There is a lot of crime in the world, too much -- but sometimes misfortune hits close to home and needs to be highlighted.

There is a bizarre coincidence in the resort area of the Algarve Coast in Portugal in which a 3-year old girl and 70-year old man have disappeared without a trace -- in two separate incidents. One might suggest that sort of thing happens every day in large cities -- and of course, I'm fully aware that Iraqis are experiencing human trauma on the level of 9/11 about every 8 days.

3-year old Madeleine McCann was kidnapped from her apartment while her parents dined at a restaurant next door, and Karl Kleine-Brockhoff disappeared while hiking four miles from his rented villa to a small village to meet his wife and friends.

Kleine-Brockhoff is the father of Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, a well known international journalist who was Washington Bureau Chief of Die Zeit and has been a blogger on occasion for the Washington Post. He begins a new position with the German Marshall Fund in Washington next Monday.

I highlight these cases because it's hard to lose friends, family members, or even just good people we don't know -- whether in Iraq or in our own neighborhoods.

-- Steve Clemons

I have been arguing for years that Vice President Cheney had done more than any other single person in the government -- including the President of the United States -- to plant acolytes and followers of his throughout the national security bureaucracy. He has had spies and apparatchiks in the Departments of State and Defense, in the Directorate of National Intelligence, the National Security Agency and the CIA, and elsewhere in government.

John Bolton was one of these at the State Department, as was Robert Joseph -- both of whom held the position of Under Secretary of State for International Security and Arms Control.

Finally, there is a breath-taking, disturbing four-part series in the Washington Post written by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker detailing the most outrageous usurpation of power that this nation has seen in decades, if not in its history. The series is on Cheney's Rasputin abilities and methodologies and is titled "Angler," the term the Secret Service uses to identify the Vice President.

Most outrageous is Cheney's recent claim that his office is not in the Executive Branch and is not an agency of government that fits within the matrix of checks and balances that affect the presidency.

If that absurd assertion is allowed to stand, then the Office of Vice President must be de-funded by Congress immediately, and all powers related to the Vice President immediately made null.

If the Vice President thinks that there is no authority to which he reports, then he has committed a high crime against this nation and its democracy.

Every word of this long series should be absorbed. Some of what it reports is new and much not -- but it provides important validation for what some writers -- including those at this blog and others like Sidney Blumenthal have been describing for a very long time.

On January 7, 2007, I wrote a piece at The Washington Note arguing that long time Washington Post writer Bob Woodward had done the nation a great disservice in his book State of Denial by getting so much of the inside story on the Iraq War right -- and then depicting Cheney as a relatively uninfluential, eccentric character.

I'm very pleased to see that the Post's own team has invalidated Woodward's work with regard to the role and influence of this Office of the Vice President.

I would also like to direct readers to this TWN piece from a while back, "Can Cheney be His Own Declassification Machine?"

It is clear now, in retrospect that Cheney has worked hard to write in the "Office of the Vice President" as a body with specific statutory authority that does not derive from the Presidency as his machinations on modifying Executive Orders on "Classified National Security Information."

Republicans and Democrats in Congress should be unifying now on all fronts to immediately contain the power of Cheney and his team if they in fact do not feel that there are any controls on them that should be acknowledged.

Bush was never a Julius Caesar type. Cheney, however, is.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm attending the launch conference today for the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) that is headed by two former CSIS senior staffers, Kurt Campbell and Michele Flournoy.

The conference has pulled together a real who's who of the Democratic national security establishment into this invite only confab at the Willard Hotel. But there are some of the Republican persuasion here too -- including Philip Zelikow who until recently served as Counselor to Condoleezza Rice, Peter Feaver of the National Security Council, and a lot of folks from the uniformed services -- who reportedly are 70% Republican and 30% Democrat in their ranks.

In a session titled "The Inheritance and the Way Forward", panelists CNAS CEO Kurt Campbell, UT Austin LBJ School Dean and former Deputy National Security Advisor Jim Steinberg, Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter and futurist and Johns Hopkins University SAIS professor Francis Fukuyama sorted through the mess that America has in its foreign policy portfolio.

In a question I posed, I asked the panelists to suggest real proposals that would reverse the real collapse in the perception of American power in the world. I mentioned the Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Survey (of which a new phase of information is about to be released) that show that what used to be Bush-focused anger and frustration around the world has turned into systemic disdain and disregard for the United States. In other words, global anti-Bush attitudes have become more firmly rooted anti-American views. I asked what could they recommend to the next President to help turn this "perception" of our decline around.

Anne-Marie Slaughter said that the first thing she'd recommend is that the next President go on a "listening tour" -- a real listening as opposed to a "telling tour" -- along the lines of what Senator Hillary Clinton did in up-state New York. The second initiative that Slaughter would push would be for America to initiate a process ot get fundamental reform and redesign of the UN Security Council. She said that when India, Germany, Japan, Brazil, no African nation, and other key states are not part of the most important international power management machine, then this furthers global frustration with the lack of fairness and equity among key stakeholder states. She made the point that we need more of the world's population to be stakeholders in the international order.

Kurt Campbell responded by saying that the most important initiative that could be initiated to change the terms of America's global engagement and change the way America is "perceived" globally would be a fundamental shift in our efforts on global climate change. Campbell argued that this would helps us reconnect in constructive ways with the G8 members. Campbell also added that the US and China are actually working together to try and block climate change efforts -- and this is wrong-headed and must be reversed.

James Steinberg said that the most important thing the next American leader can do is to step back from the impulse to offer meaningless platitudes in defining the goals and objectives of American foreign policy. He said that we must "match rhetoric with reality." Announcing lofty goals that are not connected to "means and ends" undermines American credibility in the world and has contributed to the perception that America's ability to achieve change in the world is eroding. Steinberg said that the next US President needs to "think before pledging".

Francis Fukuyama did not get a chance to respond as moderator Richard Danzig called for the next question.

(Former Clinton Administration Deputy National Security Advisor James Steinberg and former Defense Secretary William Perry)

I thought that all of the responses I heard were sensible -- but I guess I would have added something that focused on changing America's stance on the Middle East. My view matches Zbigniew Brzezinski's that the combined storm of America's engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, brewing problems with Iran, lack of meaningful success in Israel-Palestine peace, and regional disdain among Arab Muslims for the United States is the defining challenge for America.

We need to turn that around and given the collapse in legitimacy America has experienced because of failure in Iraq, much more priority should be given to establishing a stable Israel-Palestine deal that produces two states and includes other regional deal-making including normalization of relations with Syria and a new set of economic and collective security arrangements with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and other regional players.

That did not come up in the session and should have -- but it was nonetheless a good exchange.

I'm now listening to a discussion about Iraq. CNAS Senior Vice President James Miller gave a number-specific, calendar-specific four year withdrawal strategy from Iraq. I have a hard time seeing how such a strategy can be publicly embraced given the fear so many in America have that the Pentagon and White House are not being truthful about Iraq and what are real long term intentions are there.

General Anthony Zinni basically whacked the earlier presentation (in a tactful way) by saying that there can not be an "Iraq strategy" without a regional strategy. He agrees with my view that we need some sort of new regional security arrangement among key players that today are not acting in any real unified manner.

Philip Zelikow and Washington Post correspondent Tom Ricks are up next. Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed is moderating the meeting.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Johanna Mendelson Forman is a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and was previously Senior Program Officer for Peace, Security and Human Rights at the UN Foundation. She post below is a version written specifically for The Washington Note and is a shorter version of this article that just ran in The Washington Post's "Think Tank Town" column. (This article was written 'before' the June 19-21 conference and is written with that tense.)

This week [June 19-21] leaders of 14 Caribbean countries will meet in Washington, D.C. to discuss the future of the region and its relationship with the U.S.

For U.S. leaders the Caribbean 20/20 Vision conference is low priority on the foreign policy agenda for officials too busy with the Middle East and a war in Iraq. (We understand that the meeting of Caribbean Heads of State with President George Bush will be little more than a photo op, and the one with Secretary Condoleezza Rice keeps getting switched due to other more pressing concerns!)

And the media silence on this event only underscores the lack of understanding that exists about a region. Although the Caribbean states vary in size, (most are small), wealth, and population, we underestimate the region's geopolitical potential. These states represent votes at the UN, the OAS, and make it possible for the U.S. to advance its agenda in multilateral organizations.

The last seven years have failed to generate a coherent policy to manage our relationships with the Caribbean. U.S. policy toward the region has been limited to fighting drug traffickers and preventing terrorists from advancing to U.S. shores. (Note that the capture of alleged JFK bombers who hailed from Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana happened because there was excellent law enforcement cooperation with the Caribbean states.)

We handed the Haiti mess off to the UN in 2004, with Brazil leading the peace keeping operation there. Only in March 2007 did President George Bush look south when he traveled to Latin America on a whistle-stop tour that yielded little more than a memorandum of understanding on biofuels with Brazil on renewable energy, and agreements about technical cooperation in support of three Caribbean and one Central American nation gaining greater energy independence.

U.S. effectiveness as a good neighbor in the Caribbean could help overcome a sense of betrayal that many of the Caribbean states felt after the U.S. intervened in Haiti for a second time in 2004. Our actions not only created ill-will among the CARICOM states, but it also reduced our effectiveness in the corridors of multilateral institutions like the OAS and the UN, where the U.S. had counted on the Caribbean to help support U.S. interests through their votes.

If the U.S. is to once again rely on the support of these small island states, it will have to demonstrate that it takes its commitment to the third border by seriously crafting a policy that addresses the regional concerns: stimulating trade and development, reducing poverty, stabilizing Haiti, supporting the U.S.-based Diaspora, and mitigating climate change through expanding renewable energy resources.

Only by putting greater emphasis on a collaborative approach to the multiple and complex policy issues in the Caribbean will the U.S. once again be able to regain its legitimacy as a trusted actor and ally.

-- Johanna Mendelson Forman

Michael Moore is making quite a splash in Washington with his new film, Sicko. I have yet to see the film, but I think that one of the key takeaways from the documentary on the sorry state of American health care is that in Cuba, comprehensive quality health care is considered a human right.

Cuba gets much wrong -- but after Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Haditha, and frankly 47 million uninsured Americans with no health care -- America has a diminished level of moral credibility to stand on when criticizing illiberal regimes. Today, Cuba is exporting doctors whereas it used to export revolution and weaponry. Without getting too deep for the moment, just ask yourself which country in the world tops the charts on exporting armaments and revolution.

Here is an article by Sarah van Gelder that explores the issue of health care as "right" and focuses on what Cuba has been able to do.

It is interesting to note that tonight's guest blogger, Representative Jane Harman attended the Washington screening of Michael Moore's film and supports dramatic change and reform in the terms of America's engagement policies with Cuba.

In other US-Cuba news today, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) called America's current policy "wrong-headed" and introduced legislation in the Senate calling for an end to trade and travel restrictions with Cuba. Congresspersons Charlie Rangel (D-NY), Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO) and Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) joined Baucus in arguing for an overhaul in US-Cuba economic policy and introduced companion legislation in the House and Senate.

-- Steve Clemons

Representative Jane Harman (D-CA-36) blogs in her spare time and reads The Washington Note frequently. She also occasionally guest blogs at Huffington Post. Like the proprieter of TWN, she considers herself a "radical centrist" and presently serves as Chair of the Intelligence Subcommittee of the House Committee on Homeland Security

In the partisan paradigm under which Congress operates, compliments are rarely paid to good policy initiatives by the opposite party.

Here goes. I applaud the recent initiatives of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to focus on threats posed by small boats and general aviation aircraft. Just this week, his Department sponsored a small vessel security summit in Washington as part of an effort to understand potential threats to our country's 150 ports.

Yes, I know. Some regulations may affect or interfere with some recreational boating and business air travel. But how short is our memory? 17 American sailors were killed in 2000 when a small boat loaded with explosives slammed into the USS Cole at port in Yemen. Numerous small aircraft have targeted the White House; a small plane accidentally flew into it in 1994.

Senator Susan Collins and I recently visited the Port of Los Angeles and were briefed by the Coast Guard (now part of the Homeland Security Department) about its impressive program to track ship traffic headed for the port complex.

But what about small boats, we asked. The answer was that a 100-foot perimeter was set around commercial and tourist vessels -- "controlled navigation areas" -- and that any boat invading that perimeter is breaking the law.

But the terrorists who smashed into the USS Cole didn't care about breaking the law -- or staying alive.

This is what we're up against -- and a bigger worry than a suicide bomber acting alone is a suicide bomber carrying a radiological weapon.

The bipartisan SAFE Port Act, which passed the last Congress with overwhelming support, creates a layered maritime security strategy for America's ports. So-called "Marine Domain Awareness" is a big part of this, and exempting small boats and general aviation aircraft would create a loophole for our agile adversaries to exploit.

So, I believe Secretary Chertoff is onto something important, and am happy to say so. If ever there was an issue that should not fall victim to the vicious partisanship now plaguing Congress, it is national security.

-- Jane Harman

It is rumored that tomorrow during a "Principals Meeting", the administration will decide to shut down the Guantanamo military detention facility and transfer prisoners there into the American legal system.

I have not received confirmation that this is the case, but it sounds like this could be another important example of President Bush tacking towards the consensus neo-realist position of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, CIA Director Mike Hayden, and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. State Department Elders John Negroponte, R. Nicholas Burns, and John Bellinger have also played vital roles in this transition of policy away from pugnacious, anti-international Cheneyism.

I suggested the other day that Colin Powell's call to the administration to shut down Guantanamo and his admonition about the damage it was doing every day to America's prestige and moral credibility was pushed at a "tipping point moment". Powell probably knows that this was the most efficacious time to speak out. He has assets inside the administration who would have let him in on what was brewing inside the Executive Branch and wanted to give a public push to offset Cheney's internal resistance.

A friend of mine offered circumstantial evidence that something "big and good" was in the works as he ran into and gave an assessment of the "mood and physical condition" of Condi's Chief Legal Advisor, John Bellinger, the other day -- who has shepherded forward the administration's support of the Law of the Seas Treaty, helped shut down secret detention facilities, suggested that the US could be supportive of International Criminal Court investigations concerning Darfur, and now probably helped make the case for shutting down GITMO. My friend said he had not seen Bellinger look so relaxed and so happy in quite a long time.

When it comes to these sorts of issues, the "mood" of people who have a conscience is worth noting.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: I have just spoken with a senior administration acquaintance "who would not confirm or deny" that there would be the Principals Meeting tomorrow described above -- but who made it clear that the press is reporting that some in the administration are saying that the meeting has been cancelled. Cheneyism still has some serious legs perhaps.

I've never met Bill Scheurer, but I think his Peace Majority Report is a wonderful contribution to the debate on the U.S. role in the world. He takes a broad view of peace advocacy and is refreshingly willing to challenge the peace movement on its strategic choices and effectiveness. I rarely read commentary from the organized peace movement, but I would read more if it were like Scheurer's.

His latest column on the occasion of World Refugee Day notes the tragedy of the refugee crisis, the "living victims of war," and then moves on to discuss the plight of those who are killed - the civilian casualties.

Scheurer proposes a "Name Every Victim" law, which would require the U.S. to undertake a good faith effort to identify all civilians killed in every military action we undertake. It's one of the more revolutionary ideas put forward by peace advocates, and one that should be adopted without delay.

Well-intentioned people can, no, must debate the conditions under which the U.S. should use military force. My own view is that decision-makers in Washington vastly underestimate the costs of military operations in lives, dollars, effectiveness, and international credibility. Doing our best to identify civilian victims and restore dignity, identity, and humanity to all sides of our military engagements will surely bring some of those costs to light.

-- Scott Paul

A reader noted that yesterday was World Refugee Day. To mark the occasion, the UN High Commission on Refugees released a report that counts over 10 million asylum-seekers this year.

That's a 14% increase over last year, thanks mostly to the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syria. This is one "surge" that deserves serious attention.

For more on this, see Mark Goldberg over at UN Dispatch or Steve's earlier posts here, here, and here.

-- Scott Paul

CSIS Strategic Analyst Anthony Cordesman didn't use that metaphor exactly. Here is what he wrote in an email he sent me this morning along with his new report, "Still Losing? The June 2007 Edition of "Measuring Stability in Iraq":

The latest Department of Defense report on "Measuring Stability in Iraq" attempts to put a bad situation in a favorable light. It does not disguise many of the problems involved, but it does attempt to defend the strategy presented by President Bush in January 2007 in ways that sometimes present serious problems. More broadly, it reveals that the President's strategy is not working in any critical dimension.

The are enough indicators in the June 2007 report, however, to make it all too clear that the US is not making anything like the overall progress it needs to implement the President's strategy. Moreover, it is all too clear that the most import issue is not the "Plan A" of the Bush Administration, or any "Plan B" from Congress, but the sheer lack of any meaningful Iraqi political development of a "Plan I" for political conciliation.

As in Vietnam, the US can win virtually every tactical encounter. As in Vietnam, this is irrelevant without political unity, effective governance, and a nationalist ideology with more real world impact than its extremist, sectarian, and ethnic competition.

Part of the problem is that the US is trying to fight the wrong "war." The US does need to fight a serious counterinsurgency campaign, but this seems to be focused far too narrowly on both Al Qa'ida, which is only one Sunni Islamist extremist movement, and on the most radical elements of the Sadr militia. The US does not have an effective strategy or the operational capability to deal with the broader problem of armed nation- building, or with a widening pattern of civil conflicts.

The attached report analyzes both the strengths and weaknesses of the June 2007 report. It also provides a summary of the key trends in conciliation and governance, security, the development of Iraqi forces, economic development and aid.

Cordesman's sober, lucid, unsentimental analysis just lays out the picture in Iraq as it is -- not like he or any of us hope it might be. This kind of truth-telling needs much more air time.

-- Steve Clemons

I'll eliminate the suspense: I think it's pretty silly. I understand the Clinton campaign's desire to connect with its supporter base, develop loyalty, establish brand identity, and increase its candidate's accessibility.

Nothing wrong with that. But those goals could have been accomplished in ways that touch on issues facing the U.S. and the world, too. The way it was done seems a little shallow.

However, I did enjoy the spot announcing the end of the contest, which pays homage to the Sopranos and, more importantly, to Mt. Kisco Coach diner. The diner is a local fave for those of us from the Chappaqua/Mt. Kisco, NY area, as well as my destination as a teenager for many a breakfast and late night snack.

So in sum, Hillary's campaign song contest may lack in substance, but it is high on local flavor and sentimental appeal.

I've been away from the blog for a few days and should be back soon - with plenty of exciting stuff to report on and a few random thoughts here and there, too.

-- Scott Paul

Seymour Hersh has just published in The New Yorker a major interview with Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who led the Pentagon's investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib. The piece is titled "The General's Report."

Among the revelations Taguba shares is that he was ordered to focus on lower level soldiers in his investigation even though he felt that command knowledge and participation in the abusive techniques and practice of torture went very high in the Pentagon.

Also captured in the article, via the Washington Post:

Taguba also said that Rumsfeld misled Congress when he testified in May 2004 about the abuse investigation, minimizing how much he knew about the incidents. Taguba said that he met with Rumsfeld and top aides the day before the testimony.

"I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib," Taguba said, according to the article.

"We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable."

Those keeping the score card on Rumsfeld need to add this "lying to Congress" case.

Although many no doubt believe that Rumsfeld misled, obfuscated, distorted and lied on a number of occasions -- getting a clear case with a witness and participant as important as Taguba is rare.

If I were Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, I'd call Rumsfeld back in for a chat -- under oath.

-- Steve Clemons

I've received a mountain of email lately -- some of it has asked for some more pics of Oakley the Amazing Weimaraner and his kid-sister Annie.

Well, here's one above of the pups sleeping which they do a lot of after some wild romps, runs, and walks that they get into on a daily basis.

I'll try to get some more up soon.

Wait. . .I want to put up a classic pic of the Oakster and me (I've posted it before) hard at work sorting out stuff in the office.

-- Steve Clemons

As many readers of this blog know, I hosted former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson's October 2005 cannon blast against the "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" and the degradation of the national security decision making process in the White House.

Wilkerson has admirably been working full time since giving speeches, appearing in films and television shows exposing the machinations and duplicity of many who worked in this administration in preparing and executing plans to invade Iraq.

Wilkerson is fascinating and important in his own right -- but for many, he is also a proxy for his former boss Colin Powell's views. Powell and Wilkerson probably disagree on a number of things Wilkerson has said -- but he also agrees with much but has been silent. Wilkerson has helped create a "place holder" for Powell until he began to speak.

And now -- as of last weekend on Meet the Press, Powell did speak and called for the closing of Guantanamo.

I have written a commentary for the Guardian's "Comment is Free" site titled "Guantanamo and Colin Powell" -- and wanted to link it here.

Many of my liberal readers will probably rail against Powell, and perhaps he does deserve a lot of criticism. I am trying to both think through and explain his previous silence -- and why as well he is beginning to speak up now.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm halfway through a report on disaster management and peacebuilding by Michael Renner and my good friend Zoe Chafe at the Worldwatch Institute.

The frequency of disasters is likely to increase due to a number of factors, chiefly among them climate change. The report's most important contribution is its insight into how interdisciplinary approaches to disaster can actually make them peacebuilding opportunities. Chafe and Renner go into depth on a few case studies to make their point.

This should make some waves.

-- Scott Paul

I have no doubt that readers of this blog have noticed my more-than-occasional rants about insufficient U.S. funding for multilateral activities and institutions. Global poverty and U.N. peacekeeping are among the areas I've pushed for hardest through my " day job," but there's another that's just as much in need and even less noticed.

The shortfall in U.S. funding for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) threatens to undermine global efforts to monitor nuclear tests, especially in areas where the U.S. lacks access, like China, North Korea, and Iran. It's one more example of the Bush administration's unfortunate tendency to cut off its nose to spite its face.

To date, the only coverage of this issue was a short article in the Washington Times. It desperately deserves some more attention.

The brief history is as follows: President Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits nuclear tests, in 1996. The Senate has never ratified it, but the U.S. has remained a member of the CTBTO, which is charged with implementing the agreement.

To do that, the CTBTO has begun construction of an international monitoring system to detect nuclear tests. For example, it was the CTBTO system that confirmed that North Korea's missile test last October was nuclear.

The administration rejects the CTBT and is split over funding for the CTBTO. It has never requested funding from Congress, and last year, the U.S. lost its voting rights in the Organization.

Without U.S. funds, which make up roughly a quarter of the CTBTO budget, the monitoring system won't be completed. Stations planned in strategically important locations - locations near China, Iran, and North Korea, where the U.S. has no nuclear "eyes and ears" of its own - won't be built.

And it would cripple one of the most critical nonproliferation tools available to the international community.

If the new leadership at State is really looking to heal some wounds with the international community, this is low-hanging fruit. Besides, do we really need fewer non-military tools to contain the proliferation of nuclear weapons?

Congress needs to right this wrong, pronto.

-- Scott Paul

Note: In a previous post, I noted that the DNC endorsed the ONE Vote '08 Campaign and urged the RNC to do the same. I have since been informed that the DNC and RNC have both endorsed the ONE Vote '08 platform. Congratulations to both.

A TWN reader just sent me this interesting article titled "Arab Journalist Knocks U.S. Credibility in the Mideast," that ran in yesterday's Daily Oregonian.

The title of the article aside, it's a very interesting inventory of views of America's Middle East mess as seen from an Arab perspective. Hafez Al-Mirazi, who was previously Washington Bureau Chief of Al Jazeera and now a senior correspondent in Cairo launching a new 24-hour news channel, Misr TV (and an occasional reader of The Washington Note), was speaking in a series organized by the Oregon World Affairs Council.

It's important for Americans to do some listening -- and to absorb some of the messages people like Al-Mirazi are transmitting.

Among the bullets that writer Ted Mahar garnered from Al-Mirazi's talk were:

America will face crises in the Middle East for years to come, largely because it has acted un-American.

. . ."Iraq is much worse than it was before the U.S. invasion," he said. U.S. mistakes included disbanding the Iraqi army, which has evolved into uncontrollable militias. Further, U.S. policies foment sectarian differences instead of seeking compromise.

Ending a dictator's rule seems a hollow goal, "because there are so many dictators in the Arab world who are friends of the U.S.," he said. With the Cold War over -- and won -- the U.S. should reject ties to any government leader not elected fairly.

. . .U.S. backing of Israel seems to be at the expense of Arab interests and will be an obstacle to order until truly even-handed sympathies are clear, he said.

"In the recent political debates, no Democrat said (the word) 'Islam,' while the Republicans competed to use anti-Islamic rhetoric," he said. The administration, he said, has made the word "Islamic" an adjective used mainly with words like "terrorist," "extremist," "militant," "radical" and anything but "religion."

The short article is a good, quick snapshot of the staggeringly high antipathy in the Middle East towards America, and in my view, Al-Mirazi is smoothing out the edges and being very diplomatic.

But kudos to the Oregon World Affairs Council for hosting speakers like a senior journalist from Al Jazeera. More around the country need to avail themselves of similar opportunities.

-- Steve Clemons

Editor's Note: Thanks to BG for sending the Oregonian article link.

(John Edwards' Senior Economic Adviser Leo Hindery and CNN Washington Bureau Chief David Bohrman at New America Foundation Dinner)

This is interesting news. John Edwards has appointed cables sports industry giant Leo Hindery
to serve as Senior Economic Advisor on his campaign.

There are not many Democratic CEOs in the cable television and sports business, but Leo Hindery is one. He has had a spectacularly successful career in the media and broadcast arena but his passion is restoring the health of the American economy and achieveing more equitable sharing of the growth and gains in that economy among its key stakeholders -- in other words with "workers."

Hindery has been one of the few CEOs who has argued that overall the current crop of American business leaders are shipping out jobs and manufacturing capacity overseas to benefit their own personal financial interests -- but are crippling their firms, their workers, and the long term health of American society.

While John Edwards may get a bump with his base for bringing on a guy who won the Le Mans Grand Prix, I think it's what Leo Hindery has been writing and arguing about economic public policy that makes him interesting.

Hindery's book It Takes a CEO: It's Time to Lead with Integrity and his interesting recent report on the American economy under the auspices of the Horizon Project give good insight into the kind of stakeholder-oriented economic counsel Hindery will most likely provide presidential candidate John Edwards.

-- Steve Clemons