Peter O'Toole's performance as T.E. Lawrence in the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia should remind us that all of us, of all political stripes, are dealing with stereotypes that could throw our foreign policy way off course.

The prevailing Republican view is well-documented. O'Toole put it this way in his quixotic and messianic quest to found an independent Arab state:

"[The Arabs] want to gain their freedom. Freedom...I'm going to give it to them."

And that, albeit in an exaggerated, literary way, pretty much sums up the attitude of the White House and the Republican leadership in Congress - with some important exceptions, as Steve has noted.

My hope over these past few years has been that Democrats and eventually Republicans would embrace a more enlightened view: that people in the Middle East do want freedom - and economic opportunity, and peace, and rights, and dignity - and the United States should work with them as a partner to help them achieve these goals.

This rationale, in my view, is the right justification for redeploying troops from Iraq. Such a step, coupled with international partnerships and continued nonmilitary assistance, can help bring about a political solution in Iraq, as well as progress for Iraq's neigbors.

But I'm not entirely convinced that this is the prevailing attitude in the Democratic Party. I'm worried some Democrats, frustrated with the Iraqis and sensing their constituents' impatience, are simply ready to say, "not my problem anymore" and take up the isolationist cause.

Consider this from Hillary Clinton in her interview with NYT:

"No one wants to sit by and see mass killing," she added. "It's going on every day! Thousands of people are dying every month in Iraq. Our presence there is not stopping it. And there is no potential opportunity I can imagine where it could. This is an Iraqi problem; we cannot save the Iraqis from themselves." (my emphasis)

I'm also unsure about where Carl Levin - whom I generally hold in very high regard - is on this. On one hand, he said:

"We have got to force the Iraqis to take charge of their own country," Mr. Levin said at a breakfast meeting with reporters. "We can't save them from themselves."

Then, however, he immediately added:

"It is a political solution. It is no longer a military solution."

Clinton, Levin, and others repeating the "save them from themselves" talking point need to get their acts together. Saying "we can't save the Iraqis from themselves" suggests that Iraqis, left to their own devices, will tear each other apart. It reinforces the chauvanistic stereotype that people in the Middle Eastneed steely autocrats to keep them in line and stop them from killing each other. And it leads to the conclusion that no matter what the U.S. does, it cannot affect positive change in Middle Eastern countries.

The exaggerated, literary summation of this attitude?

"So long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people; a silly people; greedy, barbarous, and cruel."

That's O'Toole as T.E. Lawrence again, this time in a moment of exasperation. I don't believe that this is where most Democrats are headed. Most of them know better. And I think those who are projecting this attitude probably know better too, but believe they can win cheap political points with constituents by playing to their frustrations.

But make no mistake - the underlying attitude of the "save them from themselves" talking point is chauvanist and isolationist. If people are repeating it for political reasons, as I suspect, they need to stop right now. These political games make for dangerously bad foreign policy.

-- Scott Paul

New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman was one of the headliners at a star-studded annual "Opinions Award" dinner sponsored by The Week in partnership with the Aspen Institute on Tuesday night.

On stage, Friedman made a tongue-in-cheek proposal in response to a question from George Stephanopoulos who asked: "Are we just treading water for the next 22 months until the Bush administration leaves office?"

Tom Friedman responded:

We need a new constitutional amendment called "Can I Go Now?" Something less than impeachment but more than resignation.

President Bush just needs a "Can I Go Now?" clause in the constitution.

Friedman got a lot of applause.

Others at the dinner included magazine diva Tina Brown, George Stephanopoulos, Teresa Heinz-Kerry, Tucker Carlson, Ben Bradlee, Sir Harold Evans, Margaret Carlson (who was the real power mistress of the night and invited most of the guests -- including me), Representative Jane Harman, cartoonist extraordinaire Tom Toles, Kathryn Kross, Claire Shipman, Bruce and Hattie Babbitt, Mickey Kaus, Matt Cooper, Terry McAuliffe, Michael Kinsley, Chris Matthews, Jon Fox Sullivan, Elizabeth Kieffer, and lots of other political glitterati.

Wonkette editor and my table mate Alex Pareene caught more of the evening here. Tucker Carlson and Pareene, whom I was seated next to, have apparently crossed swords in the past -- and while Pareene admits successfully ducking Carlson, Carlson wanted to express some tough, not too pleasant words to the blogger so Carlson vented with me over some of Wonkette's "over the line" commentary.

Other highlights of the evening included Chris Matthews asking the evening MC Sir Harold Evans "Why is this room 90% white?" Sir Harold responded by asking why more than 90% of the guests on Hardball are white. Matthews said that beyond all other issues, the "biggest struggle is who we are." He argued that race and reconciliation are the issues this nation needed to deal with. He said that "the San Andreas fault line in the country is race and ethnicity."

Tucker Carlson responded by saying that "the nation's original sin was slavery" but that intermarriage rates between ethnic groups were rapidly increasing in the U.S. and that this was a good measure of change in the racial divide. My colleague Gregory Rodriguez at the New America Foundation has written more prolifically than anyone I know about this trend and validates Tucker Carlson's point -- but it was interesting to have Matthews just shoot this topic into the room that night.

Matthews went on to say that "Obama was a symbolic breakthrough" on the race front. Because he's black, Matthews suggested, everyone is excited.

Washington Editor of The Week Margaret Carlson asked a panel of Tom Friedman, Tucker Carlson, Claire Shipman, and Jim Lehrer what the '08 race would look like.

Jim Lehrer said that prognosticators on the election were all going to be wrong. He said that this election was unprecedented and that there was no conventional wisdom to rely on.

Tina Brown followed up by asking who would "bring the best people" into government. Tucker Carlson said that "the most secure candidate would bring the best people." He said insecure people bring "yes men" and Cabinet types who will not challenge or threaten them. He said -- somewhat facetiously I think -- that Richard Holbrooke should be the next Secretary of State, no matter who is president. The room broke into laughter -- probably because Holbrooke excels in the art of intimidation.

Ben Bradlee appealed to the audience to maintain faith in newspapers. He's not high on computers and blogs -- mostly because it's too uncomfortable to drag the computer to the john. He said "the newspaper and magazine work best in the bathroom."

Harold Evans asked the panel where they were on the Iraq War before the war. Tom Friedman was for the war. Jim Lehrer said he had had no opinion. Claire Shipman was undecided. Tucker Carlson said he opposed the war -- and then was lobbied extensively and sold a bill of goods by the administration and supported the war, which he regrets. Carlson said he's a "paleo" conservative and that national interests rather than democracy crusades should guide our foreign policy course.

Lehrer said that interests should always drive our foreign policy but that didn't mean rejecting efforts to promote democracy. But he said "It's one thing to have a war to spread democracy and another to just favor democracy."

Carlson said that he had no problem building strong relations with a benign dictatorship (not sure if that's an oxymoron) when it was in our national interests.

On the war and what to do in the Middle East, Friedman admitted he was out of ideas. He didn't know what to do. I spoke to him after the program and referenced his recent appeal to the Saudis to take King Abdullah's peace plan even further than they had. I suggested to him that while that was creative -- this was a time when the U.S., Europe, the UN, Russia, the Arab League and others all had to be creative and not look to the Saudi King to take steps that severely undercut his legitimacy in the eyes of his public and in the Arab world. In fact, the initiative already moves the Arab world quite dramatically far -- so that the U.S. and Israel had to respond creatively as well.

Friedman agreed -- but he said that he expressed real frustration with where we are at and sees a problem in a world that is perceiving an America that has increasingly diminished capacity to achieve its objectives in the foreign policy arena.

Tucker Carlson said that he saw America moving towards an isolationist phase after this Middle East adventure. Claire Shipman agreed.

Jim Lehrer countered saying that "If Iraq goes bad, the world will need the idealism of the U.S." I don't quite know how Lehrer's concept would work given that if Iraq gets even worse, American citizens are probably going to be a bit sick and tired of what Bush-style idealism untethered to reality and spiced up with presidential swagger achieved for this country.

Tom Friedman also stated that we "used to worry about a world with America having too much power. Now we have to consider what to do with a world with too little American power."

Despite the glitter, the powerful political and journalist figures that there were there, and the high probability of a vapid evening -- it was actually interesting and important.

The cynicism that ran through the room about the sorry state of American affairs in the world was palpable and shared by most there -- across the majority of the political spectrum.

-- Steve Clemons

Interesting. In a 50-48 vote, proponents of an Iraq withdrawal timeline prevailed against an attempt by Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) to rip out that language in the Iraq supplemental spending bill being debated and voted on today.

Senators Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) joined the Dems.

Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) voted with the Republicans.

And shock of all shocks, Ben Nelson (D-NE) actually voted with the Dems on this one too -- though Mark Pryor (D-AR) defected. I think Hagel's aye vote forced Ben Nelson's vote of support. Nelson knows how to triangulate.

I also forgot to salute Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) who has been shaky on this vote -- and also stayed with her side of the aisle.

Senators Enzi (R-WY) and Johnson (D-SD) did not vote.

-- Steve Clemons

Cheney and his team are disurbingly impressive in their ability to constantly get away with sabotaging the work and efforts of President Bush and his team.

The New York Sun's Benny Avni reports:

As her aides anticipated an important announcement about Israeli-Arab diplomacy yesterday, sources in Jerusalem and Washington said Secretary of State Rice has encountered enough resistance from all sides to lower her expectations for a breakthrough.

Israeli officials have spoken to a top White House official in recent days, using friendly Washington contacts to go "over Condi's head" to describe several of her new ideas as unrealistic, a Jerusalem source, who declined to be identified, told The New York Sun.

Specifically, according to three officials involved in this week's flurry of diplomatic activity in Washington, Jerusalem, Arab capitals, and the United Nations, Ms. Rice intended to intensify her shuttle diplomacy between Israeli and Palestinian Arab leaders, in an attempt to get them to start negotiating "final status" issues.

There are very few people in the White House that Avni could reputably title as "over Condi's head."

Elliot Abrams would not count -- nor would John Hannah, Cheney's national security advisor. I suppose one could stretch the idea that Stephen Hadley had an edge on Rice, but it is an artificial edge as her relationship with President Bush is closer than Hadley's -- and she held his job while he served as her deputy. So, an honest journalist would not note Hadley as "over Condi's head" without some clear qualification.

David Addington, Cheney's chief of staff, certainly is not over Rice -- but the VP is a different story.

I don't have any idea if the New York Sun really got access to Cheney -- but he and the President himself are the only ones would could be framed as Condi's superiors in this political process -- and I know that Bush is not the person Avni is referring to.

That means -- if the story has legs, which it probably does -- that Cheney is out there working hard to sabotage Condoleezza Rice's efforts in the Middle East, particularly her Middle East Super Summit idea which I think has merit.

President Bush needs to shut Cheney down -- sideline him -- and send an unambiguous message to all of his staff that Condi Rice has the helm and the others should swab the deck.

Bush has few if any chances to do something positive in the foreign policy arena and needs to recognize that the enemies of his administration succeeding are housed over in the VP's wing of the Old Executive Office Building.

President Bush, please send Cheney quail-hunting.

-- Steve Clemons

AP is reporting a very important story today about Indonesia's battle for control over H5N1 avian flu strains with the World Health Organization.

WHO should have access to the viral material and should share it with pharmaceutical companies working on a vaccine. But Indonesia's gripes are legitimate and deserve to be taken seriously. A scenario could indeed play out in which Indonesia, which has suffered more confirmed bird flu-related deaths than any other country, shares its information and then cannot afford the vaccine produced as a result of its good-faith cooperation.

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt had this to say:

"All nations have a responsibility to share data and virus samples," U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt said in an e-mailed statement that also offered $10 million to WHO to help make sure poor countries have access to vaccines.

"Responding to a pandemic will demand the cooperation of the world community. No nation can go it alone," he said. "If a country is to protect its own people, it must work together with other nations to protect the people of the world."

Mike Leavitt's not wrong - in fact, his talk is right on here. But the U.S. and the international community are far from off the hook. We are not doing our part.

Committing to share a substantial portion of bird flu vaccines at a steep discount or for free would be a good first step, but even that falls short of what's needed.

A colleague and I used to joke that poultry farmers simply need to stop kissing chickens. Obviously, the picture is vastly more complex, but our joke holds a grain of truth. The most effective preventive action the world can take - for developing countries and aid donors alike - would be to vastly expand education and assistance to developing country poultry farmers. It's sorely needed.

Indonesia is one of many countries that has suffered from avian flu, figures to suffer more in the future, and lacks the resources to contain or protect itself from the deadly disease. I think its withholding of virus samples is a negotiating tactic to get more help. WHO is optimistic that it can break the impasse improve access to flu vaccines in developing countries.

I hope the negotiating works out as it should - Indonesia gets the help and assurances it needs, and WHO gets the viral strains it needs to help pharmaceutical companies to develop a vaccine.

-- Scott Paul

Senator Chuck Hagel has fired a warning shot across the White House's bow.

On George Stephanopoulos' This Week, Senator Hagel expressed frustration that Bush was ignoring Congress's steps to drive a new direction in America's Iraq engagement.

From a Reuters report:

"I think Congress is going to play a role now like we've not played before," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, a critic of Bush's Iraq policy from his own Republican Party.

Bush's weekend radio address in which he threatened to veto emergency spending legislation for the Iraq war if it included a timetable for withdrawing troops was "astounding to me -- saying to the Congress, in effect, you don't belong in this, I'm in charge of Iraq," Hagel of Nebraska said.

Hagel went on to say:

"I am opposed to the president's further escalation of American military involvement. We are undermining our interests in the Middle East, we are undermining our military, we're undermining the confidence of people around the world in what we're doing," Hagel said on ABC's "This Week" program.

"We have clearly a situation where the president has lost the confidence of the American people in his war effort," he said. "It is now time, going into the fifth year of that effort, for the Congress to step forward and be part of setting some boundaries and some conditions as to our involvement."

Senator Hagel is taking a dangerous step in challenging the White House in this way -- and is probably calculating that his presidential opportunity will rise or fall on Iraq and America's mismanaged engagement in the Middle East.

It's a bold gamble, and Dems and moderate Republicans need to take note of the political space Hagel is creating.

-- Steve Clemons

Last year, I wrote an article in the Washington Post, "The Rise of Japan's Thought Police," suggesting that Japan's right-wing was harassing important intellectuals, political leaders, business leaders, and other important voices that were engaged in a fair debate about Japan's relations with China and about the future character of Japan's imperial institution.

The fact that my piece ran in one of the more important national papers of opinion in the United States meant that the article was going to be read -- both here and abroad.

Right wing bloggers and supporters of Yoshihisa Komori, sort of the Rush Limbaugh of Japanese journalism, gave me quite a drubbing when they could. I had written in part about harassment of a Japanese public/private research institution in Japan and how Komori had successfully wrestled an "apology" out of the Institute's director for material that the Institute ran on the web and that was counter to Japan's official stance vis-a-vis China.

This story is more complex and not important to hash out in excruciating detail -- though Komori devoted huge columns in his paper, the Sankei Shimbun, to attacking me in highly strident ways. Everyone involved in the US-Japan game has known that Komori is extremely close to Japan's current prime minister Shinzo Abe, himself an ideologue for historical denial and revived right-wing nationalism in Japan.

Komori and Abe are separate people and one's views shouldn't be automatically ascribed to the other. But in part because of the wrestling match I was having with Komori at the Washington Post, the Washington-based right-of-conservative journalist saw his visibility rise and was given the opportunity by the New York Times to "interpret" the then new Japanese Prime Minister Abe for the American public in this article.

But something else has happened in the American press -- and that is that a media that had stayed far away from the kind of discussion I had raised -- about informal harrassment of legitimate and moderate voices in Japan by "thought control" agents -- had broken wide open. This used to be a taboo subject.

Very few newspapers would venture into the subject of Japan's war memory problems -- and it was very clear that America was complicit in Japan's historical amnesia.

That no longer seems to be the case. Every other day, Yoshihisa Komori's friend, Shinzo Abe, is being pilloried in the American and European press -- and even the Japanese press -- for his efforts to roll back Japanese acceptance of responsibility for "the abduction, rape and sexual enslavement of tens of thousands of women during World War II."

Prime Minister Abe's denial of Japanese responsibility for its "comfort women" ranks pretty closely with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust. Abe's behavior is simply outrageous.

But all of America's newspapers are calling Abe out on this -- as the Washington Post did today in an excellent editorial, "Shinzo Abe's Double Talk."

And let me hasten to add that the Prime Minister we are reading about on a daily basis now in our press bears much more of a likeness to the trends I described in my own Washington Post article and little to the version promulgated by Yoshihisa Komori in the New York Times.

-- Steve Clemons

For more information: See materials on the Comfort Women issue at the Japan Information Access Project.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey is speaking at Yale University next Thursday afternoon. If you are nearby, you should go.

Woolsey will be speaking for he Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism on Thursday, 29 March, at 4:15 pm in Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Room 101, 63 High Street in New Haven.

His topic: "Energy, Security and the Long War of the 21st Century."

I think Jim Woolsey's work to support greater energy independence in the U.S. is laudable -- while I have strong disagreements with him on how he has positioned himself as a financial winner in this war on terror while so many American men and women are paying with their lives, family emotional and financial security, and careers for a war he has helped flame as a pundit. I also strongly disagree with the former CIA Director's advocacy of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard's release.

That said, it would be interesting to hear Woolsey talk about the "long war."

Ask him where the best opportunities are for profiteers in this long war we face. Where is putting his money? He'll probably say "Toyota stock" -- but press him.

Seriously though, I think anti-semitism as a trend is important and worthy of study. Years ago, I helped the Pacific Rim Institute of the American Jewish Committee get access to high-level Japanese political and cultural leaders for discussions to help stem what was a rising tide of anti-semitic literature in Japan. The material that some Japanese cults were producing was really disgusting and needed a response.

I just don't know what Jim Woolsey's energy concerns have to do with anti-semitism studies -- unless in his remarks (that I hope someone reports on) he is going to paint a broad brush stroke alleging anti-semitism against all the Middle East regimes that sit on oil -- even those regimes that are trying to propose a final peace solution with Israel. That would be a sad outcome of Woolsey's appearance at Yale. Let's hope he proves my suspicions unfounded.

Charles Small, the Yale program director, is an accomplished academic and may just be bringing in someone like Woolsey because of the cachet of having a former CIA Director. It wouldn't matter to Small perhaps what Woolsey was speaking about -- even if it was something like Eastern shore birdwatching.

But I suspect that Woolsey has been invited in part because of his overdrive activities advocating Jonathan Pollard's release or as a tireless advocate of another war in the Middle East.

Perhaps I'm just being cynical, but it would be useful to hear from any Yale attendees on how much hyperbole Woolsey engages in next Thursday.

-- Steve Clemons

There is a great website out there, Poem of the Week, that is run anonymously by a good friend of mine.

This week's poem is Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was born in 1792 and was "a renowned atheist and proponent of 'free love' when such things were decidedly unfashionable."

Percy Bysshe Shelley is probably best known as husband of the brilliant author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley.

When I read this poem, the image that came to mind was a faltering America stranded in the eroding sands of the Middle East.

I can just imagine someone eventually pointing to a map of the world and then to the U.S. saying, "They used to be big. . ."

Ozymandias

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

'Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Poignant. . .

-- Steve Clemons

It was heavy-lifting all the way, but the House funding bill that funds America's operations in Iraq but requires withdrawal in 2008, passed today in a 218-212 vote.

I haven't seen the floor statement yet, but Representative John Murtha was apparently quite emotional -- on the verge of tears -- speaking about the successful passage just after the vote.

I think that the Senate will be an insurmountable challenge to this legislation as Dems will not be able to muster enough votes to move legislation forward that requires a date-specific withdrawal. But this does further fix blame for the Iraq War on the White House.

There were 15 Dems who opposed the funding bill -- some like Kucinich because he sees the appropriations bill as keeping the war going and others because they opposed any hand-tying of the military in Iraq.

The 15 included Represenatatives Barrow, Boren, Lincoln Davis, Kucinich, Lee, Lewis (GA), Marshall, Matheson, McNulty, Michaud, Taylor, Waters, Watson and Woolsey.

-- Steve Clemons

I will be in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at Dickinson College Saturday evening for the "central Pennsylvania debut" of a new fictional film on Iraq by Director Philip Haas titled The Situation.

Ticket information follows here -- but just prior to the show at 7 p.m. -- former Army War College Commandant Major General Robert Scales, former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson, and I will be engaged in a pre-film "discussion" on the issues that the film delves into.

Director Philip Haas will be there as well -- and the public is welcome. If there are friends of TWN or members of the media who would like to attend, I think I can get a break on the $6.00 price of admission (but no guarantees).

-- Steve Clemons

Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is about to get former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack's endorsement.

This is pretty big news and strengthens Clinton's position in Iowa significantly. Vilsack -- while a second tier presidential contender -- is nonetheless an important part of a credible heartland strategy.

A timely endorsement like this gets Vilsack on the VP consideration list -- even though I think a more interesting pairing for Clinton would be Chuck Hagel.

-- Steve Clemons

Chris Matthews and Tom DeLay had a tug back and forth on whether DeLay had called Dick Armey "drunk" or "blind" with ambition.

DeLay kept insisting through the show that his new book cites Armey as "blind with ambition" but Matthews pointed out to him that the book reads "drunk with ambition."

It's clear that DeLay had both fronts covered in his own ambition.

-- Steve Clemons

(Former Senator Jesse Helms was the partner of Dan Burton on Helms-Burton Law)

Perhaps it was too good to be true. Congressman Dan Burton -- co-author of the Helms-Burton Law imposing extraterritorial sanctions law towards Cuba -- seems to have reversed himself -- or is at least seen to be flip-flopping this way and that -- on relaxing the Cuba travel ban.

Burton told Cuban-American Iraq War veteran Carlos Lazo and Sarah Stephens, Executive Director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, that he was supporting the Delahunt-LaHood bill removing travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans wishing to travel to Cuba.

I saw this as progress in the right direction -- even though I believe that U.S. laws that discriminate among classes of Americans based on ethnic descent are probably unconstitutional. Such a law permitting travel restrictions to be lifted for Cuban-Americans while not all Americans seems to be discriminatory and would unfairly limit my human right to travel as compared to Cuban-Americans.

But that said, Congressman Burton did communicate his intention to support Congressman Delahunt's and LaHood's legislation.

What also accompanied Sarah Stephens' press release yesterday was that Congressman Burton "had communicated" his position to both Congressmen Bill Delahunt (D-MA) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), the latter a proponent of lifting the travel ban to Cuba without restrictions.

So, has anyone called Congressmen Flake and Delahunt to see if Dan Burton did what he said he did?

-- Steve Clemons

(Israeli Ambassador to Italy and former Foreign Ministry Deputy Director General for Public Affairs Gideon Meir: AIPAC can help so much it hurts)

Even the best informed of us can be just real dumb on Friday mornings. I never knew that AIPAC was NOT compelled to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Apparently, the criminal investigation of two AIPAC employees, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, has many in the US-Israel policy community worried that a conviction would compel FARA registration for the organization. I had not seen this debate previously.

One would think that it was obvious that AIPAC was an agent for Israel's interests and thus would have to register as such.

Then again, to take the alternative position, I guess that there can be "undirected" agents of interest and that AIPAC members are simply advocating policies that they feel are good for the United States with regards to Israel -- without direction from Jerusalem.

There is some sense in this. If I wanted to advocate on behalf of smarter U.S. policy towards Cuba, towards Japan, towards Palestine, or towards the United Arab Emirates, then I should be able to do so without a need to register as an agent of foreign interests -- particularly since I am taking no direction from those foreign interests.

This is fascinating and explains a mystery that has bothered me for some time.

Pat Choate's famous book, Agents of Influence: How Japan's Lobbyists Manipulate America's Political and Economic System, has an appendix listing all of the known lawyers and lobbyists operating in Washington on behalf of foreign interests.

But Israel is one of the very few nations not listed. One might have surmised that Pat Choate had enough trouble taking on the Japan lobby at that time that he didn't want to take on the Israeli lobby as well -- but the reason seems to be that AIPAC was not required to file as a foreign agent and thus would not be listed in the book's appendix.

There are others who can weigh in on whether or not AIPAC is taking instructions from Israel's government and political leaders. If former Prime Minister Netanyahu is giving orders from his Likud seat, or Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making requests of AIPAC in its roster of political action efforts, then AIPAC should be registered appropriately. It's an interesting question.

But one thing that I can report from my trip to Israel last year is that there are some in the Israeli government who do not want to own AIPAC's actions and advocacy.

Then Israeli Foreign Ministry Deputy Director General for Public Affairs Gideon Meir (and now Israel's Ambassador to Italy) told me that "AIPAC does not represent the interests of the Israeli government. This organization may mean well but these diaspora organizations -- in order to keep and retain their members -- present battles in black and white and see only two sides. I have to deal with five sides -- or seven sides -- to a problem; and sometimes AIPAC and these diaspora groups undermine our efforts."

This would argue against AIPAC registering as a foreign agent. But if memos came down the pike that Israel is giving AIPAC clear instructions, then the requirement of registration should be implemented.

-- Steve Clemons

The details are fuzzy, but news agencies are reporting that the Iranian Navy has just detained 15 British troops in Iraqi waters.

After some negotiation and diplomatic sizzle, these troops will no doubt be released.

But this is more evidence that America and Iran are poking each other through proxies. Iran is using these British military personnel to send signals to the U.S. -- and the U.S. has taken similar actions against Iran inside Iraq and probably along the Iran-Iraq border.

These kinds of incidents become the stuff of escalation and miscalculation. One would hope that the President has purchased copies of The Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis for his team to get them to understand what reckless escalation might cause. The problem is that part of Bush's foreign policy team views "reckless escalation" as its hobby.

Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage reportedly bought copies of this book and distributed to both sides in what could have been a hot nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan.

One hopes that Bush has the sense to drop the swagger and realizes that we are increasingly tilting towards accidental, if not purposeful, war -- but perhaps that is the President's intention.

-- Steve Clemons

My New America Foundation colleague Daniel Levy scores a great article in Ha'aretz suggesting that Condoleezza Rice is now a believer in and delivering on construction of "a horizon" for Palestinian-Israeli negotiated peace.

George Soros's piece, if you have not yet read it, on "Israel, America and AIPAC," deserves another read by this blogger.

For a laugh, watch this recruitment video for Japan's Maritime Self Defense Forces. I had seen it a couple of years ago but someone sent the link recently from YouTube.

As if we needed one, here's yet another reason to get rid of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is the "anti rule-of-law Attorney General."

And a strong partner article to that of George Soros was written by Gary Kamiya at Salon.com titled "Can American Jews Unplug the Israel Lobby"

And then. . .Wow. . .David Ignatius wallops the Bush administration for its disdain of America's hard-working, solid civil servants. Here's the whole piece, but after reporting a short roster of obituaries of career civil servants in the Post op-ed pages, Ignatius writes:

What infuriates me about the Bush administration is its disdain for people like these. You sense that scorn reading the e-mails that have surfaced in the flap over the firings of U.S. attorneys. I don't think the story is much of a scandal. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, and he can fire whomever he wants. What interests me about the Justice e-mails is that they are a piece of sociology, documenting the mind-set of the young hotshots and ideologues who populate the Bush administration.

Here's Kyle Sampson, now-deposed chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, griping about a U.S. attorney in Phoenix who had the effrontery to want to make his case personally: "In the 'you won't believe this category,' Paul Charlton would like a few minutes of the AG's time." And here's Brent Ward, the director of a Justice Department task force who made his name as an anti-pornography crusader grumbling that he doesn't want to deal with the U.S. attorney in Las Vegas: "To go out to LV and sit and listen to the lame excuses of a defiant U.S. attorney is only going to move this whole enterprise closer to catastrophe."

The Bush political operatives have become the people the Republicans once warned the country against -- a club of insiders who seem to think that they're better than other folks. They are so contemptuous of government and the public servants who populate it that they have been unable to govern effectively. They are a smug, inward-looking elite that thinks it knows who the good guys are by the political labels they wear.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Joint Chiefs Commander Peter Pace -- in the photo above may be reminding Japanese troops that homosexuality is immoral over in Tokyo too (just joking) -- stopped in Japan to reaffirm the bilateral relationship.

While the Japanese government issued a press release stating that Foreign Minister Aso (the likely next prime minister) and General Pace discussed joint ballistic missile defense efforts; shoring up forces to deter potential North Korean aggression; reallignment of some U.S. military activities outside of Okinawa in what has been a slow, decade-plus-long road map (thus far) following the rape of a 12-year old girl by three U.S. military personnel; and Japan's further assistance (financial now) in the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq -- we do not have any information on whether Japan's Defense Minister -- a critic of America's war in Iraq -- got any "quality time" with Pace.

Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma and Foreign Minister Taro Aso have both expressed reservations about America's Middle East military adventure -- but Kyuma went the furthest earlier this year calling the Iraq War "wrong."

Vice President Cheney refused to meet Kyuma during his recent Tokyo jaunt, and while one news report does state that General Pace met both Kyuma and Aso -- no one has reported any words or agreements that might have transpired between Japan's Defense Minister and America's most senior general.

The Foreign Minister's office, however, did not offer any commentary on whether homosexuality in Japan's military ranks was a priority concern for General Pace.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: A TWN reader provided this video that I had seen a while back but lost track of. Funniest thing you'll see all year. . .

-- Steve Clemons

I think Warren Olney's show, "To the Point," airs in the Washington, DC area again tonight at 10 p.m. It aired earlier today at 2 p.m. Eastern and 11 a.m. Pacific. Bill Richardson is on for the last 10 minutes -- and Richardson is just superb.

While I have written both critically and positively about New Mexico's Governor, Richardson was the finest I have heard today in just ten minutes of air time.

Among the many blunt but insightful comments Richardson shared were that "Attorney General Gonzales needed to decide if he was the nation's lawyer, the peoples' lawyer, or whether he was just the President's political flack."

Richardson did not feel that matters that were essentially "political" should be shielded by executive privilege. Unless it was a matter of national security, Governor Richardson saw the effort to shield Congressional oversight from the Gonzales attorney firings as inappropriate.

On the Middle East, Richardson got the frame exactly right. He didn't just focus on whether the surge would work or fail (though he called the surge "tragic"), he said that what needed to happen was a reconciliation process inside Iraq as well as a regional stakeholders gathering -- including Syria and Iran.

I didn't understand what Richardson meant when he said that we needed to give Iran its "fuel cycle," though I think what he intended to say was to find ways to give Iran access to nuclear fuel for a civilian nuclear energy capacity. Russia has been trying to do something along these lines -- but thus far Iran has rebuffed the offers.

Essentially, Richardson thinks that the same kind of regional deal-making that the Iraq Study Group called for is what we should be enthusiastically pursuing in the region.

All in all, Bill Richardson's comments were excellent -- and were the type of quick hit common sense that other candidates should try out.

-- Steve Clemons

Sarah Stephens, Executive Director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, has reported that Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN) will support legislation allowing family-related travel to Cuba, "The Cuban-American Family Rights Restoration Act," sponsored by Congressman Bill Delahunt (D-MA).

According to a press release, Congressman Burton made the commitment to Sarah Stephens and Sgt. Carlos Lazo, a Cuban-American and veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Dan Burton was the author of the Helms-Burton Law -- and thus his move towards opening up people-to-people contact is quite significant.

In my view, it is not enough to open up "travel rights" for a certain ethnic class of Americans. In fact, I have a hard time believing it is constitutional to permit discrimination among Americans on an ethnic basis when it comes to international travel -- but Burton's move does represent some progress in an enlightened direction.

Here is the full press release:

I'm happy to see Tom Lantos is holding a hearing this morning called "Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Oil Dependence." Not only is this the right problem for the Foreign Affairs Committee to focus on - it's the right angle to take, too (insofar as one can judge from the title of the hearing).

Too often, the problem is cast as a "foreign dependence" problem, as if cutting ourselves off from the global energy market were possible or helpful. It is neither. The world's oil dependence, not just our own, is the problem.

I don't subscribe to the theory that oil is the main reason we're in Iraq - I think we have a team of narcissistic neoconservatives with delusions of grandeur to blame for that. But oil does complicate our ability to confront a wide range of national security and human rights issues that should otherwise be at the top of the U.S. agenda.

Even if the U.S. were to generate all of its own energy, we would still be vulnerable to fluctuations in global energy prices so long as the vast majority of the world's people depend on a few oil-producing states for power. In other words, as long as most of the world is oil-dependent, oil will plague us whether we consume it or not.

Perhaps most importantly, the world's dependence on oil - not simply America's - plays a major role in causing climate change and keeping billions in poverty. Plus, oil dependence limits other countries in their foreign policy options more than it limits the U.S., thanks to our ample strategic reserves and some domestic supply. The effects of oil on other states seriously complicate our own geopolitical realities.

The U.S., which consumes about a quarter of the world's oil, should lead the global transition away from oil - but shutting off the American spigot won't do the job alone.

I hope this is where Tom Lantos and Co. are heading. This debate desperately needs a respite from the alternating calls for the ideal of "energy independence" and more of the status quo.

-- Scott Paul

Fired U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias lays out a compelling case in a New York Times oped this morning, "Why I Was Fired," that the administration removed him for political rather than competency reasons.

His essay also shows that Representative Heather Wilson (R-NM) and Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) should be under far greater fire than they are for the roles they played.

Iglesias writes:

Politics entered my life with two phone calls that I received last fall, just before the November election. One came from Representative Heather Wilson and the other from Senator Domenici, both Republicans from my state, New Mexico.

Ms. Wilson asked me about sealed indictments pertaining to a politically charged corruption case widely reported in the news media involving local Democrats. Her question instantly put me on guard. Prosecutors may not legally talk about indictments, so I was evasive. Shortly after speaking to Ms. Wilson, I received a call from Senator Domenici at my home. The senator wanted to know whether I was going to file corruption charges -- the cases Ms. Wilson had been asking about -- before November. When I told him that I didn't think so, he said, "I am very sorry to hear that," and the line went dead.

A few weeks after those phone calls, my name was added to a list of United States attorneys who would be asked to resign -- even though I had excellent office evaluations, the biggest political corruption prosecutions in New Mexico history, a record number of overall prosecutions and a 95 percent conviction rate. (In one of the documents released this week, I was deemed a "diverse up and comer" in 2004. Two years later I was asked to resign with no reasons given.)

He said that the first time he had been thanked for his service was yesterday in the President's speech -- but like a good lawyer, he'd like to have the President's previous "confidence" in him communicated in writing.

-- Steve Clemons

A number of TWN readers have been emailing with pleas to tell them more about my Cuba travels, which were more educational and eye-opening than I had imagined they could be.

I will be doing so. The problem is that I don't want to share some quick hit items right now.

I need to tell what I learned about Cuba's current political climate, the impact of America's embargo and travel ban, the lives of normal folks I met, and the business activity I saw beginning to hit a higher pitch. I have some thoughts on Hugo Chavez and Hemingway, on Martin Luther King's followers in Havana and how America is screwing over some very good social work, and how Fidel's master plan of forsaking military exports in favor of shipping out doctors to nations in need around the world was a stroke of genius that has outmaneuvered America's over-militarized response to most problems.

Both former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson and I went to Cuba legally -- under the license provisions that allow researchers to travel there -- and even had my passport officially stamped, which I understand many do not do.

I got back into the U.S. with no problem. I actually had dinner with Ricardo Alarcon, the third most powerful political player in Cuba, on Thursday night just after he told many in the media that if Castro felt up to it, Allarcon would "nominate him" to serve as President of the National Assembly in the following year's elections.

There is much to tell about this trip -- and I will start posting tomorrow. I just need a bit more time to recover from a cough and cold from the travel stress that American Airlines subjected me to when they cancelled our flights on Friday.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

No one knows the subject -- but it must be the Gonzales affair -- unless perhaps they have captured bin Laden or al-Zawahiri?

The White House offer for Rove and Miers to testify in the GonzoGate matter may be for commentary NOT under oath, which is not such a great deal. Leahy should not accept such an offer.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

White House Counsel Fred Fielding has just released a letter (pdf here) to Senators Leahy and Specter, and Congresspersons Conyers, Smith and Sanchez.

In it, he writes:

In response to the invitations extended by the Committees, I am prepared to agree to make available for interviews the President's former Counsel; current Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor; Deputy Counsel; and a Special Assistant to the Office of Political Affairs.

Pat Leahy has the White House squirming.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: It is unclear whether Rove and Miers "interviews" would be allowed by White House Counsel Fred Fielding to be given under oath.

One of Steve's and my partners in crime on the Bolton campaign has informed us that former Ambassador Bolton will be on The Daily Show tonight at 11. Should be entertaining.

Interesting to note: Bolton and Jon Stewart have an interesting point of agreement: they both think France doesn't matter. Bolton has repeatedly faulted the Bush administration for channeling its entire foreign policy through the Security Council, which is code for overvaluing input from the Permanent 5 and the legitimacy of the U.N. in general. Stewart, for his part, says France is "unworthy of a boycott" by Fox News, since France isn't all that important. I make the comparison tongue-in-cheek, but it's exactly the kind of material The Daily Show writers love.

The damage Bolton has done to U.S. influence and the U.S.-U.N. relationship is no laughing matter, of course, but I'm looking forward to seeing the banter between Bolton and Stewart nonetheless.

-- Scott Paul

I just came across an interesting letter sent to presidential candidate Barack Obama by over 100 Iowa Caucus participants from 28 different cities.

I did not realize that the oldest mosque in North America is in Cedar Rapids. It's a good letter -- calling for Obama to share more about his vision of how to achieve a Middle East that has the states of Israel and Palestine living side by side.

-- Steve Clemons

Alberto Gonzales has finally received that dreaded call of firm presidential support from the White House:

Alberto, it's me, George -- yeah the President.

Just wanted to tell you that I know it's hot out there, but I'm fully behind you. You are on the team, man. You have my full confidence, and I'll be telling that to all of the citizens and you know, the media people. You are Da Man!

You got nothing to worry about from our side. Catch you later.

And then Josh Bolten sends in to Bush's office the next potential candidate interviewing for Attorney General.

Gonzales knows its close to over.

-- Steve Clemons

Booz Allen Vice President R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence during the Clinton administration, still has his security clearance.

Woolsey's advocacy of American Navy employee turned Israel spy Jonathan Pollard's release though raises questions about the propriety of his continuing to have access to the nation's secrets -- particularly those that cover activities in the Middle East.

Woolsey has been at the crossroads of conflicting intelligence loyalties in the past as well.

In 1998, James Woolsey served as the lawyer for a group of six detained Iraqi National Congress personnel detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Guam and then subsequently in California.

I don't think that the INS has ever been given sufficient praise for having stopped these six Iraqi National Congress operatives -- one of whom was Aras Karim, Chalabi's intelligence chief who later defected to Iran. Woolsey had planned to read through the classified information that the U.S. was holding on these detainees and then to determine whether the U.S. position was legitimate or not. Woolsey alleged at the time that if the U.S. government did not allow him to do this, then the "government must be hiding something."

Woolsey helped enable Chalabi, his intel chief, the Iraqi National Congress operation, and the war against Saddam by being the first on national television on September 11, 2001 to allege a connection between the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Saddam Hussein. Woolsey failed to disclose on TV when making these comments that he was not only a pundit commentator on the attacks -- but was also Ahmed Chalabi's attorney.

I recently attended the annual dinner of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (where I was treated quite well and with great courtesy I should add) and saw Woolsey at the dinner at the Army-Navy Club. It was shortly before this dinner in early February that the CIA Director began changing his tune on Pollard.

Woolsey has a right to be a pundit, a commentator, a thinker, an organizer of forums and organizations committed to not only our current war against Iraq -- but the many other wars for which he is agitating.

But it is wrong for someone of Woolsey's background and abilities to simultaneously be raking in the dollars from private investments and business activities related to a war he is advocating while American men and women are dying on the front line.

It is also wrong for our former Director of Central Intelligence to be advocating the release of an individual who undermined our national interests and who gave America's most closely held secrets to another government. Woolsey's loyalties seem increasingly conflicted -- just as they were when he was serving as a consigliere for Ahmed Chalabi & Co.

Woolsey's security clearance should be suspended.

-- Steve Clemons

Pajamas Media has an "exclusive" movie review of the film, 300, by former Tennessee Senator and presidential wannabe (maybe) Fred Thompson.

Thompson writes:

The comic book movie 300 about the Spartans and the Persians in 480 AD is still breaking box-office records. Now it seems the rulers of modern-day Persia, Iran, are not amused.

300 shows a small band of Spartans saving the lives of their countrymen AND the seeds of modern Democracy by kicking the much larger Persians forces effectively in the backside at Thermopylae until the shear numbers overwhelmed them.

If I remember my history, that's exactly what happened. But the Iranians have filed a flurry of complaints with the United Nations, claiming 300 is "cultural and psychological warfare." Who are these guys who are getting all flushed over our cultural insensitivity?

People who want to blow Jews off the face of the earth. The regime that stormed our embassy in 1979 and kept Americans captive for 444 days. Iran's Hezbollah puppets have killed more Americans, than any other terrorist group except Al Queda. Explosive devices from Iran are being used right now against our soldiers in Iraq. They're clearly more skittish about cultural warfare than the sort that actually kills people -- like the one against Israel that Iran financed just a few months ago.

I must say that I'm impressed that Hollywood took on a politically incorrect villan. Must have run out of neo-Nazis. So now these sensitive souls in Iran think that Hollywood is part of a U.S. government conspiracy to humiliate them into submission.

I can only wish we were that effective.

Sounds like a campaign opener to me. This review may, in fact, be a notch above the traditional annoucment of an "exploratory committee."

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

I just got a scoop on who the next publisher of The American Conservative is going to be -- and it's an intriguing choice.

I read The American Conservative because Vice President Cheney hates the publication and thinks that its editorialists run in the same gaggle of "Not-Republicans-Enough-for-Cheney" as Chuck Hagel and Chris Shays.

Ron Unz -- a software magnate who led a successful California ballot initiative against bilingual education in California -- will become the magazine's new publisher, succeeding current publisher Scott McConnell. McConnell will continue to serve as The American Conservative's editor.

Pat Buchanan was the former editor and is now editor emeritus of the publication but according to sources has not been involved in the magazine's work for a couple of years.

Unz is an intriguing choice because he is not a predictable conservative -- and certainly not a predictable liberal. He's more of an entrepreneurial libertarian who is -- at the same time -- an advocate of pro-immigrant policies while also an opponent of bilingual education programs, which he thinks retards the ability of Hispanic and other immigrants to quickly assimilate into U.S. society.

In 1994, Unz challenged incumbent Governor Pete Wilson of California in the Republican primary for Governor and got 34% of the vote. He helped organize the opposition to an anti-immigration initiative, Proposition 187, and organized one of the largest immigrant marches (at that time) in California. Later, he became one of the leading experts in citizen-based electroral propositions by drafting Proposition 227, which effectively dismantled a third of the country's bilingual programs and advocating and building an extensive network of English language immersion programs.

According to inside sources, Ron Unz strongly supports the generally "realist" direction that the magazine has adopted in its U.S. foreign policy commentary but also is comfortable with the more classically conservative policy of the magazine on domestic policy.

All I can say about Unz, who I have met a half dozen or so times, is that he is an energetic ideas guy and is far less predictable -- than say, New Republic editor Martin Peretz who has unleashed a predictable salvo against George Soros today for Soros' interesting Israel-related commentary that also ran today in the New York Review of Books. (more on that later)

In any case -- an interesting move in the political journalism world that I wanted to bring to your attention. . .

-- Steve Clemons

Update: Matthew Yglesias offers a concurring perspective.

I think that Israel Prime Minister Olmert's resistance to talk to the new Palestinian unity government 'may' be a charade disguising quite a bit of informal, off the books negotiations as everyone I speak to from the Middle East sees a deal on Palestine in the works -- in about 18 months. We should all be skeptical, but Olmert is not being completely truthful in suggesting that he and Israel will not meet any part of the Palestinian government. Whether it is direct, or through proxies, all sides are beginning to deal with each other.

That said, Olmert and his foreign service have some other distractions, including the revelation that the Israeli Ambassador to El Salvador has been recalled after being "found drunk and naked."

According to this BBC report, Ambassador Refael was found in the Israeli compound -- "bound, gagged and naked apart from sado-masochistic sex accessories." Apparently, he was only able to identify himself to police "after a rubber ball had been removed from his mouth."

Stuff happens. But if the Palestinians want to speak with Israeli diplomats -- even after revelations like this one -- then I think that Olmert's public high-handedness seems out of place.

On another front, Israel doesn't seem to have much of a problem violating the Helms-Burton law forbidding American and other firms doing business in the U.S. from doing business with Cuba. Just to be clear, I oppose Helms-Burton and think that the embargo we have imposed harms American interests.

But still, one of America's closest allies -- Israel -- has major Cuban citrus farms under management.

One wonders if Israel can do business with Cuba, which I support generally, why it can't find creative ways to deal in public (rather than in secret) with the democratically-empowered political realities in Palestine.

-- Steve Clemons

Yosri Fouda, an important Al Jazeera journalist who interviewed both Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, has written a very interesting note today in The Sunday Times of London on what may be driving KSM's extraordinary admissions during secret hearings at Guantanamo Bay.

The entire piece is very insightful, but here is the last extensive section:

I have no doubt that he would have liked to have been responsible for all the claims on the transcript, but was he? One thing that is missing, which I'm sure he was responsible for, is the Djerba operation in Tunisia: a tanker drove into a synagogue there in 2002, killing 21 people, after KSM gave the perpetrator his approval. That kind of "responsibility" is not uncommon. Maybe he forgot that one.

So he seems to be taking responsibility for some outrages he might not have perpetrated, while keeping quiet about ones that suggest his hand. I think he has blurred the line between what he did and what he was hoping or plotting to do.

He wants to take the credit for high-profile attacks because he is a pragmatist, a power-hungry mastermind, and realises his time is up; he might as well gain sympathy as an ideological hero.

He lived for this spotlight, the chance to say: "Look at this spectacular operation I pulled off against the most powerful nation on earth." But he is not a fantasist. KSM is a guy who enjoys plotting and being in the field. He could be the head of the mafia and also the imam of a group of people praying in Afghanistan. He would enjoy both roles.

Another possibility is that he might be taking credit so other people, still at large, can avoid the blame. We can never know for sure. One thing that is clear is his wish to be dignified as a prisoner of war. When he mentions George Washington, he is addressing America. He is saying: "This is your own hero, you used to be oppressed by the Brits and the Brits considered George Washington to be a terrorist."

He knows that the smallest count against him will be enough to have him executed. Hardly anyone, even in Al-Qaeda, will believe he was responsible for all these operations. But he's hoping they'll think he has been selfless.

He is not a man of Allah but a man of action. I knew that when they were captured it would be KSM who talked first. Ramzi would be much tougher to interrogate: a true believer in Allah, in his own way. I would bet when he was captured Ramzi thought: "My true jihad has just started." KSM would have thought: "This is it, game over."

It would be interesting to know what this 9/11 plotter thinks about the success of his operation and of the distraction of America away from his al Qaeda overlords into the swamp of Iraq.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Folks, I have been off of email and the cell phone for five days as the ability to get on email was just too ridiculously expensive and difficult in Havana. I paid $8.00 to get to one unimportant email out of many hundreds.

Now, a storm has shut down travel up north, and I'm stuck in Miami -- probably flying to Charlotte in the morning. After that, I'm most likely driving a car from Charlotte to D.C. -- so I won't be online tomorrow either.

When I recover and get organized, I'll begin to get into some very interesting subjects.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

What exactly did President Bush see when he looked into President Putin's eyes? I recall he got "a sense of his soul."

After my post last week about Kommersant's reaction to the death of Russian journalist Ivan Safronov, a couple of my Russian friends e-mailed me to tell me they were concerned for my safety.

I think I'm plenty safe writing critically about Putin from my Washington, D.C. office. But now I'm beginning to worry about my friends who wrote me the e-mails.

This from the Financial Times:

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has decreed the creation of a new super-agency to regulate the country's media and the internet, sparking fears among journalists that a clampdown on the media could extend to the web, which until now has remained free.

Downright spooky.

The official Kremlin line is that this is just bureaucratic reshuffling. Some speculation in the Western media has focused on the timing of the move, just a year before elections. The shockwaves that an Internet-patrolling agency will create will long outlast a single electoral season.

In fact, the implications of this move could be even greater than the chilling effect it is sure to have on bloggers and online news outlets. Setting up to regulate the Internet opens up the possibility of regulating e-mail, the cheapest, easiest, and presumably most anonymous form of communication available to Russians today.

During my first trip to Russia in 1998, my friends and I had conversations with Boris and Ivan, FSB agents we imagined were listening to our every move at the now-closed, legendary Rossiya hotel. My friends who had made trips just a few years earlier recalled finding bugs in the room and cracking jokes for the benefit of the real-life agents who were listening in.

In 1998, living with spies felt like a quaint aspect of daily life in Russia that was comfortably in the rear view mirror. There's nothing quaint about these current developments. By spying on e-mails, the FSB can "listen in" on any Russian without the hassle of installing bugs or the potential humiliation of their discovery.

If only that could have be foreseen by looking into Putin's eyes. Until recently, the United States embraced a policy of see no evil, hear no evil in Russia. On the few recent occasions when administration officials have chided Russia for the erosion of press freedom and democracy, Putin has simply deflected the criticism by returning fire and telling America not to throw stones from glass houses.

It didn't have to be this way. The Bush administration has left the U.S.-Russia relationship to rot, replacing back-and-forth diplomacy with warm fuzzy compliments. For his first five years in office, Bush turned two blind eyes to crackdowns like this one in order to increase the likelihood of some future diplomatic agreement on Iran, Iraq, North Korea, or the next American foreign policy failure du jour.

Now, that has been exposed as pure fantasy. And you won't even be able to blog about it in Moscow.

-- Scott Paul

Mark Lagon is one of the people in the International Organizations bureau at State who can play ball with high-level Bush appointees and still make the case for a strong U.S.-U.N. relationship. When John Bolton fought to vote against the Human Rights Council after his negotiating blunders, Lagon played a huge role keeping us engaged and supportive.

So I have mixed feelings about seeing him promoted to direct the Department's trafficking work. Lagon deserves it, no doubt about that, but the country will miss his voice in the IO bureau.

Lagon's nomination came just a month before the Bush administration decided against running for a seat on the Human Rights Council for the second straight year.

It's a sad day when the U.S. lacks the moral standing or the influence to win a seat on an international human rights body. Most observers suspect the U.S. isn't willing to spend the political capital necessary to win a seat.

Geneva misses a strong U.S. presence. I harbor no illusions about the performance of the Human Rights Council last year. The Organization of the Islamic Conference succeeded in focusing the Council almost entirely on Israel, ignoring other situations that sorely need international attention.

Yet on almost all the votes that mattered over the past year, the margins were extremely slim. A change of heart by only a few countries could make the difference between failure and success for the Council, and there are more than a few countries who will listen to the United States - should the administration have anything to say.

Appointing a Special Envoy to the Human Rights Council to lobby the swing votes in the Council could make the difference. There has been some openness to the idea in the administration, but still no movement.

This is just the kind of situation where we'll miss Mark Lagon's contributions.

-- Scott Paul

There are a thousand reasons Nancy Pelosi might have decided not to push for a greenhouse gas cap & trade scheme by July 4, her timeline for global warming legislation. None of those reasons are compelling.

I'll be doing some fairly in-depth writing on climate change and energy policy on this site. Usually, I'll be writing in greater depth about the links between our climate, energy, and foreign policy. Today I'm just venting.

Yesterday, on the same day that Great Britain published the world's first blueprint for a low-carbon economy, Pelosi announced that her early-session push for global warming legislation would not include the cap & trade measures that could ultimately set us on a path toward climate security. Some reports say she wants to wait until after the 2008 elections.

For newcomers to the issue, cap & trade is a system under which targets are set for total emissions of a particular gas. Based on those targets, we create a finite amount of pollution rights that can be traded at a market value. The market then helpos us reach our emissions target in the most cost-effective way, rewarding approaches that work and weeding out those that don't, helping companies that surpass the target and forcing companies that fall short to pay for their failure. The system was used to regulate SO2 and was tremendously successful in curbing acid rain. For a problem like climate change, which will cost $9 trillion and countless lives if the current inertia prevails, it's our best hope. It's the solution that makes the other solutions work.

The policy rationale is clear: it's the right thing to do morally, economically, and internationally.

The political rationale makes sense too. The public supports cap & trade legislation by broad majorities and across partisan lines. Any losing vote is just more political ammunition for elections. Plus, given Congress's embarrassing history on global warming policy, any vote - even a defeat - is bound to be a marked improvement over Congress's assumed stance. If Senators McCain and Lieberman didn't have the guts to lose a few successive times to demonstrate increasing public awareness, we certainly wouldn't have the political space we have today. Besides - it might even result in a win.

I've been supportive of Speaker Pelosi's cautious approach to this point, but backing off or looking for some supposed middle ground on climate change now is simply weak. Climate advocates have sacrificed a host of stricter regulatory measures and embraced a cap & trade scheme. This is the middle ground. Looking for it elsewhere shouldn't be called bipartisanship, caution, comity, or inclusiveness. It should be called losing.

Update: Executives from Chrysler, Ford, GM, and Toyota testified today in the House that they could support a cap & trade scheme. When companies are asking for regulation, you know your legislators are playing catch-up. There is simply no excuse for stalling.

-- Scott Paul

I'll be watching closely on Thursday morning as Zalmay Khalilzad runs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee gauntlet.

Acting Perm. Rep. Alex Wolff has been doing, by all accounts, a fantastic job at the U.S. Mission in New York on multiple fronts: winning support of other countries, working with the Secretariat, and controlling the John Bolton appointees within his ranks. It's not easy work.

But with all due respect to Alex Wolff, we need a confirmed Ambassador that all countries know has the ear of the President and the confidence of the Senate. I'm sure Wolff knows that as well as I do.

Khalilzad is known as a world class schmoozer, a real diplomat's diplomat, but that doesn't give us an idea of what kind of Ambassador he'll be. Much will depend on how he's been prepped, and the confirmation hearings will give us a sense of what's to come from a Khalilzad-run Mission.

It will also give us a sense of how the Bolton battle has affected the political landscape on U.S.-U.N. relations. Two years ago, hard-line unilateralists were foaming at the mouth for an opportunity to slam the U.N., while proponents of a strong U.S.-U.N. relationship were reluctantly prepared to make their case. I think the tables have turned. When we see which senators show up to question Khalilzad and the tone each senator strikes, we'll have a better idea.

Here's what I'd ask the Ambassador-designate - and what I'd like to hear from senators who want a strong and effective U.N.:

Former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson taught me a term recently that I did not know about -- the "non-paper" paper. Diplomatic initiatives that need to stay in the dark or that need to be launched with complete deniabiliy are sometimes moved forward with a sheet of paper and a roster of proposals -- with no return address and no promised commitment of the proposing party or government.

Senator Chuck Hagel is at this moment launching a "non-campaign campaign."

Hagel is in Nebraska this morning announcing that he will not announce his candidacy for either the presidency, another senate term, or even retirement from public life until the fall of this year. But he is sending signals -- big ones -- that he's going to be a 'player' in nearly every significant domestic and international policy issue that confronts America at this pivotal point in its national history.

Hagel seems to be announcing a new national and international activism -- in which he will raise money for his political action committee -- and without saying it, he's becoming the new Independent who, like Joseph Lieberman, may be less loyal to scripted party direction. Hagel seems to be saying in his statement (see full Hagel statement below) that this is no time for ideology; this is a time for thinking and problem-solving.

Hagel is not alone in this non-campaign campaign strategy and of waiting while the early "rabbits" in the race, the current front-runners like Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and John McCain on the Republican side, stumble and find themselves out too soon.

Hagel is incrementally building -- which will frustrate some -- but he's attempting to avoid the quick boom/quick bust cycle of many other campaigns.

His statement is strong and implies substantial criticism of the status quo political order.

Now, we need to see what evolves from here.

Senator Chuck Hagel's Statement:

Statement by U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel on His Political Future

March 12, 2007

America stands at an historic crossroads in its history. It is against this backdrop that I find myself at my own crossroads on my political future. Burdened by two wars, faced with dangerous new threats and global uncertainty, beset by serious long-term domestic problems and divided by raw political partisanship -- America now reaches for a national consensus of purpose. America's response to the challenges and opportunities that confront us today will define our future. Finding solutions to these challenges and capitalizing on these opportunities will not wait until the next election.

I have worked hard over the last ten years on foreign policy and national security issues, climate change and energy, education, entitlement reform, especially Social Security reform, health care, veterans benefits, GSE reform, and immigration reform. This year will be an important year for these critical issues– and I intend to offer new initiatives on each of them. I want to give these and other subjects my full attention over the next few months. I believe it is in the interests of my Nebraska constituents and this country that I continue to work full time on these challenges.

America is facing its most divisive and difficult issue since Vietnam -- the war in Iraq, an issue that I have been deeply involved in. I want to keep my focus on helping find a responsible way out of this tragedy, and not divert my energy, efforts and judgment with competing political considerations.

I am here today to announce that my family and I will make a decision on my political future later this year.

In making this announcement, I believe there will still be political options open to me at a later date. But that will depend on the people of Nebraska and this country. I cannot control that and I do not worry about it. I will continue to participate in events across this country, raising money for my Political Action Committee to assist Republican candidates, and raising funds for a Senate re-election campaign.

In conclusion, I would first like to commend my colleagues who are currently seeking their Party's presidential nomination. I admire each of them for their willingness to put themselves on the line and pursue their strong beliefs and ideals.

I believe the political currents in America are more unpredictable today than at any time in modern history. We are experiencing a political re-orientation, a redefining and moving toward a new political center of gravity. This movement is bigger than both parties. The need to solve problems and meet challenges is overtaking the ideological debates of the last three decades -- as it should. America is demanding honest, competent and accountable governance.

A global political readjustment is also in play today...and will respond to America’s leadership. What is at stake for the future of America is larger than just American politics. Politics is simply the mechanism democracies use to affect responsible change. The world is not static, it is dynamic.

At the beginning of my remarks I said that America is reaching for a national consensus of purpose. We will find it because Americans expect it and will demand it. I do not believe America's greatness is lost to the 20th Century. There are chapters of America's greatness yet to be written. I intend to continue being part of America's story.

-- Steve Clemons

I've been in Senator Harry Reid's territory for the last day and a half -- enjoying watching the unlikely co-mingling of a massive number of NASCAR fans mixing with tweed and tie-wearing academics from the Western Political Science Association.

A few quick things I want to pass on but don't have enough time at the moment to fully get at before my brief return to Washington today and then departure to Cuba tomorrow.

First of all, I will be attending part of the AIPAC Policy Conference 2007 on Sunday to hear as many speakers as I can.

Secondly, I just read this excellent piece, "Rice's Hiring of Neocon Leaves Observers Puzzled," by Tom Omestad of US News & World Report. It addresses Condi's curious choice of Eliot Cohen as her Counselor. This blogger has a line in the piece which states that Cohen is primarily insulation from Cheney's inter-agency attacks.

On another front, however, I need some counsel of my own from any readers familiar with Havana. I'm taking a research trip there this next week. If anyone has thoughts on ways to get on line -- let me know.

I am used to WiFi and DSL services -- and don't use dial-up, or haven't in a long time. So any good counsel on this front appreciated. Also need to figure out the electric outlet situation.

For anyone in Cuba at the time who wants to discuss things -- or has DSL advice -- I'll be at the Parque Central Hotel.

-- Steve Clemons

When Matsushita purchased MCA/Universal Studios in 1990, many worried that the Japanese business would distort, censor, or otherwise direct creative content at the giant movie and entertainment house towards politically safe -- rather than provocative and edgy -- material.

A journalist asked the Chairman of Matsushita Electric, Masaharu Matsushita, at the first press briefing focused on the entertainment studio acquisition whether Matsushita would play any role in content supervision at MCA/Universal. Masaharu Matsushita said that his firm would not meddle in creative affairs and wanted MCA/Universal to continue to create appealing films and music for a global audience. When the journalist followed up and asked "Would Matsushita allow 'Tora! Tora! Tora!' to be made today?" the Chairman responded by saying "Why would anyone want to make that film today?"

A shiver went through the room -- and it reverberated through the creative community at MCA/Universal.

The same sort of issue exists when branches of government or bureaucracies think that they have specified powers.

One should assume that specified legal authorities will be used in their broadest sense. One would be naive to 'hope' that concern for the public good will generally prevail in complex government organizations.

This tension between public interest and government power is apparent in the news today that the FBI abused Patriot Act authorities. I agree with Senator Russ Feingold, who is on the
Senate Judiciary Committee panel that oversees the FBI and said that a new Justice Department Inspector General report on the FBI "proves that 'trust us' doesn't cut it."

Lara Jakes Jordan of AP reports:

The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday.

And for three years the FBI underreported to Congress how often it forced businesses to turn over the customer data, the audit found.

FBI Director Robert Mueller said he was to blame for not putting more safeguards into place.

"I am to be held accountable," Mueller said. He told reporters he would correct the problems and did not plan to resign.

"The inspector general went and did the audit that I should have put in place many years ago," Mueller said.

The audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found that FBI agents sometimes demanded personal data on individuals without proper authorization. The 126-page audit also found the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.

The audit blames agent error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct.

The only way our form of democracy works is to realize that the President wants to be King, that Members of Congress want to be re-elected and derive power from keeping the King in check, and that the Judiciary has ultimate authority in most cases to resolve disputes between branches of government and contending political interests. The aspirant King and the wannabe rulers in the Congress both have input into the membership of the Judiciary.

The system works with all parties vigorously pursuing their interests. We should always worry that a Matsushita would pull the plug on "Tora! Tora! Tora!" and plan accordingly.

We should also expect that the Patriot Act would be misused, misapplied, and distorted beyond the intention Congress and the White House had for it.

Getting rid of Tom DeLay was an important part of correcting some of the worsening structural corruption in Washington (though i hear from the Wall Street Journal's John Fund he is about to become a CNN commentator), but there is much more work that needs to be done to get the American political order off the edge of "losing its character as a republic."

-- Steve Clemons

Update: Someone close to me tells me that the Matsushita-MCA example doesn't work very well.

Perhaps not, but Glenn Greenwald has a terrific post here that deserves attention and looks at the abuse of Presidential powers that led to what the FBI was doing.

-- Steve Clemons

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has told a number of senior national security officials -- current and former -- that he is shutting down (or at least significantly shrinking) the Rumsfeld-Cambone-Feith-Boykin intelligence operation.

Rumsfeld encouraged a massive expansion of the Department of Defense's intelligence operations just at the time that the 9/11 Commission, Congressional enabling legislation, and the White House had worked together to reorganize the vast bulk of America's intelligence machine under the Director of National Intelligence -- who was then John Negroponte.

Rumsfeld's colonization of much of the intelligence operations of government was in direct defiance of the legal operational and budgetary authority that the DNI position theoretically held.

Gates' move is a sign that he is making what are possibly an important set of moves to try and get the government's national security decision-making process back in better shape. DoD's misbehavior in intelligence has generated constant battles and significant mistrust among key players in defense policy.

As this writer has reported before, there was significant rivalry between Rumsfeld and Cambone on one side and then Deputy DNI Michael Hayden and DNI John Negroponte on another. Gates' intentions on getting his operations back under the operational management of current DNI Mike McConnell shows that this institutional rivalry is mostly over.

More important though was that the Rumsfeld-Cambone-Feith-Boykin intel machine included the staff of Vice President Cheney who were key beneficiaries of intel activities and information passed on to the Vice President's Office by DoD. Instructions also flowed from Cheney's office to DoD regarding intelligence initiatives and work that should be done. This entire interaction existed beyond what was legally prescribed and appropriate between the White House and this subcabinet intelligence activity controlled by Rumsfeld and his minions.

Bob Gates is about to shut down a signficant chunk of Vice President Cheney's intelligence eyes and ears -- and to some degree, an inappropriate ability to help drive covert actions.

National Journal's Shane Harris has a great article on this out today:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is considering a plan to curtail the Pentagon's clandestine spying activities, which were expanded by his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, after the 9/11 attacks. The undercover work allowed military personnel to collect intelligence about terrorists and to recruit spies in foreign countries independently of the CIA and without much congressional oversight.

Former military and intelligence officials, including those involved in an ongoing and largely informal debate about the military's forays into espionage, said that Gates, a former CIA director, is likely to "roll back" several of Rumsfeld's controversial initiatives. This could include changing the mission of the Pentagon's Strategic Support Branch, an intelligence-gathering unit comprising Special Forces, military linguists, and interrogators that Rumsfeld set up to report directly to him. The unit's teams work in many of the same countries where CIA case officers are trying to recruit spies, and the military and civilian sides have clashed as a result. CIA officers serving abroad have been roiled by what they see as the Pentagon's encroachment on their dominance in the world of human intelligence-gathering.

A former senior intelligence official who knows Gates said that the secretary wants to "dismantle" many of the intelligence programs launched by Rumsfeld and his top lieutenants, Stephen Cambone, the former undersecretary for intelligence, and Douglas Feith, who was Rumsfeld's policy chief. The former official added that the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has also expanded its human spying efforts, could be returned to a more analytical role.

Many are still trying to assess what kind of impact Bob Gates will have on America's wrong-headed military course -- and whether he will be able to bring some maturity and realism to a White House decision-making that has been dominated by Vice President Cheney and his followers.

I think that this is a subtle but important first step in changing the "structural dimensions" of Cheney's influence.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm a big Chuck Hagel fan. His roll call votes rarely turn out the way I'd like since he's been a party loyalist for most of his career, but he's been an important voice for comity in the political process and multilateralism in foreign policy for a long time. The Republican Party and the country need him very badly.

I want him to run for president or for re-election to his senate seat. Either in the senate or in presidential debates, his ideas need to be heard.

But I can't help wishing he could have run for president under different circumstances. I wish he hadn't needed to come out so forcefully against the president on Iraq - and he did need to come out forcefully.

(Keith Ellison taking oath of office on Thomas Jefferson's Quran)

Why not arrange a "conversation" with the increasingly popular first Muslim Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Keith Ellison, at the upcoming annual AIPAC Policy Conference?

Representative Ellison is actually beginning to coordinate with Secretary of State Rice and other officials responsible for crafting American public diplomacy to "tell his story" as the first elected Muslim Member of Congress.

When asked about this "collusion" with the Bush administration, Ellison said "Hey, my country first. We can work out political differences later."

If Ellison can walk that far, so perhaps too can AIPAC.

From a report my McClatchy News' Kevin Diaz:

Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, had little good to say about President Bush's foreign policy when he ran for office last year.

Now, two months in office, the Minnesota Democrat plans to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other top State Department officials to talk about showcasing his story as part of their public diplomacy efforts in the Muslim world.

"Hey, my country first. We can work out our political differences later," said Ellison, an outspoken critic of the Iraq war. "I've said I'm willing to do whatever I can to make some friends for America."

Adding to the cachet he's built since taking his oath of office on Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an, Ellison has been profiled three times by the State Department's overseas press bureau.

On Monday he did a Voice of America interview from his office, where an American flag was placed conspicuously behind his desk for the cameras.

He's scheduled to follow up on Thursday in a teleconference with Karen Hughes, the State Department's undersecretary for public diplomacy. The White House has asked that the teleconference promote American values and confront ideological support for terrorism around the world.

If it can work for Condi and Karen Hughes, then perhaps this outreach can be embraced by more in America -- and the Middle East.

The AIPAC meeting which starts Sunday and runs through the first part of next week is chock-a-block with speakers, so one could suggest that there's no room for Ellison in the full program.

This is from AIPAC's press release:

In addition to the four top Democrat and Republican Congressional leaders -- House Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Reid, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH), the Vice President, and Israeli Foreign Minister Livni, other conference speakers include: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (via satellite), Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz, Israeli Opposition Leader and Likud Party Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Sallai Meridor, Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman, and many others of note.

My friendly suggestion is that someone yield some time to the freshman Congressman.

It could be the start of something productive -- as long as "both sides" of the conversation make the effort to "listen."

-- Steve Clemons

The Washington Post's Dafna Linzer gets senior U.S. official to confirm that General Asgari left Iran voluntarily and is "cooperating" with Western intelligence agencies.

This will give some new grist for John LeCarre's mill:

A former Iranian deputy defense minister who once commanded the Revolutionary Guard has left his country and is cooperating with Western intelligence agencies, providing information on Hezbollah and Iran's ties to the organization, according to a senior U.S. official.

Ali Rez Asgari disappeared last month during a visit to Turkey. Iranian officials suggested yesterday that he may have been kidnapped by Israel or the United States. The U.S. official said Asgari is willingly cooperating. He did not divulge Asgari's whereabouts or specify who is questioning him, but made clear that the information Asgari is offering is fully available to U.S. intelligence.

Asgari served in the Iranian government until early 2005 under then-President Mohammad Khatami. Asgari's background suggests that he would have deep knowledge of Iran's national security infrastructure, conventional weapons arsenal and ties to Hezbollah in south Lebanon. Iranian officials said he was not involved in the country's nuclear program, and the senior U.S. official said Asgari is not being questioned about it.

Former officers with Israel's Mossad spy agency said yesterday that Asgari had been instrumental in the founding of Hezbollah in the 1980s, around the time of the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.

This is important and will merit watching further.

For those of you in the intelligence community debriefing Asgari -- don't be sensationalizing material he gives you -- and quadruple source everything. . .

-- Steve Clemons

General David Petraeus believes that the U.S. must talk to all key parties inside Iraq -- particularly the most militant groups that have been opposing the U.S.-backed government.

His statements reflect a common sense realism that boggles the mind to some degree because the obvious question is "What has happened over the last four years?!"

America has spent more time identifying who would not talk to than who it could or should. The problem is that four years of inaction on what would otherwise be a sensible course makes the eventual right strategy much more fragile -- because so many view the intentions of the U.S. skeptically. And they should given what we have allowed to happen and the tragedies we have worsened in Iraq.

From an ABC News report on Petraeus's statement:

He said that "any student of history recognizes there is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq, to the insurgency in Iraq."

"Military action is necessary to help improve security. . .but it is not sufficient," Petraeus said. "A political resolution of various differences. . .of various senses that people do not have a stake in the successes of Iraq and so forth that is crucial. That is what will determine, in the long run, the success of this effort.

U.S. officials, including Petraeus' predecessor Gen. George W. Casey Jr., have long expressed the opinion that no military solution to the Iraq crisis was possible without a political agreement among all the ethnic and religious factions including some Sunni insurgents.

However, previous overtures to the insurgents all faltered, apparently because of political opposition within Baghdad or Washington to some of the conditions.

One can blame Washington on the failure for earlier overtures far more than the constituent parties in Iraq. And going a step further, Cheney's national security team deserves the lion's share of blame for our current mess -- including of course, a couple of the Vice President's chief spear-carriers -- Donald Rumsfeld and Scooter Libby.

-- Steve Clemons

A fascinating story is beginning to percolate among the international media of a high-level military defection from Iran to the United States.

According to both Iranian and Western news sources, retired Revolutionary Guard General and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Ali Reza Asgari disappeared in Turkey and is now "on his way" to the United States. This may mean "on his way" to U.S. handlers in Europe rather than actually to the U.S. some have acknowledged.

Iranian news sources imply that he has been abducted -- while American, European, and Australian news sources are reporting that the general organized a well-planned defection in which he moved his family out of Iran before he disappeared.

Such a defection could be quite significant in better understanding the strengths and limitations of Iran's nuclear and military interests. Most analysts who have begun to write about Asgari's defection are focusing on what he can impart about Iran's covert nuclear efforts.

I think that his value in understanding decision-making in Iran's political system, the general intentions of Iran's Supreme Leader, and a better understanding of the structure and activities of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Quds force probably outweighs what he can establish on real or illusory nuclear weapons programs.

Part of the reason why such a defection is so potentially important is that a key Iranian national security official such as this general could fill in a massive gap in American intelligence created when the CIA goofed and outed most of its "assets" inside Iran. After this mistake in electronic communications that allowed Iranian authorities to "roll up" America's intelligence network inside Iran, we have essentially depended upon European, Israeli and Saudi intelligence capabilities.

This story is lurking out there -- and not in the big press yet -- but it is important. Let's hope that those who debrief General Asgari and use the material generated do a better job than they did with Curveball.

-- Steve Clemons

I will be in Havana, Cuba at the time -- with uncertain internet access -- but Senator Chuck Hagel has just announced that he will hold a news conference Monday, 12 March 2007, at 10 a.m. CST (11 a.m. EST) on his "future plans."

The meeting will be held in Bootstrapper Memorial Hall at the University of Nebraska at Omaha's William H. and Dorothy Thompson Alumni Center.

I'm guessing Hagel is announcing the formation of his exploratory committee given the size font that his office used on the announcement. The headline came in 48 pt. font size.

Big. I suspect that if Hagel was announcing he was not running or not running for the Senate, the font would have been a more discreet, less bold size.

This is interesting news.

Just getting ready to fly to Vegas after a really enjoyable evening with Seattle's Drinking Liberally crowd last night and a good cluster of TWN readers this morning at Starbucks.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

(Cambridge Energy Research Associates Chairman Daniel Yergin, former First USA Bank CEO Richard Vague, and Senator Chuck Hagel -- New America Foundation/American Strategy Program dinner salon, 20 February 2007)

Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) recently spoke at a policy salon I hosted with businessman Richard Vague in Washington, DC. (See Richard Vague's recent report Terrorism: A Brief for Americans.

It was a terrific evening during which Senator Hagel articulated what he would do to get America's national security portfolio back in shape. A lot of the speech was captured in a talk he gave a few days later at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, but he demonstrated what a tenacious candidate he might be if he decides to run for the presidency, which I think he might.

The dramatic tenor of the night was captured by this article, "Anti-War Veteran May Rally the Republicans" (pdf here) that appeared in The Guardian Weekly by Washington, DC Bureau Chief Ewen MacAskill. I am reprinting the article in full with permission from The Guardian:

The Guardian Weekly -- Washington Diary

2-8 March 2007

Anti-War Veteran May Rally the Republicans

by Ewen MacAskill, Washington Bureau Chief, The Guardian

Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator from Nebraska, is one of the few senior figures in either Congress or the Bush administration to have been in combat. While many of them deferred their service, like the chief hawk, Vice-President Dick Cheney, or did a short spell on home soil in the National Guard, like George Bush, Hagel spent time in the mud of Vietnam as an infantry sergeant.

That experience explains why he is one of the leading opponents in Bush's own party of the Iraq war. When the president announced his decision in January to increase the number of US troops in Iraq by 21,500, Hagel's comment was one of the most widely quoted in the media. He called the troop surge "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam."

Hagel, 60, has not yet announced that he will seek his party's nomination for the 2008 presidential race, but there were few people who heard him speak last week in Nora's, one of Washington's favourite political restaurants, who doubted he intends to run. He was speaking at one of the capital's best-known salons, run by Steve Clemons, head of a centrist thinktank, the New America Foundation. Clemons is one of the city's great networkers, with friends across the city and across the parties.

(former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson and Senator Chuck Hagel)

About 30 people joined Hagel and Clemons upstairs at Nora's: senate staffers, policy wonks, businessmen and journalists. It is an egalitarian salon: no reserved seating and questions open to anyone. Hagel spoke for about 20 minutes on the record and took questions, off the record, for the remainder of the dinner. He sounds like John Wayne and has the same bras self-confidence, but does not share the late actor's rightwing, gung-ho opinions. In fact, Hagel is an unusual Republican, with a complex set of views, conservative on many issues but so liberal on others he could pass for a Democrat.

(former State Department Middle East expert Hillary Mann Leverett, Financial Times correspondent Guy Dinmore, and former G.W. Bush administration National Security Council Middle East Director Flynt Leverett)

The front-runner for the Republican nomination is Hagel's fellow senator, John McCain, also a Vietnam veteran, who spent five years in a communist prisoner of war camp. But McCain and the other front-runners, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, have so far not enthused their party in the way that the Democratic party has been lifted by the stellar trio of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards.

Almost any political analyst will say it is too early to write off the Republicans, in spite of the anti-Bush mood in the polls. The Democrats' problem is that almost every recent presidential race has been exceedingly close, and next year's could be determined not only by party, personality, campaign style and policies, but some chance remark. Or it could be the candidate's position on the Iraq war. McCain's problem is that he is too closely identified with the war, having long advocated an increase in troops. If the war continues to go badly, and there is little reason to believe otherwise, Republican support for the war could erode and they may look to someone with a record of opposing it, like Hagel.

Hagel is unusual in his party in other ways. He is liberal on many social issues that most Republicans refuse to countenance, such as gay marriage. Hagel says he regards marriage as between a man and a woman, but is relaxed about homosexual or lesbian marriages. And on an issue that is too hot even for most Democrats, burning the Stars and Stripes, he voted for legislation making it a crime but said that he could still see why people might want to do it as a form of protest.

One of Hagel's strongest points is that people instinctively like him. A wealthy businessman at Nora's recalled the first time they had met. The businessman had been braced for a request for funding, as he would have expected from most candidates, but instead the two discussed foreign policy. He came away refreshed that Hagel seemed to be more interested in his opinion than his money.

Hagel's anti-war views are not confined to Iraq. During the Israeli war against Hizbullah in Lebanon last year, he urged Bush to call an immediate ceasefire, something not only the president but Tony Blair refused to do.

He also calls for the closure of the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where more than 300 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Muslim world have been detained without trial. He sees this as damaging America's reputation as a champion of human rights.

While Bush refuses to open dialogue with Iran, sent an extra aircraft carrier group to the Gulf and insists that all options remain on the table, including a military strike, Hagel spoke passionately at Nora's in favour of negotiating with Tehran. His opposition to escalation of the Iraq war and avoidance of one in Iran can be traced to his still strong memory of Vietnam, from which he returned in 1968 with shrapnel in his chest and two Purple Hearts. Like the former secretary of state, Colin Powell, another Vietnam vet and one of the few members of the administration who cautioned against the Iraq invasion, Hagel has seen at first hand what happens in war.

In an interview with GQ magazine in January, he said: "Certainly, going through combat in Vietnam and seeing war up close, seeing friends wounded and killed in front of you, you cannot help but be framed by that experience. When I got to Vietnam, I was a rifleman. I was a private, about as low as you can get. So my frame of reference is very much geared toward the guy at the bottom who's doing the fighting and dying."

(CNN Washington Bureau Chief David Bohrman and Scowcroft Group Principal Arnold Kanter speak with USA Today correspondent Barbara Slavin)

What are Hagel's chances of winning the Republican nomination? Some at Nora's, discussing him after he had left, thought he might make it, while others said that he might instead end up as vice-president or secretary of state. Others said that McCain is still the Republican to watch.

But, whatever their thoughts on Hagel's chances, almost all seemed to be impressed by this anti-war senator from Nebraska.

Ewen MacAskill is Washington Bureau Chief of The Guardian.

Great article on Hagel and the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program salon.

These salons are packed with interesting people -- and they do ask tough questions. Our roster of attendees for the salon with Senator Chuck Hagel included:

Washington Bureau Chief of The Guardian Ewen MacAskill, Circuit City founder Alan Wurtzel, former First USA Bank CEO Richard Vague, Washington Post editorial editor Fred Hiatt, Council on Foreign Relations Board Member Peter Ackerman, CNN Washington Bureau Chief David Bohrman, New York Times national security correspondent Michael Gordon, Wall Street Journal diplomatic correspondent Neil King, former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson. . .

(New America Foundation/American Strategy Program Director Steve Clemons and Senator Chuck Hagel)

Moriah Fund CEO Mary Ann Stein, C-Span producer Robb Harleston, Atlantic Philanthropies director Christopher Oechsli, USA Today diplomatic correspondent Barbara Slavin, former President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board Member and Scowcroft Group Principal Arnold Kanter, New America Foundation Non-Proliferation and Nuclear Posture Initiative Director and www.ArmsControlWonk.com blogger Jeffrey Lewis, New America Foundation/Century Foundation Senior Fellow and Middle East Policy Initiative Director Daniel Levy, New America Foundation Senior Fellow Anatol Lieven, Wall Street Journal correspondent Jay Solomon, Senator Hagel's Chief of Staff Lou Ann Linehan, The Week Washington Editor Margaret Carlson. . .

(Council on Foreign Relations Board Member Peter Ackerman, Soros Fund Management officer Michael Vachon, and Washington Post editorial writer and Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Sebastian Mallaby)

Washington Post defense correspondent Karen DeYoung, New York Times intelligence correspondent Mark Mazzetti, Arms Control Collaborative Director Terri Lodge, New America Foundation Geopolitics of Energy Initiative Director Flynt Leverett, Georgetown Visiting Professor and former National Intelligence Council Middle East Director Paul Pillar, American Prospect Senior Editor Michael Tomasky, former State Department INR Middle East expert Hillary Mann Leverett, Washington College Professor Andrew Oros, Financial Times diplomatic correspondent Guy Dinmore, ExxonMobil DC Office Chief Dan Nelson, Council on Foreign Relations economics and foreign policy fellow and Washington Post editorial writer on sabbatical Sebastian Mallaby, Ashcroft Group Senior Vice President William C.T. Gaynor. . .

New York Times investigative correspondent Jim Risen, former Republican National Committee Deputy Chief of Staff Jennifer Crooks Gaynor, Economist economics correspondent and frequent author of the "Lexington Page" Adrian Wooldridge, Cambridge Energy Research Associates Chairman Daniel Yergin, Soros Fund Management Director of Communications Michael Vachon, Time State Department Correspondent Elaine Shannon, Reuters diplomatic correspondent Carol Giacomo, Venture House Group Chairman Mark Ein, among others. . .

Whether discussing potential Republican or Democratic candidates, I believe that the single most important defining challenge facing the United States today is our engagement in the Middle East.

America's diminishing prestige, collapsed moral position, and over-stretched military capacity has shown the world our limits. In that environment, enemies have scrambled to move their agendas and U.S. allies are counting on us less. The global equilibrium of interests has been thrown out of whack. Everyone's behavior has changed -- and that has created an enormously dangerous global geostrategic environment.

America's engagement in the Middle East must be redirected if it is to salvage anything from this point forward and if the U.S. is going to start rebuilding its domestic and international standing.

I think that there are a number of candidates on the Democratic side that may move in this direction eventually -- but I'm not convinced that many have really offered more than incrementalist proposals that remain in the same general grooves of Bush's direction in the Middle East. Wes Clark and Joe Biden are exceptions -- and there are others -- but they are not yet setting the political pace of the country.

On the Republican side, Chuck Hagel has the framing right -- and it's a narrative I do hope that he brings into the presidential arena. . .soon.

-- Steve Clemons

Russian prosecutors believe journalist Ivan Safronov threw himself from a fifth story window to his death. Apparently we're to believe that Safronov, who was about to publish a story detailing his investigation into Russian arms deals with Iran and Syria, suddenly decided to give up on life. Raise your hand if you buy that?

News is now breaking that Russian justice officials told Safronov before his death that he would be prosecuted for disclosing classified information if he were to go ahead with the story. The most damaging aspect of his story apparently proves that Russia is sending Iskenders to Syria, which can be used to fire missiles into Israel.

Safronov's employer, the Russian business daily Kommersant, has an independent, preliminary report on the events leading up to his death. The English version is here. It is chilling, and well worth a read.

This is going to have major shockwaves in Russia. Kommersant is mad. The publishers have launched their own independent investigation into Safronov's death and seem willing to go head to head with the Kremlin. Few papers in Russia still have the guts - or independence - to take on Putin over mere policy differences, let alone breaking scandals or abuses of power.

Kommersant has proven remarkably resilient to the Kremlin's efforts to co-opt it. That leaves Putin with a simple choice: expand intimidation tactics or back down. The former option probably involves more tragedy and will have a further chilling effect, but will provoke a stern international reaction and destroy any claim the Kremlin might have to innocence; the latter will probably involve scapegoating a mid-level official and ending letting the media climate thaw somewhat.

You can guess which I'm pulling for. Either way, Kommersant and the Kremlin are on a serious collision course.

-- Scott Paul

I'm enjoying Seattle -- now finagling my way into Microsoft's Annual TechFest event for which I just signed a non-disclosure agreement to get in to see the cool stuff.

It's kind of interesting that the front doors of the building I am in on Microsoft's campus says that one of the exhibits has a couple of cats -- so people with allergies need to watch out. Since that was on the front door, I don't think I'm bound by the non-disclosure contract.

But to some TWN beer and coffee gatherings. . .

I'm going to be at "Drinking Liberally" tonight, Tuesday, after 8:00 p.m. This group meets at the Montake Ale House at 2307 24th Ave E in Seattle. Here is a map.

Tomorrow morning, Wednesday, at 10:30 am, I will be meeting a group of TWN readers at the Starbucks at Washington Mutual Tower -- the largest Starbucks in Seattle -- at 2nd & Union Streets in downtown Seattle.

Please join if you can. I really enjoy these coffee political gossip and chat sessions.

Thursday and Friday, I'll be in Las Vegas for some political science meetings and all next week will be on a research trip to Havana, Cuba.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

Former Chief of Staff to the Vice President Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been found guilty on four of the five counts he was charged with in the Valerie Plame Wilson/CIA leak case.

He was not found guilty on the 3rd charge of making a false statement.

Let's now see if the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Trust posts the headlines on his guilty verdict on its news site.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm honored that Steve has asked me to begin making regular contributions here at The Washington Note. Having worked with Steve on and off for about two years, I have developed a great deal of respect for him as a thinker, writer, convener, and all-purpose operative. And as a TWN reader, I've also gained a healthy respect for his boosters, critics, and fellow readers who take the time to comment on his posts. If my thoughts and reports can generate anywhere as much passion and debate, writing here will be well worth it.

Here is a bit of background on me. I have all sorts of things buzzing around my head right now relating to energy policy, the United Nations, long-term consequences of the Iraq debate, and politics, just to name a few. Stay tuned, and thanks in advance for the warm welcome.

-- Scott Paul

I'm not kidding.

It's very sad the fear-mongering that some in our society are addicted to.

In Seattle today. More later.

-- Steve Clemons

I once worked with a person -- who will remain unnamed -- who said that in the work my institution was focused on and that was primarily supported by two sides of an industry group at war with each other that we should pick the side that gives us the most financial support (i.e., dough).

In retrospect, this individual has said that his comment was meant in jest -- and so I withdrew my criticism of the statement and him -- but the point of working for the highest bidder despite the merits of a case still matters in the structurally corrupt reality of Washington, D.C.

Allegedly, former Attorney General John Ashcroft offered his firm's services to XM Satellite Radio Holdings in the days after the Sirius/XM merger was announced. When rebuffed, he went and sold his weight in these matters to opponents of the deal, the National Association of Broadcasters.

This clip just ran in the Wall Street Journal:

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who sent a letter this week to his successor Alberto Gonzales blasting the proposed merger of Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. and XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc., approached XM in the days after the merger was announced offering the firm his consulting services, a spokesman for XM said Saturday.

The spokesman said XM declined Mr. Ashcroft's offer to work as a lobbyist for the company.

Mr. Ashcroft was subsequently hired by the National Association of Broadcasters, which is fiercely opposed to the merger. On its behalf he conducted a review of the effects on competition if the two satellite radio companies were allowed to merge.

The fact is that there may be appropriate reasons for opposing a merger of two huge media firms -- not that any other large merging media conglomerate marriages have been stopped. But still, there may be a reason not to allow a virtual monopoly in satellite radio services to be born.

But if Ashcroft did "pay for play" in this case -- then this is a very serious matter that ought to be debated in the press, among players in the legal and antitrust profession, and among politicians and policymakers.

Ashcroft may have done nothing illegal in this case -- but to have served as the former Attorney General of the United States and to weigh in so heavily on a specific case in which he has a financial interest -- needs to be known by all parties because it should erode the trust that others should have in his counsel and advocacy.

I think that Ashcroft's representatives have some explaining to do in this case -- or alternatively, the revelation that Ashcroft wrote to Attorney General Gonzales and shopped his services to both sides in the case may generate a lot of "Blowback" and may make it harder for the federal government to block the XM/Sirius merger -- even if it is the appropriate thing to do.

Gonzales needs to understand that he has a problem now and needs to demonstrably show that he and his antitrust division have not been inappropriately influenced by Ashcroft.

Gonzales should now appoint an independent ombudsman to report on the process -- and potentially even assign an investigator to look into the review that the Ashcroft Group conducted for the National Association of Broadcasters if it is submitted as evidence in the case.

-- Steve Clemons

P.S. Hat tip to Bonddad for forwarding the WSJ piece.

Stephen Krasner, Director of Policy Planning at the Department of State and one of Condi Rice's mentors, will be departing his position within a month and returning to his tenured faculty position at Stanford University.

While Krasner the realist plans to depart, however, a neoconservative -- Eliot Cohen -- is moving into the Secretary's suite as her Counselor.

Krasner, who is one of the leading realist intellectuals in the United States, was brought in by Rice to try and work some of his ideas through the policy process. Those around him and who admire his thinking and work report that Krasner did serve Secretary Rice well as one of her key "ideas guys" but that he had little stomach for constant combat with bureaucratic rivals over the course of policy.

The sources I spoke to said that Krasner did not know that the most obvious best idea didn't automatically win the competitive games in and around the President and that any initiative required herculean, tenacious advocacy.

That said, Krasner -- despite the "thrill" of the job has been pushed to the point of serious exhaustion -- and needs to take both a mental and physical health break. Krasner just returned from Istanbul this week.

This writer also must note that Stephen Krasner's office has not confirmed his departure; nor did staffers there deny it. I received a non-denial denial in which one of his colleagues said, "Steve is leaving? First I've heard of it." Another person at State to whom I reported that I had heard rumors of his departure refused to comment other than saying "Now the rumor has reached us via your phone call."

However, multiple close colleagues of Krasner have reported that Stanford will have him back soon.

But in another slot that Condi Rice had open among her close team was the Counselor position, vacated recently by University of Virgnia historian Philip Zelikow.

Late last week, Secretary of State Rice shocked many by appointing a leading neoconservative intellectual, Eliot A. Cohen, as her Counselor. Cohen was a leading proponent of the Iraq War -- and has only recently begun to critique -- along with other leading neocons like Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, and David Frum -- the Bush administration's effort as one that has not gone as expected.

This article, "The Talented Mr. Cohen," published by Ximena Ortiz at National Interest Online captures well the often-contradictory positions and statements Cohen has made on the Iraq war.

As reported in this piece by Jim Lobe, I believe that Cohen's appointment is in part an effort to get someone past the Cheney foreign policy wing. Rice does not like to do direct battle with the Vice President and views personnel appointments as a way to inoculate herself and her efforts against sabotage from the Cheney team.

In other words, Cohen has joined Condi's team both to create back-channel communications with Cheney's spear-carriers but also to protect Condi from all-out assault from the Vice President.

When I queried another top-tier political and intellectual personality who works closely with Eliot Cohen, the response I received was that he was surprised Cohen would want the job at this point in the life-span of the Bush administration.

This person also stated that Cohen would probably take over much of the "democratization" and "how to do nation building" portfolios that Krasner was working on as Director of Policy Planning. According to this source, Eliot Cohen has been working on the subject of how to get democratization -- the nuts and bolts of the process -- right.

The net effect for Condi's game plan though is that Cohen protecting her rear flank from Cheney's assaults is probably more important than any thing new he might achieve in another risky R&D effort on nation-building.

On one other front, I have confirmed that Eliot Cohen will resign his position as an Executive Committee member of the journal, The American Interest.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

I just acquired an interesting letter sent to a number of military officials and academics around the country by Air Force Col. Edward Westermann who has been working in Afghanistan and who now teaches at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

Westermann is a serious and well-respected intellectual who has authored numerous books on military strategy and history.

Strangely enough, I also happened to go to high school with him in Japan -- at least until the 11th grade when his parents were moved elsewhere. Until his departure, he was the only person at Yokota High School who was simultaneously a friend and true intellectual rival. I joined track because he was on the wrestling team and knew our ferocity in the academic arena would get too intense if we took each other on in sports; besides I know he would have wiped the floor with me.

This Westermann letter addresses troubling realities of nepotism, racism and corruption that make doing the right thing and building professionally run institutions in Afghanistan (and other nations for which America has responsibility) more exception than rule.

This story ends well. The right guy got selected for a position running a training curriculum at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan, but the selection process that he describes reveals much.

Westermann's words don't need moderation by this writer, but it does say something when an active duty officer in the U.S. military refers to "the ill-named Global War on Terrorism." From my vantage point, it seems like this kind of commendable independent thinking is regrettably a diminishing resource in the military ranks.

Westermann writes:

Annie and Oakley don't seem too bothered that I'm going to be traveling for two weeks and blogging from the road.

For those of you in cities I'm visiting, here is the schedule.

SEATTLE -- March 4-7

LAS VEGAS -- March 7-10

HAVANA -- March 12-16

Coffee meetings possible if folks are interested. Drop me a line at steve@TheWashingtonNote.com.

-- Steve Clemons

Caretaker of the Kennedy legacy, Arthur Schlesinger died last night in New York.

The 89 year-old historian was a controversial and provocative commentator on public affairs and America writ large. He was one of the most significant figures in old school American internationalism that had edges of both diplomacy and a military power focused together in collaboration with other great powers on big global problems.

I met him several times -- one at a fascinating evening with the Carnegie Endowment's Jessica Mathews and Zbigniew Brzezinski. I learned a tremendous amount about details of American diplomatic history that I would never have learned from written historical treatments.

We also sat together on the Advisory Board for Washington College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience in Chestertown, Maryland. I regret that we never met at the old Customs House in there and talked history while looking out over the Chester River.

He will be missed. My condolences to the two sons I know -- Stephen Schlesinger and Robert Schlesinger -- and to other members of Arthur's family.

-- Steve Clemons

Lincoln Chafee used to shoe horses -- literally.

I never knew the term, farrier, until I walked into the then Rhode Island Senator's office one day and saw a framed assortment of farrier licenses with the thin, scraggly-looking, long-haired picture of the would-be Senator Chafee on each. There must have been ten or so years of pictures of Chafee the farrier -- so he must have been very good at what he did.

Chafee, despite a distinguished political lineage to draw from, made himself a regular guy with views grounded in a blacksmith's common sense. He has been articulating an approach for US policy towards the Middle East, towards international institutions, and towards our problems in North Korea that are not convoluted or crafted 30,000 feet above normal Americans. My hunch is that Chafee probably thinks that there are a few different ways to shoe a horse -- and there ought to be more to thinking about war and peace than just going to war or staying home.

For the few years I have been closely following Lincoln Chafee's views, he has presciently outlined the general contours of where America may be tilting, more today by accident and desperation for new options than by design -- but still in a slightly more positive direction.

We seem to have a new equilibrium of interests that has snapped together around the North Korea nuclear problem. John Bolton is now out of the United Nations criticizing President Bush and his team rather than undermining the UN from inside. And while it is too soon to over-invest in the news that American officials will sit in the same room as Iranian and Syrian officials in a Baghdad-hosted "neighborhood gathering" next month, it's a possible start in a new direction.

Lincoln Chafee has been speaking about more informed policy options and new efforts at deal-making for a long time. He's not satisfied with yes-no, binary choices that we often convince ourselves are our only choices.

Today, in the New York Times, Chafee writes about the fact that before the Iraq War Resolution was voted on, the Senate had a choice other than the binary one handed to it. He writes:

A mere 10 hours before the roll was called on the administration-backed Iraq war resolution, the Senate had an opportunity to prevent the current catastrophe in Iraq and to salvage the United States' international standing. Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, offered a substitute to the war resolution, the Multilateral Use of Force Authorization Act of 2002.

Senator Levin's amendment called for United Nations approval before force could be authorized. It was unambiguous and compatible with international law. Acutely cognizant of the dangers of the time, and the reality that diplomatic options could at some point be exhausted, Senator Levin wrote an amendment that was nimble: it affirmed that Congress would stand at the ready to reconsider the use of force if, in the judgment of the president, a United Nations resolution was not "promptly adopted" or enforced. Ceding no rights or sovereignty to an international body, the amendment explicitly avowed America's right to defend itself if threatened.

An opponent of the Levin amendment said that the debate was not over objectives, but tactics. And he was right. To a senator, we all had as our objectives the safety of American citizens, the security of our country and the disarming of Saddam Hussein in compliance with United Nations resolutions. But there was a steadfast core of us who believed that the tactics should be diplomacy and multilateralism, not the "go it alone" approach of the Bush doctrine.

Those of us who supported the Levin amendment argued against a rush to war. We asserted that the Iraqi regime, though undeniably heinous, did not constitute an imminent threat to United States security, and that our campaign to renew weapons inspections in Iraq -- whether by force or diplomacy -- would succeed only if we enlisted a broad coalition that included Arab states.

We also urged our colleagues to take seriously the admonitions of our allies in the region -- Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. As King Abdullah of Jordan warned, "A miscalculation in Iraq would throw the whole area into turmoil."

Unfortunately, these arguments fell on deaf ears in that emotionally charged, hawkish, post-9/11 moment, less than four weeks before a midterm election. The Levin amendment was defeated by a 75 to 24 vote. Later that night, the Iraq War Resolution was approved, 77 to 23. It was clear that most senators were immune to persuasion because the two votes were almost mirror images of each other -- no to the Levin amendment, aye to war. Their minds were made up.

In order to get the future right, we need to remember our history squarely -- the constructive and the destructive initiatives that Washington has produced.

Chafee suggests that whether Members of Congress voted for the Iraq War Resolution are not is not as significant as whether they voted for an alternative option that would have slowed the march to war and that would have attempted to further secure legitimacy from the international community for what we were planning to unleash against Iraq.

Chafee writes:

Americans are gravely concerned about Iraq, and yearn for leadership to stabilize the situation there and gradually end United States involvement. Calling on presidential hopefuls to justify or recant their vote authorizing the president to take us to war almost misses the point.

The Senate had the opportunity to support a more deliberate, multilateral approach, one that still would have empowered the United States to respond to any imminent threat posed by Saddam Hussein. We must not sidestep the fact that a sensible alternative did exist, but it was rejected. Candidates -- Democrat and Republican -- should be called to account for their vote on the Levin amendment.

I couldn't agree with the Senator more, but I'll go one step further.

While I think that benchmarking Senate positions on the Levin initiative makes sense, I think that as we see efforts to deauthorize the war or reframe our military engagement in the region through legislative entrenpreneurship, there will be key votes ahead on everything from potential engagement or conflict with Iran and Syria and provisions related to the Israel-Palestine negotiations.

These will need sensible third option possibilities as well -- something more that appeasement or war, something more than zero sum games between one side in a conflict and another.

I have learned that Lincoln Chafee is treating his students to a debate today up at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. The contenders will by my New America Foundation colleague Daniel Levy, who was the lead Israeli drafter of the well-known Geneva Initiative, and neoconservative Middle East specialist Meyrav Wurmser.

I'd be interested to learn whether proposals other than bleak, binary choices emerge out of this Middle East issues session.

-- Steve Clemons