraq (and TWN thinks that we should go) -- we need our leading analysts to make their arguments and market their Iraq proposals to the public through a realistic prism.

-- Steve Clemons

Although I have yet to read a full transcript of tonight's BBC interview with Colin Powell, a report on the former Secretary of State's comments tracks with Lawrence Wilkerson's impressions of a Rumsfeld-Cheney cabal at the White House.

From a BBC report this evening:

He also referred to his relationship with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney - often depicted as icy.

"Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney and I occasionally would have strong differing views on matters. And when that was the case we argued them out, we fought them out, in bureaucratic ways," he said.

"Often maybe Mr Rumsfeld and Vice-President Cheney would take decisions into the president that the rest of us weren't aware of. That did happen, on a number of occasions."

Asked about post-war planning for Iraq, Gen Powell said his state department staff drew up detailed plans, but they were discarded by Mr Rumsfeld's defence department, which was backed by the White House.

"Mr Rumsfeld and I had some serious discussions, of a not pleasant kind, about the use of individuals who could bring expertise to the issue. And it ultimately went into the White House, and the rest is well known."

These comments by Powell primarily color in much of what was already known.

But they perhaps were triggered by his 16-year aide's brave revelations about the best-case only decision making realities in the White House.

It's still too early to tell, but Colin Powell may finally be finding his voice.

-- Steve Clemo