There is informal discussion among some in the military set -- and increasingly among some pols -- that General David Petraeus could be an interesting presidential prospect on the Republican side of the line a few years from now.

This is all speculation -- very little grounded in anything serious -- but the prospects of a "draft Petraeus" plan, though embryonic, triggered a Chatham House rules discussion today that I participated in in Chicago after I brought up Bill Gertz's "Draft Tommy Franks for VP in 2008" article that appeared today.

To get a sense of how "not" viable the Gertz proposal is, re-read Spencer Ackerman's article on General Franks from August 2004 titled "Vision Impaired."

But the same is not true of US Commander in Iraq David Petraeus -- no matter what the outcome of his testimony before Congress in September on the results of the surge or the long-term outcome of the Iraq War.

In fact, Petraeus may actually be helped in any hidden presidential aspirations he may hold if things continue to deteriorate in Iraq and the Dems take the White House in November 2008.

The scenario runs something like this.

Petraeus -- who both Dems and Republicans liked when he was perceived to be a highly competent, underappreciated expert on counter-insurgency and who was punished by Rumsfeld and exiled far from the front line action to do his work in Leavenworth, Kansas -- won't be blamed for the deteriorating mess in Iraq.

Things continue to go badly. Petraeus holds his finger in the dyke preventing total breakdown in Iraq and convulsing violence, but the Dems win the White House in 2008. Let's just say Hillary Clinton wins, but I think the scenario holds for either Edwards or Obama.

Hillary Clinton and two chambers of Congress are now fully responsible for unwinding the Iraq War and managing America's position in the Middle East. No matter how one looks at the problem, there is no silver bullet solution to preserve America's interests where they were. There will be costs. Some Sunni governments in the region could fall. A regional conflagration could begin to heat up. A high-level assassination of a moderate Sunni Arab leader in Jordan, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia could start a raging new regional, if not global, war.

But not even considering the more nasty, sensational scenarios -- Clinton or Obama or Edwards and their Democratic partners in Congress are going to have a terrible mess that will likely deteriorate further before some equilibrium is found.

There will be "plenty" by that time to blame on Hillary and the Dems in the Middle East -- and thus, a new balanced, more pragmatic and judicious voice is needed -- someone who understands how to deploy power and understands the evolving contours of non-state, radicalized, Islamic extremist violence.

He may be earning his political chits with Bush and company now.

Petraeus would be the Republican's version of a Wesley Clark -- a new Eisenhower. . .perhaps (though one senior retired military friend of mine nearly tossed it up when the comparison to Eisenhower whom he admires came up).

There are lots of problems with this scenario, but some folks are beginning to chew on it. Watch for David Petraeus in 2012. And watch for him to tell reporters who ask him about this, "I have no intentions to run for president at this time. . . "

-- Steve Clemons

(photo credit: Jay Westcott, Washington Examiner)

I'm going to out myself. I have friends -- lots of them -- inside the American Enterprise Institute. Some of them I can't mention here as they used to work at AEI and then went to work for political players that this blog has been at cross-purposes with. Need to protect those folks.

But I have worked well and collaboratively with Norm Ornstein, James Glassman, Claude Barfield and others there -- even Jeffrey Gedmin and Radek Sikorski, both who would be in the neoconservative camp, but both of whom I respect and get along well with personally. (Though I just couldn't remain quiet during an effort by John Bolton to hire Jeffrey Gedmin as his deputy at the United Nations.)

The American Enterprise Institute is a success story in many ways that other institutions should study. But there are some real tensions inside AEI that should be noted.

Norm Ornstein does this for me in large part in an interesting essay, "My Neocon Problem," he has just published in the September 10 edition of the New Republic's Washington Diarist.

Ornstein has wrongly been labeled a neocon because of his AEI affiliation. He writes:

A blog called WurstWisdom, railing against the neoconservative domination of the planet, recently contained the following passage: "There are other Neocons or Neocon facilitators you may not have heard of because they are seldom in the public eye, the better to wield behind-the-scenes power. These include Grover Norquist, Richard Viguerie, John Bolton, Elliot Abrams, Norman Ornstein. . ."

This is rich -- and unfortunately wrong (as the blog itself is interesting) -- because Grover Norquist is about as anti-neocon a right-winger as you can get, to paraphrase Tucker Carlson the other day who admitted to being the most "pro-gay right winger you can imagine." Norquist is a libertarian realist who sees big government and high taxes as the results of the neocon agenda.

Elliott Abrams is a neocon for sure.

John Bolton is not. Bolton has allied with the neocons and often is not distinguishable from the movement, but he's a Jesse Helms-revering, pugnacious nationalist. Bolton, in many ways is admirable in his consistency, if not for his irascible nature, but he's patriotic without awareness that his brand of patriotism is highly damaging to the country.

Norm Ornstein is a dedicated moderate who understands the ins-and-outs of the American political system as well as anyone. He's empirical and not ideological. He'll probably be punished at AEI for this (well, he says in his piece that he's never pressured), but his pal around buddies are often the center-left Brookings guru on good governance Tom Mann and liberal-with-lots-of-conscience (much more than AEI would prefer) E.J. Dionne.

Ornstein continues:

It was extremely disappointing to have my cover blown in this fashion. I had considered my weekly columns in Roll Call inveighing on behalf of campaign finance reform an excellent camouflage for my nefarious stealth machinations. But, alas, my identification with the neocon conspiracy has now become a commonplace "fact" in certain quarters -- many of them, strangely, in Iowa.

A blogger for The Des Moines Register, for instance, has declared me "a neoconservative Washington Insider." An Iowan novelist with a blog called Is this Heaven? recently referred to me as a "far-right ... flak." This is quite a turnabout for my reputation. My career as a congressional analyst has steadfastly avoided partisan politics.

In fact, I'm one of those Jurassic-era Washingtonians who believes in the virtues of centrism and bipartisanship. I have worked closely with both John McCain and Russ Feingold on campaign finance reform and with Barack Obama and Fred Thompson on congressional and civil service reform. As for my enemies, they span the spectrum: My writings have enraged Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastert, as well as the chairmen of the black and Hispanic congressional caucuses.

So why am I now somehow a dangerous neocon? Without a doubt, it is because of my perch as a scholar at the now infamous American Enterprise Institute (AEI). I joined AEI as an adjunct in 1978, while I was teaching political science at Washington's Catholic University, before converting to a full time think-tanker six years later. It is true that AEI is a bastion of conservative thought, having a long relationship with the self-proclaimed godfather of the neoconservative movement, Irving Kristol.

And it is also true that some of my AEI colleagues were early and enthusiastic supporters of war with Iraq. They helped provide the intellectual framework for it and contributed to the crafting of the surge strategy. Of course, this recent history accounts for the think tank's popular image -- not to mention the urge of various blogging naifs and ignoramuses to cram me into the wrong ideological box.

But Ornstein's dilemma should raise some red flags for AEI. If its staff members are getting tagged for the work and keep-us-in-permanent-war campaigns of Bill Kristol and friends, then not only bloggers will confuse the players but "funders" may begin asking questions about how their money is being directed -- and whether they are the financial lifeline paying for the chief ideologues of the Iraq War. Jim Lobe has been getting at this in a series of articles at his LobeLog. See in particular Lobe's "AEI: Caught Between Its Likudist Heart and Its Corporate Head."

In a different arena with relevance to the subject, I won't soon forget being a guest of Intel Corporation at AEI's gargantuan annual black tie dinner. Michael Novak was honored -- and during his speech, if my memory serves me well, he railed on a bit against abortion and a woman's right to choose. He actually said "A house cannot remain half-slave, half-free (and I must add today, half pro-life, half pro-death). Either it will go all for slavery, or all for liberty. No man can properly will slavery (or abortion) for himself; hence, not for any other."

This was strange because there were hundreds of professional, corporate women at this dinner. The wife of a prominent national print and television journalist and then senior telecom exec sitting near me but at a different table, just inhaled and held her breath and looked as if she were biting her lip when Novak was speaking.

Around the room were the blue chip firms of industrial America as well as the new high flyers then, like AOL, Cisco, Intel, and many others. All of these multinationals are light years ahead of AEI's Novak on issues of abortion and tolerant workplaces that include benefits for same sex partners and all that. And yet they continue to give to AEI (I've asked them) because they respect what Norm Ornstein calls "an intellectual openness and lack of orthodoxy at AEI exceeds what I have seen on any college campus."

Ornstein's prose on this needs to be replayed here, as its zesty and probably true:

I'm not, by nature, an outspoken company man. But the fusillades lobbed at AEI have got me thinking about my long-time intellectual home. And here's what I can tell you: I spent 13 years teaching full-time in university settings. Since then, I have regularly visited campuses. I can say flatly that the intellectual openness and lack of orthodoxy at AEI exceeds what I have seen on any college campus -- and without faculty meetings.

I have many pro-choice colleagues, along with a number of pro-life ones. There are many libertarians on issues like same-sex relationships. And, even though my writings have frequently ticked off conservative ideologues and business interests -- especially my deep involvement in campaign finance reform -- I have never once been told, "You can't say that" or "You better be careful."

I have been able to pursue my interests in a completely unfettered way. I know that this is hard for people to understand, especially given the widespread desire to believe that a tight-knit cabal that convenes in a mysterious think tank is driving Bush administration policy. And I know that this flies in the face of a widespread desire to characterize all conservatives as intellectually intransigent. But life in Washington, thank goodness, is more complicated than that. I have many colleagues with strong opinions who are willing to listen to the opinions of those who disagree with them. And that fact gives me a sliver of hope.

With many urgent issues, from global warming to subprime mortgage loans to health policy to pensions, there is plenty of sensible middle ground.

There is sensible middle ground, but Norm's problem is that while AEI is diverse, it is best known today as being the headquarters for those who laid the intellectual and political groundwork for the invasion of Iraq which has had devastating consequences for the country in my view. They are again doing all that they can to instigate a war with Iran.

I used to wonder when pictures would pop up of the coffins of American soldiers who have been on the front-line of this massive military and foreign policy debacle by the Bush/Cheney administration and its neoconservative fellow-travelers, if someone would put a logo of Intel over the flag-draped coffin graphic titled "Intel Inside?" to raise concerns about Intel's funding the public policy institution that gave sanctuary to the architects of this damaging war.

It hasn't happened yet -- and just for the record, I have no idea whether Intel is a major funder of AEI or not. I just sat at an Intel sponsored table at a fundraising dinner for AEI. Intel, or any of these firms, might think that they are helping to fund what Chris DeMuth, AEI's President, was famous for -- deregulation policy work. But over time, people connect dots, even if it's unfair in the eyes of Ornstein or his moderate colleagues.

That seems to be happening to the neocons as well -- as it is nearly impossible to fathom an AEI foreign policy department article arguing against sanctions against Iran appearing in the Washington Post. But one did, by Danielle Pletka. I take her at her word that she may believe what she has written, but I think that she'd have to agree that the piece is not "continuous" with much of her other writing. It's rather a remarkable article on many levels.

Did some donors get self-interested and indicate to AEI -- even informally -- that pushing on sanctions damaging to their interests was over the line? I have no idea but some speculate that's the case. If this did occur, it's too bad these firms had to wait for a clear financial hit before communicating their concerns and didn't make that call either when moral calls were being made from AEI that were at serious odds with their liberal political culture -- or when they saw the bodies of soldiers coming home and thought through AEI's unique role with the Bush administration and the set of wars we are engaged in.

But the bottom line of this essay is that I can attest fully that Norman Ornstein is NOT a neoconservative and is a great guy who works with a diverse set of public intellectuals at AEI. I just wish they got more bandwidth than the neocons there.

-- Steve Clemons

Here is some thinking I have written up about America's ongoing neocon problem and the threat that that movement represents over at Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish.

And for those in Chicago or at APSA, I'm blogging away in the fantastic lounge of the Sheraton Hotel on the Chicago River.

-- Steve Clemons

David Corn has gotten hold of a secret report -- still in draft form -- outlining the concerns that the US military and foreign service have about a "norm of corruption" in the current Iraqi government.

One wonders how holier-than-thou Americans can be here given the rampant corruption we have allowed in no-bid contracting in Iraq and even around the billions in recovery funding for the Katrina tragedy.

Corn writes:

As Congress prepares to receive reports on Iraq from General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and readies for a debate on George W. Bush's latest funding request of $50 billion for the Iraq war, the performance of the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has become a central and contentious issue.

But according to the working draft of a secret document prepared by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, the Maliki government has failed in one significant area: corruption. Maliki's government is "not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anticorruption laws," the report says, and, perhaps worse, the report notes that Maliki's office has impeded investigations of fraud and crime within the government.

The draft -- over 70 pages long -- was obtained by The Nation, and it reviews the work (or attempted work) of the Commission on Public Integrity (CPI), an independent Iraqi institution, and other anticorruption agencies within the Iraqi government. Labeled "SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED/Not for distribution to personnel outside of the US Embassy in Baghdad," the study details a situation in which there is little, if any, prosecution of government theft and sleaze.

Moreover, it concludes that corruption is "the norm in many ministries."

A couple of quick thoughts.

First, in an environment in which there is a second economy of influence or money, the cause is usually that there is no trust in the first economy. Rules and contracts are not enforceable in Iraq, and self-dealing becomes highly rational and important for survival when everyone else is doing it -- and when there is a sense that the whole enterprise may collapse at any moment. That is certainly true of Iraq.

So, corruption occurs -- and in some circumstances, rational self-dealing can be useful because it helps to influence and sway the behavior of major stakeholders in Iraq's political system. We can hem and haw about the morality of corrupt government officials, but the more efficacious tactic would be to bribe them ourselves if we care about what they do.

But that requires us to be able to set clear objectives of what we are trying to do, apply resources to the effort, and see it through. America does not seem to have that ability -- and seems to insist on operating with the delusion that we are dealing with good guys who actually care about the Iraqi nation.

We are not. Those in Iraq, at the helm now, are self-dealers on the whole -- who care about power among their clan and sectarian identity.

And we are only realizing now that they are corrupt? I had thought we were bribing them all along but just weren't very good at it. We need to get out.

-- Steve Clemons

Here is a pdf copy of the "Restricted Distribution" report by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, "Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran."

These concluding clips from the Summary underscore that ElBaradei sees Iran moving in a positive direction and setting its nuclear program up for high level transparency that had not been previously the case:

22. The Agency is able to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran. Iran has been providing the Agency with access to declared nuclear material, and has provided the required nuclear material accountancy reports in connection with declared nuclear material and facilities. However, the Agency remains unable to verify certain aspects relevant to the scope and nature of Iran's nuclear programme.

It should be noted that since early 2006, the Agency has not received the type of information that Iran had previously been providing, including pursuant to the Additional Protocol, for example information relevant to ongoing advanced centrifuge research.

23. The work plan is a significant step forward. If Iran finally addresses the long outstanding verification issues, the Agency should be in a position to reconstruct the history of Iran's nuclear programme. Naturally, the key to successful implementation of the agreed work plan is Iran's full and active cooperation with the Agency, and its provision to the Agency of all relevant information and access to all relevant documentation and individuals to enable the Agency to resolve all outstanding issues.

To this end, the Agency considers it essential that Iran adheres to the time line defined therein and implements all the necessary safeguards and transparency measures, including the measures provided for in the Additional Protocol.

24. Once Iran's past nuclear programme has been clarified, Iran would need to continue to build confidence about the scope and nature of its present and future nuclear programme. Confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme requires that the Agency be able to provide assurances not only regarding declared nuclear material, but, equally important, regarding the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, through the implementation of the Additional Protocol. The Director General therefore again urges Iran to ratify and bring into force the Additional Protocol at the earliest possible date, as requested by the Board of Governors and the Security Council.

This last section, however, is what the United States and France are crying foul over and which remains a major obstacle to more political progress:

25. Contrary to the decisions of the Security Council, Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities, having continued with the operation of PFEP, and with the construction and operation of FEP. Iran is also continuing with its construction of the IR-40 reactor and operation of the Heavy Water Production Plant.

What is happening now is that there are now at least three, if not more, divergent international tracks in confronting Iran on its nuclear program.

The IAEA track -- which the Iranians themselves have now just applauded (which does raise questions actually) -- is citing enough progress on transparency and possible cooperation with international nuclear protocols that the IAEA is at odds with the third round of economic sanctions that the U.S. and France are trying to rally against Iran.

Then inside American and some European circles, Iran's failure to suspend its enrichment program requires toughened sanctions, each round of which becomes tighter -- harming both Iran as well as firms in nations applying the sanctions.

And third, the neoconservative crowd simply wants to suspend all negotiations and begin bombing.

At a minimum, ElBaradei's report probably stalls somewhat the neoconservative effort to start yet another war -- but I think that the sanctions noose that Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns is feverishly working on will continue.

And if there was a God that had ElBaradei working on one side of the process and Burns on the other -- with the neocons somewhere very, very hot -- I'd think that that was a brilliant good cop/bad cop strategy.

Unfortunately, I don't think that such order and design exist in our universe.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Update:

Paul Kerr has an excellent run down of the key questions that the IAEA is working through with Iran. Kerr notes that the line of work is leading to Iranian admissions relating to its current enrichment related R&D. His site is full of excellent material on Iran's nuclear developments. Also see Jeffrey Lewis' Arms Control Wonk.

Marc Perelman, writing for The Forward, has just released an important summary of the diplomatic back-and-forth currently in progress between major American Jewish organizations and the governments of Turkey, Israel, and the United States. What I've been hearing privately jives pretty well with what Perelman has published.

I've long been amazed by the position taken by the organized American Jewish community on the Armenian genocide. While a legal case for genocide would not be completely guaranteed of success (genocide is amazingly difficult to establish legally - for reference, the UN couldn't do it in Darfur), it can and should be properly applied to the events of 1915-1917 given the spirit and popular meaning of the word.

I should say at the outset that I am not writing this post as an employee of Citizens for Global Solutions, which is generally more concerned with contemporary global problems than regional disputes; I am writing as a concerned Jew and citizen.

The most recent minor shake-up on this issue began when Andrew Tarsy, the Anti-Defamation League's New England Regional Director, made reference to the Armenian genocide. His firing prompted a public outcry and caused Abe Foxman, its director, to rehire Tarsy and, after extensive consultations, to describe the atrocities as "tantamount to genocide."

The ADL is the only one of the major establishment Jewish orgs. to make any reference to genocide of Armenians. And still, the ADL, as well as most major Jewish organizations, opposes Congressional action.

Yet, the positions of these organizations seem to be very much in flux. The American Jewish Committee, which had lobbied heavily against the Armenian genocide resolution in Congress, has not devoted extensive resources to opposition this year. AIPAC is the subject of mixed reports: Perelman says they have lobbied heavily against the resolution with help from Dick Gephardt, Bob Livingston, and Steve Solarz, while an AIPAC spokesman tells Ynet News, "...AIPAC is not - and I can say this unequivocally - not lobbying on this issue at all." Like Perelman, I had heard that AIPAC was involved.

The Forward, which published Perelman's piece, also published an editorial - against recognition. It reads:

There's no doubt that collisions between fighting genocide and defending Israel cut the heart of Jewish identity in the post-Holocaust era. What, we may ask, is the point of fighting for a Jewish state if it will not act in a Jewish manner - that is, serve as a beacon to us and the world?

AJC Executive Director David Harris - an old personal and family friend of mine - tries to articulate a middle ground on the Jerusalem Post blog. Harris identifies this correctly as a choice for Jews between principle and pragmatism, and then almost brings himself to choose principle. It's a valiant effort and an important step forward, but with due respect to my friend, still not good enough yet in my view. Either way, it's worth a read.

Some Jews will find the most persuasive argument for accepting the Armenian genocide the possibility that if we do not, our calls of outrage with Holocaust denial will ring hollow - a very real possibility. There's a better reason: it's the right thing to do and it's consistent with Jewish ethics.

All of the Jews I know who are engaged in this debate feel sincere compassion for the relatives of murdered and displaced Armenians. Their good intentions are not at issue. And, for that matter, no one should deny the implications of recognizing the Armenian genocide for Turkish and Israeli Jews.

However, the consequences of obscuring historical realities and disregarding fundamentally Jewish ethical principles - to the meaning of being Jewish - are far greater. It's time to end this controversy, even if it is 90 years too late.

-- Scott Paul

Toles (c) 2007 The Washington Post. Used by permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.

I'll be lurking at the American Political Science Association annual gathering in Chicago from Thursday (tomorrow) through Sunday. Nothing like YearlyKos, but still -- you learn stuff from academics. . .and tons of them are reading this and other blogs.

I'll be downtown and don't know my schedule fully. As usual though, I'd be happy to set up a coffee meeting with those who want it. The first to suggest a decent time and place gets to set the stage. I'll be at the Hyatt Regency.

-- Steve Clemons

A note from Tucker Carlson:

Let me be clear about an incident I referred to on MSNBC last night: In the mid-1980s, while I was a high school student, a man physically grabbed me in a men's room in Washington, DC. I yelled, pulled away from him and ran out of the room.

Twenty-five minutes later, a friend of mine and I returned to the men's room. The man was still there, presumably waiting to do to someone else what he had done to me. My friend and I seized the man and held him until a security guard arrived.

Several bloggers have characterized this is a sort of gay bashing. That's absurd, and an insult to anybody who has fought back against an unsolicited sexual attack. I wasn't angry with the man because he was gay. I was angry because he assaulted me.

Sorry Tucker -- guess I misunderstood the exact dialogue here:

ABRAMS: Tucker, what did you do, by the way? What did you do when he did that? We got to know.

CARLSON: I went back with someone I knew and grabbed the guy by the -- you know, and grabbed him, and -- and --

ABRAMS: And did what?

CARLSON: Hit him against the stall with his head, actually!

[laughter]

CARLSON: And then the cops came and arrested him. But let me say that I'm the least anti-gay right-winger you'll ever meet --

Tucker -- use your fame and opportunity for influence more wisely.  You conflate your views toward gays with a bad bathroom experience with someone who came on to you.  What lessons do you think you convey in your banter with Scarborough and Abrams?  Vigilanteism is cool. Gays lurk in bathrooms -- watch out! It's OK to assault someone after they have done something inappropriate.

I'm sure you were shocked by the experience, but you turned your opportunity to educate Americans as the "least anti-gay right winger" into frat boy banter.  But thanks for the clarification.

-- Steve Clemons

I will avoid today discussion of the reasons why so many men chose to look for sex partners in public bathrooms, gyms, and the like over the last few decades.  Most engaged in this kind of sex would probably have preferred socially supported venues for relationship and sexual development -- in the clubs, restaurants, public places galore that the heterosexual world has to walk together, to talk, to hug, to kiss, and to 'do it.'

Andrew Sullivan has much better dexterity with this subject than I do -- but it is disgusting that while so many are now cringing at the thought of gay man having tearoom sex that they are at the same time so obsessive about trying to stop same sex marriage between committed individuals.

Tucker Carlson brought this home in an interview he did yesterday in which he got "bothered" in a public restroom when he was in high school and then got a buddy and went back to beat up the guy before he was arrested.  To be fair to Carlson, we haven't yet heard whether the "botherer" grabbed Tucker's crotch or just tapped his foot under the stall. 

But Carlson's comment that he chose to beat up the trespasser "after the fact" in a vigilante action says much.

This from Media Matters:

On the August 28 edition of MSBNC Live, hosted by MSNBC general manager Dan Abrams, Tucker Carlson, host of MSNBC's Tucker, asserted, "Having sex in a public men's room is outrageous.

It's also really common. I've been bothered in men's rooms." Carlson continued, "I've been bothered in Georgetown Park," in Washington, D.C., "when I was in high school."

When Abrams asked how Carlson responded to being "bothered," Carlson asserted, "I went back with someone I knew and grabbed the guy by the -- you know, and grabbed him, and ... hit him against the stall with his head, actually."

Read the full transcript (or watch the video clip) which is pretty disgusting, not just because Tucker Carlson, self-described as "the least anti-gay right-winger you'll ever meet", admits to beating up someone trolling for sex in a public bathroom -- but because Dan Abrams and Joe Scarborough just laugh.

Someone should go look for evidence of the arrest that Tucker Carlson mentions.

-- Steve Clemons

A new, interesting blog -- Wonkosphere -- monitors how much 'buzz' is flying around the blogosphere on the various presidential candidates.

Interestingly, Ron Paul places second at the moment behind front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Obama is third.

Chris Dodd runs in seventh place but beats Giuliani, Huckabee, McCain, Brownback, and Kucinich. Gravel is not on the list -- and oddly, neither is Joe Biden.

But one must guess that Chris Dodd's "Wonkosphere Ranking" will probably surge given the just announced endorsement of him by the International Associaton of Firefighters.

The most recent analysis of the Dodd endorsement came to me from an observer of unions and politics who has given me permission to quote his comments from a private listserv:

My theory [on the Dodd endorsement]? It's a case of the Althusserian "absent center" with Dodd as the donut hole. The Firefighters don't want to make the "wrong" choice between the three candidate that can win -- Clinton, Obama, and Edwards.

They like Edwards like the rest of the movement but don't think he's going to win, and don't want to piss off the Hillary machine. But they also don't want to seem paralyzed and ineffectual. They want to be players. So they pseudo-aggressively endorse someone, but don't piss off any of the big three by picking one of them against the other two.

After Dodd drops out following Iowa or New Hampshire, they see the lay of the land and jump to the likely winner.

Sounds very plausible to me.

-- Steve Clemons

NATIONAL HARDWOOD LUMBER ASSOCIATION PAC INC
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I'm sorry. I can't help it today -- and as regular TWN readers know, I'm almost never funny.

Congratulations to Mike Rogers who launched the outing of Larry Craig in October 2006 because of his hypocrisy in the so-called culture wars.

Just for the record, Mike Rogers spoke to me in 2006 about the information he had just come by on Senator Craig. I had worked with the Senator and his staff on numerous issues -- ranging from Asia trade questions to semiconductor policy. Most recently, Senator Craig had become an ally in a more progressive stance on US-Cuba trade relations.

Rogers worked through what he had cautiously, carefully, judiciously. He sat on the information that had come to him over months and worked on making sure that his source was rock solid.

Rogers got almost zero support from the established gay network or those out there who were trying to promote greater tolerance in the corridors of political power. Rogers was alone -- just like Lane Hudson was alone when he brought forth the instant messages between former Congressman Mark Foley and a too-young male intern.

Mike Rogers and Lane Hudson have generated what are clearly some of the largest power-toppling shockwaves in our national politics -- and virtually on no budget with scant support. That really needs to change.

Just to be clear, they didn't "invent" this news. They just used the blogosphere to pursue what is in the common sense, common good. If you feel like supporting the work of Lane Hudson and Michael Rogers, here's your link.

But that said, those who exploit the dark side of American insecurity about diversity and promote intolerance towards others -- like Senator Larry Craig -- need to be challenged, and Rogers has a sure fire track record.

David Dreier, a pretty good guy in my book, is the next on Mike Rogers' list who has not squared his private life with his public votes.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Americans want a good impeachment, but the will is just not there yet to seriously go after the President or Vice President.

But what about Haley Barbour?

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour -- former Chairman of the Republican National Committee -- would be a great exercise in impeachment for the numerous Katrina-related ethics violations and beyond that he has been party to. Here is the impeachment clause from the Constitution of the State of Mississippi.

Bloomberg's Timothy Burger deserves a Pulitzer for all that he is digging up in the muck of the Haley Barbour administration's contracting decisions in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Burger writes on August 15th:

Many Mississippians have benefited from Governor Haley Barbour's efforts to rebuild the state's devastated Gulf Coast in the two years since Hurricane Katrina. The $15 billion or more in federal aid the former Republican national chairman attracted has reopened casinos and helped residents move to new or repaired homes.

Among the beneficiaries are Barbour's own family and friends, who have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from hurricane-related business. A nephew, one of two who are lobbyists, saw his fees more than double in the year after his uncle appointed him to a special reconstruction panel. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in June raided a company owned by the wife of a third nephew, which maintained federal emergency-management trailers.

Meanwhile, the governor's own former lobbying firm, which he says is still making payments to him, has represented at least four clients with business linked to the recovery.

To take Barbour's ethics blurriness a few notches further, it appears that Barbour has had a Bill Frist like problem of not being blind about what was inside his blind trust. According to Burger in an article just out today:

When Haley Barbour was sworn in as governor of Mississippi in 2004, he set up a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest and said he had severed ties with the Washington lobbying firm he co-founded.

The blind trust document he signed about six weeks later says that on Jan. 13, 2004, the day he took office, Barbour still had a stake worth $786,666 in the publicly traded parent company of Barbour Griffith & Rogers Inc., as well as pension and profit-sharing plan benefits from the lobby firm.

A copy of the notarized trust agreement, obtained from an individual who requested anonymity, says Barbour receives $25,000 per month, or $300,000 a year, from it. He lists the trust in his annual Mississippi ethics filing as his only source of income outside his $122,160 salary as governor.

Barbour, 59, a former Republican National Committee chairman, has refused to discuss his personal finances. His attorney, Ed Brunini Jr., said in a statement yesterday that "the provisions of his blind trust are fully appropriate and legal under Mississippi law." Brunini alleged that the disclosure of the information was unlawful. Barbour spokesman Pete Smith said Brunini's statement would have the governor's approval.

It couldn't be learned what, if any, interest Barbour had in Barbour Griffith when the members of the firm lobbied the state last year in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina two years ago. The minimal disclosure required by Mississippi law contrasts with federal executive-branch rules that individuals who set up blind trusts report publicly their initial holdings and what they are worth, within ranges.

What we have here is that some times Barbour has made statements that he did hold an equity position in the parent company of Barbour, Griffith and Rogers -- now very much in the news for its representation of the Iraq political ambitions of former Iraq Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi -- and at other times he said he had severed all ties to the firm but was getting a "retirement payment."

As former head of the firm, he must have known that there was no retirement from BGR, but that he was receiving a kick-out, or dividend, of $25,000/month from his so-called blind trust that was coming out of the growth, gains and principal of whatever equity positions his trust held.

This is important because there is already enough in the public domain to show that Governor Barbour knew that he had an ongoing stake in the work of his former lobbying firm -- which "cleaned up" along with many of his family members in the Washington-provided recovery funds after Katrina.

Haley Barbour has flown over the public ethics line in the past as well. The case I am most familiar with and which was investigated by Congressman Henry Waxman's Government Oversight committee involved Barbour setting up in 1993 a non-profit 501(c)3 organization called the National Policy Forum (NPF).

Barbour allegedly used NPF as a vehicle for funnelling $800,000 in foreign money into the 1996 election cycle after having used NPF as the same kind of vehicle in 1994 congressional races.

The Internal Revenue Service eventually ruled that the NPF was a subsidiary of the Republican National Committee and not entitled ot tax-exempt status. Barbour's partner in this enterprise when Barbour was serving as Chairman was John Bolton who became president of NPF in 1995.

Barbour, whether as Chairman of the Republican National Committee; Chairman of the National Policy Forum; Chairman and Proprietor of the lobbying firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers; or now Governor of Mississippi, has demonstrated obsessive disregard for the line between public ethics and private gain.

Mississippians should impeach him because he's undermined the interests of their state -- and many around the country should help.

Iraq is an ongoing tragedy -- but so is Katrina. Impeaching Haley Barbour could start a healthy trend.

-- Steve Clemons

The US State Department recently outlined a new strategy a few weeks ago in anticipation of the UN's announcement of the continued growth of Afghan poppy -- up by 17% percent from last years record crop and rising to account for 93% of the world's supply. But for the most part, the proposal offers more of the same failed efforts that have placed eradication at its center. There's even veiled hints of pursuing aerial chemical spraying, a move Afghan and European governments rightly oppose for fear it would further alienate Afghans and consolidate the Taliban's support.

Barnett Rubin, writing at a Middle East/South Asia experts blog (stemming from Juan Cole's Informed Comment), describes the follies of the new strategy -- it misses the forest for the trees by focusing on poppy rather than drug money, which is the real strategic and governance problem hobbling American interests in Afghanistan:

On pages 13-14, the US Strategy ("Defining the Problem") correctly diagnoses the problem as "drug money," which "weakens key institutions and strengthens the Taliban." But this diagnosis has consequences that the Strategy does not draw. A strategy to lessen the flow of drug money into corruption and insurgency is not identical to a strategy to reduce the quantity of addictive substances produced and exported. Once the US Strategy accurately diagnoses the problem as "drug money," it then reverts to a nearly exclusive focus on drugs themselves, and not even on heroin, which produces much more drug money, but on poppy cultivation, which accounts for at most 20 percent of the drug economy in Afghanistan but has become the photogenic Paris Hilton of Afghan narcotics policy. This analytical flaw is the root cause of most of what I believe is wrong with this strategy.

The focus on flowers rather than drug money has led to a false comparison between northern and southern Afghanistan. U.S. officials now imply that political elites in northern Afghanistan are engaging in successful counter-narcotics, while the southern drug economy expands. This depiction has obvious ethnic implications, to the point that one government (not the U.S.) asked me to comment on whether different ethnic groups have different cultural attitudes toward opium.

The basis for these generalizations is that poppy cultivation spread into Afghanistan mainly through the Pashtun areas and that in the last year poppy cultivation has decreased in the mainly northern provinces (see the UNODC Rapid Assessment Survey map). The main reason that the drug economy expanded the most in the Pashtun areas is that traffickers shifted the cultivation to Afghanistan from Pakistan when Islamabad started to suppress it in the 1980s, and the government collapsed in Afghanistan. As a trans-border people, Pashtuns are well-organized for smuggling, whether of opium, weapons, or spare parts for trucks.

But most importantly, the map shows only the flowers. The U.S. Strategy nowhere claims, discusses, or even mentions whether "drug money" has decreased in northern Afghanistan. It has not. Balkh may be poppy-free, but its center, Mazar-i Sharif, is awash in drug money. The commanders who control Northern Afghanistan today are playing the same shell game that the Taliban did in 2000-2001. Some have suppressed cultivation (in Ghor and Bamiyan cultivation is hardly worthwhile anyway, the yields are so poor) but none have moved against trafficking. Most of them continue to profit from it, if only through what in the U.S. we would call "political contributions."

Some of the same officials who today get credit for counter-narcotics efforts are generally believed to have become millionaires directly or indirectly from drug trafficking. Recently the nephew and right-hand man of the chief of the border police in a province colored a hopeful green in the map above was caught driving a car full of heroin north through Kabul. Why? Because there is still plenty of trafficking going through the North, and trafficking, not cultivation, is where the money is. An Afghan friend (and official of the Afghan government) told me that when he was in Bamyan recently, the north-south road by the lake at Band-i Amir was crowded like a highway with trucks taking the opium and heroin of Helmand northwards. (This is the same road that the mujahidin used to transport arms from Pakistan to northern Afghanistan in the 1980s.) The same traffic goes through Ghor, to the west. The arms traffic goes in the other direction, as northern commanders sell their Iranian weapons to dealers who re-sell them to the Taliban.

In a subsequent post, Rubin likens the administration's counter-narcotics approach to the "shock-therapy" treatment applied to Russia and other post-Communist states after the breakup of the USSR. The analogy is actually quite fitting though the policy is not:

A counter-narcotics strategy that serves our security goals would win over the farmers and many others involved in the industry, while we and the Afghan government help them adjust to the shock of being subject to international rules, while isolating the few who wish to use illicit revenue to fund insurgency and terrorism. Instead, the administration has adopted the Afghan equivalent of "shock treatment" in the former USSR: a "War on Drugs" approach, as if it is trying to end drug addiction in the West by attacking Afghan farmers.

The comparison to post-Communist shock treatment may seem strange. But what has happened to Afghanistan is not just drugs and terrorism: for the first time in history, the Afghan peasantry has started producing a cash crop for the international market. The peasantries of other countries faced this challenge under colonialism, when they produced (or lost their land to plantations that produced) rubber, tea, coffee, indigo, sugar, cotton, tobacco, and many other products. Caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol (in the form of rum) all came to the consumers of the developed world through the same kind of transformation that is now bringing them cannabis, opiates, and cocaine, except that the latter are now considered to be illegal. Just as sudden integration with the international finance and product markets required a shocking readjustment in the former Communist countries, the move from an illicit form of export mono-culture to a licit economy requires an immense upheaval in Afghanistan. Both transitions can destroy the economic security of millions and provoke the type of backlash we now see in Russia, but with even more dangerous consequences in Afghanistan, given the presence of al-Qaida. Avoiding this backlash should dictate the pace that crop eradication plays in counter-narcotics strategy.

Despite Rubin's sage advice, and it has been offered to the US government a number of times via Congressional testimony (see here, here, and here), the State Department's new strategy seems to betting the house on one a one-legged horse: eradication.

The strategy paper reminds me of a Dave Chapelle show episode where the character Dylan (pronounced "Die-lawn") poses the following question, "Who are the five best rappers of all time?" and unabashedly answers "Dylan...Dylan...Dylan, Dylan, and Dylan."

In the State Department's case, they repeatedly come up with eradication as the answer to the Afghan opium trade problem. The recently released US Counternarcotics Strategy for Afghanistan states:

For 2008, one of our main objectives should be to achieve a net reduction in total opium poppy cultivation in Helmand. To achieve this, we must make immediate progress in the following five areas:

1. Make Eradication a Counternarcotics Priority

2. Encourage the GOA to Set Eradication Goals for 2008

3. Encourage the GOA to Employ Non-Negotiated Methods of Forced Eradication

--Encourage the GOA to consider the use of force-protected GBS eradication in 2008, particularly in insecure areas.

--Make available to the GOA the tremendous amount of research done on health, safety, and environmental concerns about glyphosate.

But wait, there's so much more:

4. Improve the Good Performers Initiative (GPI)

--To date, rewards under the Good Performers Initiative have only been disbursed to poppy-free provinces, which have each received $500,000 for achieving poppy-free status as defined by a confirmed crop of less than 100 vestigial hectares. To incentivize poppy reduction in high-concern provinces such as Helmand, the USG and GOA will announce an expanded Good Performers Initiative before the 2007 planting season that will reward poppy reduction in all provinces, and offer special performance incentives for high-concern provinces that stabilize or reverse cultivation trends through aggressive governor-led action.

[Translation: The program will incent well-heeled governors to pursue poppy eradication at the expense of farmers but do nothing to stop trafficking which is far more profitable.]

5. Improve CN-COIN Public Information

--The USG will develop and implement an action plan to improve coordination of message delivery on the CN-COIN nexus in Afghanistan.

[Translation: We'll borrow Karen Hughes to convince farmers that eradication of poppy--often their only means of subsistence--is actually in their best interest.]

Over the past three years Afghan poppy cultivation and its share of the opium trade continue to rise and each year US officials promise increased eradication efforts will mop up the problem. But with three years of failure and a wealth of research by narco-terrorism experts like Vanda Felbab-Brown revealing the consistent, empirical failure of the eradication-first strategy, I think it's more likely that Dylan is the best rapper of all time.

--Sameer Lalwani

Too bad Senator Craig did not read up on the granddaughter of Senator John H. Bankhead, Tallulah Bankhead, who had this to say about her foot-tapping experiences under bathroom stalls:

There was the time she was in Washington for a Democratic Convention honoring her "divine friend, Adlai Stevenson"  . . .And during a long speech by some senator she had to go to the john, but found when she was settled in for the duration that there was no toilet paper at hand. "So I looked down and saw a pair of feet in the next stall. I knocked very politely and said: 'Excuse me, dahling, I don't have any toilet paper. Do you?' And this very proper Yankee voice said: 'No, I don't.' Well, dahling, I had to get back to the podium for Adlai's speech, so I asked her, very politely you understand, 'Excuse me dahling, but do you have any Kleenex?' And this now quite chilly voice said: 'No, I don't.' So I said: 'Well then, dahling, do you happen to have two fives for a ten?'"  (from People Will Talk by John Kobal)

-- Steve Clemons

Woolsey's everywhere. Working hard to start a war with Iran -- and perhaps planning to make a lot of money off the conflict if things swing that way.

Jim Lobe notes that Jim Woolsey is doing cheerleading at the American Enterprise Institute on September 10 to help sell advance orders of "Freedom Scholar" Michael Ledeen's forthcoming new book, The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots' Quest for Destruction.

But to balance out the politics, Woolsey will be speaking Wednesday, 5 September on "The Terrorism Index" at the Center for American Progress at 9 am in a session with Paul Pillar, Steven Simon, Moises Naim, and John Podesta.

Why are folks letting Woolsey balance out the politics? What a tangled web.

-- Steve Clemons

Give her a break. It was a tough question.

-- Steve Clemons

A birthday gift for me? Alberto Gonzales has resigned.

The inevitable certaily does take a long time in this administration.

-- Steve Clemons

My co-blogger this week at Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, Jamie Kirchik, has gone after Max Blumenthal, and Scott Horton has offered a push-back.

My sentiments about Max and Sidney are pretty well-known, but let me remind.

-- Steve Clemons

I just came across this blog of an American military guy that the Pentagon has not yet shut down called "Army of Dude."

Here are some choice entries:

Stupid Shit of The Deployment Awards!

Working with 1920s -- A Sunni insurgent group we've been battling for months, responsible for the death of my friend and numerous attacks, agreed to fight Al Qaeda alongside us. Since then, they've grown into a much more organized, lethal force. They use this organization to steal cars and intimidate and torture the local population, or anyone they accuse of being linked to Al Qaeda. The Gestapo of the 21st century, sanctioned by the United States Army.

The Surge -- The beefing up of ground forces in Iraq at the beginning of the year, started by the 82nd Airborne. Unit deployments were moved up several months to maintain a higher level of boots on the ground to quell the Baghdad situation. What most don't realize is the amount of actual fighting troops in a brigade, something in the area of 2,000 soldiers in a brigade of 5,000 depending on what unit it is. So for every 2,000 fighters, there are 3,000 pencil pushers sucking up resources in every brigade that was surged. A logistical nightmare that, surprise, failed miserably. The increase of troops in Baghdad pushed the insurgents to rural areas (like Diyala), hence our move here in March. The surge was nothing more than a thorn in the side of nomadic fighters having to move thirty five miles while the generals watched Baghdad with stubborn eyes.

I Can Taste It

This occupation, this money pit, this smorgasbord of superfluous
aggression is getting more hopeless and dismal by the second. It's
maddening to think that more than a year's worth of blood, sweat and
tears will lead to little more than a pat on the back and a hideously
redundant speech from someone who did none of the bleeding, sweating or
crying.

Despite being in a meaningless situation, my life has never had this much meaning. I watch the backs of my friends and they do the same for me. I've killed to protect them, and they've killed to protect me. For friends and family, being deployed is like being pregnant or surviving a car wreck; everyone is nice to you all of a sudden. People I don't even know send me kind words and packages from all over. They came out of the woodwork knowing my plight and shared with me heartfelt hope and luck.

The fact that you're reading this now, dear reader, is a testament to that. Would you have cared about what I thought, felt or did two years ago? This position I'm in, shared by less than one percent of the U.S. population, has given me the distinct privilege of sharing my experiences and ruminations of this war, observations undiluted by perpetually delirious officials like General Petreaus and mainstream media sirens. I have felt every extreme of the human condition, physically, morally and emotionally. I've never laughed so hard, cried so long or felt more ashamed of myself in all of my life. In a matter of weeks it'll be over, and I'll have just the memories of enduring 130 degree heat, and poker games lasting well into the night.

I'll look back on the hysterical laughter during fifteen hour Baghdad clears, the terror of being pinned down by machine gun fire, the sight of a Stryker on its side and the unfolding of a body bag under the flames of a nearby school, unzipped tenderly to fit the body of Chevy as RPGs screamed overhead. Soon this place will all be in the past.

The Enemy of My Enemy of My Enemy of My Enemy...

Fourteen months into this deployment and things are taking a turn for the surreal.

Throughout Mosul and Baghdad, we were fighting what could best described as an insurgent cocktail: parts of Islamic State of Iraq, Al Sadr's Mahdi Army, 1920 Revolution Brigade and simple, pissed off farmers. Shia and Sunni. Organized militias and rag tags. All they had in common was a shared goal: a total withdraw of occupational forces.

This seems like a blogger in the field that The New Republic should have hired -- or at least added to its team.

There is a strong wind that all of a sudden seems to be moving US-Cuba relations in new directions.

Presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton are going to have to decide whether they are going to spend political capital to keep US-Cuba relations in grooves carved out over five decades and defended by Bush -- or whether they are going to be part of charting a new, more constructive course.

The Los Angeles Times today ran an editorial that pulls no punches in highlighting the failures of a five-decade old American strategy that has yielded nothing for American interests. The editorial juxtaposes Clinton and Obama -- who are on conflicting pages when it comes to loosening the tight noose that Bush has strangled Cuban-American families with when it comes to family travel.

But impressively, the Times calls for full, unrestricted travel, which is my own position as well as that of Senator Chris Dodd, whose statement on US-Cuba relations still sets the gold standard.

Here is a segment of the Los Angeles Times editorial, "Obama's Right on Cuba":

. . .after the U.S. has tried for nearly 50 years to force a regime change in Cuba by way of economic embargo with no success whatsoever, Obama is one of the few presidential contenders who dares to suggest that it's time to try something different.

Some might consider Obama's move courageous given the political power of Florida's Cuban American community, which helped put George W. Bush in the White House in 2000 and has cheered his efforts to tighten sanctions on Cuba. But the minority of Cuban immigrants who vote Democratic is deeply divided on the travel ban and would like to be able to send more money to relatives at home, so Obama may not be staking out such a bold position after all.

Regardless of the political implications, Obama is clearly right -- the only problem is, his proposal doesn't go far enough. The travel ban should be lifted for everybody, not just Cuban immigrants. It is the height of irony that Americans can freely travel to countries such as Venezuela and Iran, which represent genuine threats to our security and economic interests, but not to Cuba, whose government is a threat only to its own people.

The ban has done nothing to weaken Castro, but it does keep U.S. tourist dollars out of the hands of Cubans, who might be less inclined to heed their regime's anti-U.S. propaganda if Americans were helping to raise their standard of living.

The U.S. shouldn't lift all economic sanctions on Cuba until the island's regime makes progress on democracy and human rights, but policies such as the travel ban and limits on remittances are simply counterproductive. Score one for Obama.

I'd say that Obama has scored a "big one." I hope Hillary Clinton modifies her position because a foreign policy that promotes Cold War era thinking is not what this nation needs to get its national security posture back in to some kind of acceptable shape.

-- Steve Clemons

I just wrote this piece for Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish.

The zinger -- about which I'm withholding judgment but which I think should be in the public domain -- is that I have just learned that "A War We Might Just Win" co-author Mike O'Hanlon is under contract with America's Middle East propaganda network, Alhurra.

O'Hanlon's public bio does say that he is a commentator for Alhurra -- so nothing is hidden. But "under contract" and helping to produce shows, as I'm told he is helping to do, seems to be a broader form of engagement in America's propaganda efforts, which aren't going that well in any case.

Interesting, to say the least.

-- Steve Clemons

There are aspects of both Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's national security and foreign policy strategies that seriously concern me. I feel much more pull towards the kind of national security contours of a Chuck Hagel -- but he has not announced and does not yet appear to be running.

That said, unless something earth-shattering happens, it is likely that either Obama or Clinton will be the next Democratic candidate for President, and very possibly the next President of the United States.

There are differences between them, and I have to admit that all candidates have a complex challenge appealing to voters in a primary race, then in a general election, and then dealing with citizens within the practical realities of Washington after victory. A candidate needs to be a chameleon to appeal to audiences whose core appetite is different in varying circumstances.

The Hillary we see today -- running hard right (if that is what one can call Bush's foreign policy) on a number of national security issues -- may not be the same Hillary we see in the Oval office. She may be ready to launch a new effort that helps reorder America's place in the world. Privately, I think she wants to do that. I have had at least one serious conversation with her -- and some occasional side comment moments with her -- that indicate to me that she really wants to push a 21st century foreign policy, not one sculpted in the last century.

That said, thus far in her campaign, she is demonstrating a disturbing trend towards incrementalism and continuity of Bush administration policies that she should cease.

This is a "discontinuous moment" in American history in which it's highly dangerous to American interests to plot tomorrow's course by what one did yesterday. There are no easy patterns or templates for the time we are in. America may be slipping from being a globally recognized, earth-sprawling hegemon to something that looks like just another great power -- well, perhaps not just any great power, a big one with great assets -- but that slippage has real costs.

Someone who recognizes the deteriorating state of America's moral credibility in the world and the increasingly eroded national security portfolio of the county is Carter administration National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Sending an important signal, Brzezinski has just endorsed Barack Obama's candidacy over Hillary Clinton's. Brzezinski is one of the greatest strategic minds alive today and does understand the need to make changes in policy today to generate different outcomes tomorrow.

Influential foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius anticipated the themes of Brzezinski's statement in an important Washington Post piece, "The Pragmatic Obama," earlier this week.

In an article just published by Bloomberg's Janine Zacharia, Brzezinski is reported to have said that "Obama recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America's role in the world.''

Brzezinski made the comments in an interview on Bloomberg Television's "Political Capital with Al Hunt." (Here is full transcript, courtesy of Bloomberg)

More from the Zacharia article:

"Obama is clearly more effective and has the upper hand," Brzezinski, who was President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, said. "He has a sense of what is historically relevant, and what is needed from the United States in relationship to the world."

Brzezinski, 79, dismissed the notion that Clinton, 59, a New York senator and the wife of former President Bill Clinton, is more seasoned than Obama, 46. "Being a former first lady doesn't prepare you to be president," Brzezinski said.

Clinton's foreign-policy approach is "very conventional," Brzezinski said. "I don't think the country needs to go back to what we had eight years ago."

"There is a need for a fundamental rethinking of how we conduct world affairs," he added. "And Obama seems to me to have both the guts and the intelligence to address that issue and to change the nature of America's relationship with the world."

Yesterday, I reviewed some of the candidate's views on US-Cuba policy in which I outlined that Senator Chris Dodd was perhaps the most visionary and saw a clear path to a policy that would be in the long term interests of the United States and Cuba -- and break the bilateral relationship out of its freeze-dried state of many decades.

Barack Obama has a practical, near term policy approach on Cuba that clearly differs with the Bush administration and is in American interests, but Hillary Clinton said that she supports the Bush administration's tough embargo policy and a travel ban that is more restrictive and punitive than when she and her husband occupied the White House.

Dodd outlined the mid to long-term future. Obama sketched what a near term future in US-Cuba relations could look like, and Hillary Clinton -- regrettably, as I do recognize her many strengths -- is staying in the past.

That is why Brzezinski has called for Obama. Hillary Clinton could still be our next President, but she should not get defensive about Brzezinski's statement -- and instead, should dig a bit here and ask herself why her advisors are pushing her into anachronistic, 20th century grooves -- and not ones aimed at a clear-headed and consistent 21st century vision for the country.

-- Steve Clemons

Not to be beaten by Senator John Warner who called last night for the beginning of modest troop withdrawals from Iraq, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace is reportedly going to urge President Bush to cut troop levels next year in Iraq by half. That would move the level deployed to roughly 80,000.

Reinforcing Pace and other generals uncomfortable with the maxed out conditions of the military, former JCS Army General George W. Casey Jr. reportedly stated that "We're consumed with meeting the current demands, and we're unable to provide ready forces as rapidly as we would like for other contingencies."

The other contingencies refers mostly to Iran -- which the military is not eager to engage, but knows that as long as the US armed forces look like they are near a breaking point, the value of the American military deterrent is low.

-- Steve Clemons

Significant events are unfolding inside Pakistan, most recently with reports within the past few hours that former Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif, who was exiled for corruption, has been cleared by Judge Iftikhar Chaudhry to return to Pakistan. Judge Chaudhry himself was recently reinstated after an attempt by President Pervez Musharraf to fire him, a move which sparked popular street protests.

Sharif's return is big news, especially considering the fact that Musharraf has been negotiating a deal with another former PM exiled for corruption, Benazir Bhutto, for her return to Pakistan in exchange for her support of the beleaguered president. The deal would purportedly involve some sort of power sharing arrangement that would allow Bhutto to run as the head of her party (PPP) and vie for the prime minister's seat again while Musharaf would step down as army chief of staff but remain President.

The return of Sharif appears to further weaken Musharraf's presidency, which has been beset by the perfect storm of emboldened opposition and protests from militant Islamic, judicial, and democratic forces. While some popular discontent may be healthy and stir up important changes, a number of myths are bound to arise out of this recent news.

The first is the "democracy rising" myth -- while the popular gloss on Sharif's return will spin this as further evidence of a nascent democratic revolution ready to topple a military regime, Anatol Lieven reminds us that these parties, though laced with democratic rhetoric, are in fact factions led by feudal, land-owning elites that rely on patronage networks. Pakistan may be moving towards democratic openings but we'd be remiss to think that political parties like Bhutto's PPP or Sharif's PML are primed to fully take on the responsibility of democratic governance.

The second myth surrounds the role of the military. Democratically elected leaders are no more likely to suddenly dispense with Pakistan's intransigence when it comes to fighting the Taliban. The country is too plagued by ethnic and religious fissures for any government to swiftly crackdown on the Northwest Frontier Province, where Taliban fighters are reported to be taking refuge, and civilian leaders have historically thrown up their hands and deferred to the military to control unrest.

Former State Department official Daniel Markey recently penned a thoughtful and sober account of Pakistan's military as the bulwark institution of the country that is not going away anytime soon. Like many military governments in the region, the Pakistani military and has been far more effective (and less corrupt) than civilian institutions and, for better or worse, has assumed significant governance capacities critical to the country. Markey suggests that pulling the Pakistani military even closer with US aid, joint training, and intelligence sharing, will afford the US considerable leverage to push for a heavier hand against al Qaeda and the Taliban as well as a gradual democratic transition.

I've remarked to some colleagues that space-time continuum has been ruptured when Anatol Lieven, Peter Beinart, and a former administration official all agree on roughly the same approach -- to encourage democratic openings like the Musharraf-Bhutto deal while acknowledging the critical role the military will continue to play.

Sharif may be returning to Pakistan and whispers may resume of a democratic alliance with Bhutto, his once and future political nemesis, but the fact that Pakistan heavily relies on military stewardship for governance and security is unlikely to change in the near future since civilian governments have routinely failed at the job.

--Sameer Lalwani

At the first Democratic presidential primary debates, Bill Richardson was asked about what he'd do with regards to Cuba, and he proceeded to spend much of his time answering not that question but rather an earlier question about how each of the potential presidents would react in case of another terrorist act.

Like the other candidates, Richardson said he'd quickly go after the bad guys. Retribution, Strength. All that. In the end, Richardson stated quickly that he'd promote an incremental engagement strategy with Cuba.

But the issue of US-Cuba relations has now moved from being a low tier novelty issue in the campaign to a major issue through a series of statements recently released by candidates.

The first of these was a major comment on US-Cuba relations released by Senator Chris Dodd on The Washington Note.

The second is a full op-ed by Barack Obama that appeared in Tuesday's Miami Herald-Tribune in addition to the news that Obama will be appearing in Little Havana in Miami this coming Saturday.

Senator Hillary Clinton then said that she differed from Obama and would continue the Bush administration's hard-line, Cold War-era fashioned policy towards the Castro regime and the Cuban people. In a remarkable statement, Hillary Clinton essentially stated that she would continue to support the ridiculously tight travel restrictions on Cuban-Americans who now can only travel to Cuba once every three years. In other words, Clinton supports a policy in which people have to choose between attending their mother's funeral, or their father's.

Obama sees travel, particularly of family members as a human right. Clinton sees withholding such a privilege as a right of state.

To be fair, Hillary Clinton didn't always see it this way. She has flip-flopped, as she voted with Obama in 2005 (and others) to unsuccessfully east travel restrictions in humanitarian-related family travel.

Tom Bevan reports that Hillary Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee stated:

She [Senator Clinton] supports the embargo and our current policy toward Cuba, and until it is clear what type of political winds may come with a new government -- if there is a new government -- we cannot talk about changes to U.S. policy.

This is simply not mature-minded foreign policy thinking. I've written previously that one of the measures that should be applied to all of the candidates is how they would deal with not the easy questions in our national security portfolio -- but the tough ones.

Cuba is the easiest of the tough ones to solve. First of all, the Cold War is over. Cubans don't see a Soviet-led bloc as their primary patron anymore, but see Venezuela and China, which has grown through capitalism, as their closest economic allies today. Castro is no longer exporting arms and revolution -- but rather is exporting doctors.

And Hillary Clinton is stating that she is comfortable continuing a many-decades long, failed strategy to transform Cuba. And she thinks we "cannot talk about changes to U.S. policy" until the government changes?! That's ridiculous -- particularly given her own trips to China, a Communist nation of 1.1 billion people -- and her advocacy of normalization with Vietnam and her support of incremental steps forward with North Korea.

Obama has still not made the statement that easing the travel ban is American interests -- or making sure that American firms and NGOs are involved in the practical side of oil drilling in Cuba which has a reported 9 billion barrels of oil that the Chinese are eager to get to -- if not for economic reasons, then surely for environmental.

Obama has not made that statement that Republican Congressman Jeff Flake has made that restricting travel is not something a democracy does, but rather what the Soviet or Chinese communist governments did. And legislation that permits travel in family cases, in my view, is essentially unconstitutional because it discriminates against other Americans.

Chris Dodd's view are very clearly the mid-to-long-term future that we should be shooting for in the US-Cuba relationship.

Barack Obama has moved the Cuba issue into the headlines -- and found another issue to solidly differentiate himself from Hillary Clinton -- but his views while an important and large step represent the near future in US-Cuba relations.

Hillary Clinton, who for fundraising reasons and because of her gamble that the anti-Castro types in Miami are less diverse in their views than polls convey they are, is staying rooted in the "past" in US-Cuba relations.

Clinton is wrong on Cuba. The consequences of not initiating now the kind of relationship America should have with Cuba in post-Fidel circumstances are enormous -- not only in the US-Cuba arena but in the broader context of Latin America.

Opening the door to more US-Cuba interactions would seriously stifle Hugo Chavez's ambitions and maneuvering room in Latin America. Hillary Clinton is smart enough to know this -- and she may lose more votes than she gains by pandering to a cabal that has kept US-Cuba ties frozen in a 1960s cocoon.

-- Steve Clemons

Editor's Note: The Havana Note is now up and running. Here is a bit of info on the new blog, and I have cross-posted the above there to get things moving. SCC

Recently I spent a few days up in Provincetown, Massachusetts at the very point of Cape Cod and connected with some people and ideas that moved my soul and mind forward a few notches.

First, I spent some quality time with Andrew Sullivan and his partner and soon-to-be husband Aaron Tone, an artist and music mix genius who tilts more my way on foreign policy than Andrew's. They are getting married on August 27th, which happens also to be my birthday as well as that of Mother Teresa, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Pee-Wee Herman, and Confucius.

Birthdays are not weddings -- but the line-up and the date explain all that you might need to know about all of us co-mingling on that date.

Second, I discovered that Tennessee Williams spent four summers in Provincetown and wrote some of his greatest works there. More on this another time as i find Williams a fascinating character and think that there is something to writers like Andrew Sullivan and Williams living on wharves at the end of Cape Cod where the Pilgrims first landed. I think I might start making Provincetown one of my writing shelters in coming years -- but I think I can't yet afford wharf living.

Third, the Pilgrims landed there first. I had no idea. Provincetown is better off without them actually. Tennessee Williams and his pals loved to prance around nude at the beach, and I think Plymouth Rock really needed to be situated elsewhere. Again, I'll get back to that subject another day.

All of this is foreplay in reporting that I will be guest blogging from this Saturday through the following week -- along with Hilary Bok, James Kirchick, and Gregory Djerejian -- on Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish.

I'll be posting here too -- just different stuff than over there.

Before I close for the evening (or morning -- given my Sydney-brewed jet lag), I'm wondering if anyone knows who was behind a somewhat effective pro-war TV commercial that aired tonight during the Late Show with David Letterman. The ad portrayed a mom of a dead soldier saying "let's not surrender now that we're beginning to win or there will be another 9/11."

I have my thoughts on who might be behind this -- but I'm sure someone out there knows the real scoop.

Fill us in, please. We'd really, really like to know.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: Here is a note by MoveOn.org's Tom Matzzie at AmericaBlog on the set of pro-Iraq War ads that have been running. He links former White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer and Freedom's Watch to the ad series. Here is the particular ad that ran on the Late Show with David Letterman.

-- Steve Clemons

I collect the folk art works of an Eastern Shore artist and craftsman named Jimmie Reynolds, who I met years ago in Chestertown, Maryland. Visitors to my office often comment on a "dancing crabs" painting in my office -- which is in the roster of paintings on Reynolds' website.

He's just a great guy who is not only a talented chronicler of Chesapeake bay sites but teaches kids about the traditions of the region.

I just got a note from him that the piece above is his first "museum piece" to be shown in the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum as of September 2007.

This is just a personal note to a very hardworking and talented guy. Congratulations Jimmie!

-- Steve Clemons

It hasn't been announced publicly yet, but look for the first Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on the Law of the Sea convention to take place on Sept. 27. Government witnesses will come then.

A second hearing will include two panels, the first featuring some expert supporters and selected opponents, followed by a second featuring industry representatives.

It seems at this point that the treaty's most vocal opponents are content to huff and puff but do very little. The strategy appears to be to use the Law of the Sea to raise as much money as possible, throw up a token opposition, and put the money away for a rainy day.

These funds could be used to fight comprehensive immigration reform or in a tilting-at-windmills battle against the Security and Prosperity Partnership with Mexico and Canada.

In either case, opponents simply want the Law of the Sea to go away. When it finally comes to a vote, it will be very clear that the vast majority of senators and their constituents want the U.S. to participate in fair and effective multilateral institutions.

-- Scott Paul

I'm not very good at humor, particularly when it comes to wars in which so many on both sides are tragic victims.

But I just received this clip from a friend that reminds us of the "swagger" of the Bush-Blair crowd.

-- Steve Clemons

Even President Bush is likening Iraq to images of Vietnam -- but in an opposite way from the Iraq War's critics.

Bush has suggested at the National Convention for the Veterans of Foreign Wars that withdrawal from Iraq would lead to the same kind of upheaval in the Middle East as occurred in Southeast Asia after U.S. withdrawal from Saigon.

Senator Joe Biden responds to the President thus:

President Bush continues to cling to a fundamentally flawed premise -- that Iraqis will rally behind a strong central government. That will not happen.

There's no trust within the Iraqi government; no trust of the government by the Iraqi people; no capacity of that government to deliver security or services; and no prospect that it will build that trust or capacity any time soon.

Unless Iraq moves towards a federal system that gives the warring factions breathing room, we will end up trading a dictator for chaos that will set back our national security interests for a generation.

President Bush today attempted to draw an analogy to Vietnam, but in fact it's the President's policies that are pushing us toward another Saigon moment -- with helicopters fleeing the roof of our embassy -- which he says he wants to avoid.

The President also continues to play the American people for fools -- conflating the terrorists of 9/11 with Al Qaeda in Iraq today. Al Qaeda in Iraq didn't exist before we invaded -- it is a Bush fulfilling prophecy.

Separately, my New America Foundation/American Strategy Program colleague Nir Rosen has been all over the news and blogosphere today with his comments on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now in which Rosen suggests there is no more Iraq:

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of Senator Levin calling for the Maliki and the whole government to disband?

NIR ROSEN: Well, it's stupid for several reasons.

First of all, the Iraqi government doesn't matter. It has no power. And it doesn't matter who you put in there. He's not going to have any power. Baghdad doesn't really matter, except for Baghdad. Baghdad used to be the most important city in Iraq, and whoever controlled Baghdad controlled Iraq.

These days, you have a collection of city states: Mosul, Basra, Baghdad, Kirkuk, Irbil, Sulaymaniyah. Each one is virtually independent, and they have their own warlords and their own militias. And what happens in Baghdad makes no difference. So that's the first point.

Second of all, who can he put in instead? What does he think he's going to put in? Allawi or some secular candidate? There was a democratic election, and the majority of Iraqis selected the sectarian Shiite group Dawa, Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution, the Sadr Movement. These are movements that are popular among the majority of Shias, who are the majority of Iraq.

So it doesn't matter who you put in there. And people in the Green Zone have never had any power. Americans, whether in the government or journalists, have been focused on the Green Zone from the beginning of the war, and it's never really mattered. It's been who has power on the street, the various different militias, depending on where you are -- Sunni, Shia, tribal, religious, criminal. So it just reflects the same misunderstanding of Iraqi politics.

The government doesn't do anything, doesn't provide any services, whether security, electricity, health or otherwise. Various militias control various ministries, and they use it as their fiefdoms. Ministries attack other ministries.

The implications of what Biden and Rosen are saying is that it appears impossible to reassemble Iraq under a single strong government, or even a strongman of the likes of Hussein. Biden's plan may be the last chance for a semi-workable model of government, but if that is not achieved, then Iraq may melt into warring, unstable fiefdoms under warlords that will assign their loyalties to Iran, Saudi Arabia, or some Talibanized network of affiliated semi-states.

Bleak, but we've known that.

-- Steve Clemons

John Bolton talks a lot about democracy but seems more about igniting wars -- particularly with North Korea, Iran, Cuba and/or China.

Bolton was in Taiwan recently speaking on American foreign policy and his experiences in the Bush administration as part of a set of pre-release publicity tours for his forthcoming book, Surrender is not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad. The picture above was taken by a friend in Taiwan at the headquarters of the Taiwan Democracy Foundation which no doubt made Bolton's journey to Taipei well, can we say, "quite worthwhile."

In a meeting with Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian, Bolton reportedly stated that he "did not think one democracy should tell another democracy not to act like a democracy." Bolton was referring to American informal instructions to Taiwan that any state declarations of independence from China, as opposed to autonomy, would trigger a redefinition of the strategic relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan.

One of the few good things that the Bush administration did do was to draw clear lines -- very clear lines -- for what the United States could accept regarding its own defense and security exposure to Taiwan's incremental independence efforts. Ambassadorial equivalent and China expert American Institute in Taiwan Director Douglas Paal actually did a brilliant job as the Bush administration's envoy in making sure that both Taiwanese and Chinese authorities got a reality test on the limits of American patience when it came to their sabre-rattling and dangerous rhetoric.

It's a shame that the other part of the world that has tried repeatedly to blur its boundaries and aggressively expand what it could do during the Bush administration, Israel, did not have a Doug Paal in place to communicate emphatically the limits of American strategic support. Instead we have had Elliot Abrams who has been doing what John Bolton now is -- egging on serious, potential military conflicts that America is poorly positioned to support.

Those in Washington who want to further explore John Bolton's devotion to democracy and/or war can do so at the "Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture" at the Heritage Foundation on September 6th at 11 a.m.

Maybe someone can ask him if he happens to be Secretary of State someday (and it could happen), would he tolerate someone on staff like him who was so clearly insubordinate of Colin Powell and Richard Armitage -- and who engaged in diplomatic brinksmanship with states like North Korea, Cuba, Iran, and China at times directly antithetical to what the Bush administration was trying to achieve. Would he keep the renedgage staffer on? or fire him?

-- Steve Clemons

(Doesn't Cheney just seem so. . .Richard the Third?)

I just came by this interesting interview with former Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Director and evolving neoconservative thinker Ken Adelman.

I think Adelman has shown a great deal of honesty about both the failure of a movement he belongs to and the human failings of those trying to implement neoconservative methodologies in the national security sphere. Adelman has been extremely close, on a personal level, with Cheney and Rumsfeld -- and this has not prevented him from lodging serious, full gun critiques at them and their miserable management of the war.

I last saw Adelman at a UN Foundation party with former President Bill Clinton, Senator Hillary Clinton, former Senator and UN Foundation President Tim Wirth, Ted Turner, and many other establishment liberals in honor of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus -- and Adelman was blunt with me in how angry he was at the Bush administration's performance in the war and expressed believable regret for having been part of the sound machine that clamored for the Iraq invasion.

To remind folks, Ken Adelman wrote the now infamous February 2002 Washington Post article, "Cake Walk in Iraq". I know now that he wishes he had not, but the article is a useful reminder when reading similar kinds of articles by the likes of Michael Ledeen and Norman Podhoretz calling for America to initiate an attack against Iran.

This interview is really about Adelman's interesting human resource management/leadership seminars under the title of "Movers and Shakespeares", and I've heard that Adelman's encyclopedic knowledge of Shakespeare and his love for human drama in the political world make this stuff very interesting.

But it would be interesting to know from Ken Adelman which Shakespeare characters and plays most describe the tragic situation America is in today. Who would Rumsfeld be? And is Bush more Hamlet or MacBeth? Is Cheney Richard III? What character fits Adelman himself?

Here is the last bit of Adelman's thoughts on the Bush administration and the Iraq War -- as well as his comment that America should not apply military force of its own against Iran. It's thoughtful and indicative of further fracturing in the neoconservative camp:

MORTMAN: Now I'd like to get your thoughts on other areas of your expertise. How do you think things are going in Iraq?

ADELMAN: I fear that we are not doing well. I just think that we got our act together too late. I think we lost a few years in there that we should have had. Policy folks -- Secretary of Defense, National Security Adviser -- really let us down.

MORTMAN: How do we win in Iraq?

ADELMAN: I thought if we could turn it around, and give people the sense that momentum was on our side, that could turn it around. But that hasn't happened. I think with plans to withdraw, we either get out of the way and let the different factions do whatever they have to do, or let the different factions act like Iraqis. But I'm an optimist.

MORTMAN: Should we invade Iran?

ADELMAN: I would not use the military in Iran. I would squeeze the sanctions as hard as we can. I would go to the Saudis and the Persian Gulf countries, and have them pressure the Europeans, saying they just have to crack down. I don't think the Bush Administration has done anything with the Saudis that's worthwhile.

MORTMAN: Your thoughts on the presidential race?

ADELMAN: I've been disappointed. It seems that there are no new ideas coming out of the presidential race. 1980 we had the Reagan Doctrine, supply side economics, SDI -- all these were ideas, they were new ideas. I haven’t heard anything new from either side. I’m disappointed.

MORTMAN: Your thoughts on the Bush legacy?

ADELMAN: Bush is a person who had good ideas but could not implement them. The first MBA president was the worst administrative leader, the most un-MBA-ish president. He didn't set goals, he didn't hold people accountable. He just engaged in happy talk. He thought words were all people needed, instead of a realistic approach. A failed presidency based on that.

I disagree with Adelman that the invasion of Iraq was a good idea when we should have been focused on bin Laden and stamping out the embers of his operation -- but that said, it is useful to have someone of Adelman's stature and proximity to other leading neocons speak out against a repeat of the mistakes we made in the Iraq War.

-- Steve Clemons

The real answer is that no one knows. George Bush is holding his cards close and is not giving any indication as to his direction right now -- other than keeping all options open.

What we do know now is that the military has not signed off on an attack -- though there are huge force levels deployed in the Gulf that could support a short-term military assault. But if the Pentagon had been ordered to position itself for a date-certain attack, we'd be hearing more than we are. Defense Secretary Bob Gates would be positioning himself differently than he is. We'd see generals who were disgusted with the way that Bush and Cheney have overextended the military begin to speak out, and even to resign. That has not happened.

We also know that neoconservative intellectuals feel that this is the time to lay the intellectual and political ground for bombing Iran. AEI's Joshua Muravchik was out early with his admission that Iraq was a failure but now felt that bombing Iran required new urgency. Others like Michael Ledeen, James Woolsey, Frank Gaffney, Bill Kristol and others in the neocon camp are trying to inundate the nation's op-ed pages with their calls for action against Iran and its nuclear facilities.

The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin is one of the key journalists, besides Seymour Hersh, who has been helping to lead efforts to expose and balance those who want to initiate yet another war in the Middle East. Froomkin has two great exposes out recently that need to be read in full -- the first is a long profile on on Cheney and his gang's effort to trip America into a war against Iran.

And the other is a roster of top tier experts -- whose credentials are superlative -- who should be called by any media researching and organizing stories on this subject.

George Bush has all his options open on Iran right now -- and there is a vigorous, heated battle around the Oval Office to seduce the President's soul on this.

It's time that those who have been passive on the prospect of a US-Iran War wake up and get to work. The neocons are working vigrorously and have someone smack dab in the middle of the decisionmaking machinery angling for war as well.

The advocates of a saner approach are also part of the President's team -- but it's clear that the momentum that they had in knocking back Cheney and his minions has stalled.

Rumors -- that I don't believe -- are even swirling that Karl Rove resigned now in part because he didn't want to be in the White House for all that it will take to manage a war against Iran. I don't believe this is the case, but the way the rumor has spread is a manifestation of the tension between contending factions in the White House.

-- Steve Clemons

I just ran in to the Australian Ambassador to the United States at the Sydney International Airport, where I'm about to depart for Los Angeles.

More when I get back to the U.S.

-- Steve Clemons

Michael Ledeen -- who once told me that he only supported the Iraq War because it provided momentum and pre-positioning of American military forces to then go after Iran -- is not going to feel self-actualized until America unleashes a considerable portion of its arsenal against the nation and people of Iran.

I'm not a pacifist. I have to admit that there might be circumstances in which war with Iran is our last and only option -- but we are far, far away from that situation.

I'm particularly worried that there are bad guys in Iran who so desperately want to consolidate their political positions inside Iran that they see a hot conflict with the U.S. and/or Israel as "helpful". It's also clear that Vice President Cheney as well as his followers inside the administration and his ideological following in Washington's think tank sector want war to pump up their eroding political position.

But Ledeen, James Woolsey, Norman Podhoretz, and others want war now with Iran. They want the bombs to fly. They are obsessed with delegitimating the important diplomatic efforts of Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns, US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad, and others. They despise Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- and they are increasingly offering defamatory comments about George W. Bush himself at their small dinner parties and neocon gatherings.

Ledeen has a piece, "Talking with Iran," that has just appeared in the Wall Street Journal that tries to savage those calling for negotiations with Iran. It's embedded throughout with distortions, but it is an important case statement profiling neocon obsession with waging war against Iran as soon as possible.

The opening of Ledeen's piece runs thus:

For some time now, the chattering classes have debated whether the United States should negotiate with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Both sides have endowed the very act of negotiating with near-mythic power.

The advocates suggest that "good relations" may emerge, while opponents warn it is somehow playing into the mullahs' hands. Both seem to believe that the three recent talks in Baghdad are historically significant, since they are said to be a departure from past practice.

That claim is false. Every administration since Ayatollah Khomeini's seizure of power in 1979 has negotiated with the Iranians. Nothing positive has ever come of it, but most every president has come to believe that a "grand bargain" with Tehran can somehow be reached, if only we negotiate well enough.

Washington diplomats have steadfastly refused to see the Iranian regime for what it is: a relentless enemy that seeks to dominate or destroy us. This blindness afflicted the first American negotiators shortly after the 1979 revolution, and has been chronic ever since, even though Iran declared war on us in that year and has waged it ever since.

Ledeen is entitled to his views, but smart respondents should remember a few things when considering how to deal with Iran.

First, remember that on the night of 9/11/2001, Tehran was the only place in the Middle East where thousands of people walked out into the streets holding candles and expressing grief and empathy for Americans who died that day. There are many in Iran who identify with America and are inspired by our country (though less so under current US political leadership).

Also, remember that former Ambassador and now RAND strategist James Dobbins successfully recruited Iran to play an important and constructive role in the Bonn Conference that was necessary to stabilize Afghanistan in 2002. Iran worked with us and did not need to. Yes, Afghanistan is coming apart at the seams now, and Iran may be playing both sides, but this is a function of America's failing, not Iran's designs and machinations.

Iran is a fake democracy -- but there are elements of democracy and popular will being expressed through elections there. If we bomb Iran, we need to realize and accept that there is a strong chance that the public will rally toward rather than away from its current populist political leadership under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The worst situation would be to have a perception of citizen-given legitimacy behind an extremist Iranian government now committed more than ever to the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Bombing Iran may also lead to the creation of a terrorist superhighway to the edge of Israel -- a nation whose security I believe America should be worried about and committed to 'help' defend.

Bombing Iran may also trigger a seismic shift in global energy politics, as Flynt Leverett has written, in which China, Russia, and Iran tie up their resources, technology and development needs into a condominium of alled interests. This prospect would break the backs of Europe and Japan which are directly, tangibly dependent on Iranian oil -- and could lead to the end of American primacy in the geoeconomy of oil.

I don't believe in appeasing Iran's worst behaviors either. But there are many, many, many other options than the "nuke them now and get it over with" calls by the likes of James Woolsey and Michael Ledeen.

Ledeen has an Iran obsession, as does Vice President Cheney. If they get what they want -- not only will nightmares be unleashed in Iran, but America, Europe, the Middle East and world at large will suffer tremendously.

And lastly Israel would suffer and be plunged into a dramatically blurred security mess. Israel does matter and is an ally of ours in the region, and its best long-term hopes are to become allied, at least "in spirit", with moderate Sunni Arab regimes in its neighborhood.

Ledeen, Woolsey, Podhoretz, Bolton and others are showing themselves to be reckless regarding Israel and its future. They are pushing a false choice between Israeli security and bombing Iran -- and Israeli voices need to reach out to common sense strategists who are far better friends to Israel and to Middle East stability and security than Curtis LeMay-inspired neocons.

Much of Ledeen's article is directed at blasting the "grand bargain" crowd advocating a re-ordering of numerous interlocking policy problems in the Middle East -- and since one of the leading advocates of a "grand bargain" strategy is my New America Foundation colleague Flynt Leverett, I re-link here his important paper published by The Century Foundation, "Dealing with Tehran: Assessing US Diplomatic Options Toward Iran."

-- Steve Clemons

I'm not very culturally literate, and it took my table partner at the ongoing Australian American Leadership Dialogue to tell me that the erudite, bald-headed guy speaking eloquently and convincingly about sensible strategies to confront climate change was a former lead singer of the group Midnight Oil, Peter Garrett.

I had my picture taken with him -- which I'll post later -- but which I took not because he was a singer but because he is currently the Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Heritage. This means if Labor wins the upcoming elections, this smart enviro-wonk will be Minister.

I'm convinced, particularly after this meeting, that Australia is well positioned to be a global change agent in many key issues. It's a smart country with smart people who don't have population weight -- but who could have considerable weight in international problem solving, particularly climate change.

To live by the rules of this meeting, I can't report on his commentary. However, I can report that Peter Garrett is sitting across from me, and he's sitting smack dab next to Paul Wolfowitz -- who despite any criticism I would lodge against his take on a proliferation of wars in the Middle East is admirably sitting through an entire day of discussion on climate change.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

My blogging colleague, Juan Cole, who publishes the blog, Informed Comment: Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion, will be speaking at a forum I am chairing next week at the New America Foundation. He will be speaking about his just released book, Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East.

But I bet in the Q&A session, Cole would not be averse to receiving some questions on 'Bush's Middle East.'

This is open to the public -- and you are welcome to join us at the New America Foundation (see website for address) on Friday, 24 August, from 12:15-1:45 pm as long as you RSVP to communications@newamerica.net and state that this is for the Juan Cole meeting. You bring your own brown bag lunch.

Juan Cole is someone very worth spending time with -- and more importantly, folks should be reading his book.

-- Steve Clemons

I'm into the second day of an extraordinary set of meetings, the 15th annual Australian American Leadership Dialogue, staged in Melbourne, Australia. They are extraordinary because of the seriousness and general candor of discussions ranging from climate change policy challenges to the mess in Iraq to brewing issues in Asia and with China.

These sessions are also extraordinary because of who is here.

Former and current Labor Party leaders Kim Beazley and ascending political superstar and prime minister probable Kevin Rudd have virtually attended the entire meeting. In a Rudd government, Beazley -- who has one of the most distinguished set of ministerial and party tenures and is retiring from Parliament -- is rumored to be the next Australian Ambassador to the U.S.

But the Howard government is well represented as well. Peter Costello, who many think will succeed Howard as head of the Liberal Party (the Tories here), has been here throughout the sessions -- as Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

I had breakfast with the likely next Treasurer of Australia Wayne Swan who is now the Shadow Treasurer in the Labor Party. This is a small conference -- maybe 100 delegates if that -- and the diversity on the Australian side is perfect, and the civility among parties here is extremely impressive.

On the American side, the diversity and serious players here are also impressive. The new founding CEO and President respectively of the Center for New American Security Kurt Campbell and Michele Flournoy are here. Paul Wolfowitz wearing his new American Enterprise Institute hat is here. Norm Ornstein, Thomas Mann, and EJ Dionne are here. So is Lael Brainard of Brookings and the first Ned Lamont of Connecticut Senate races -- Joe Duffey, who ran for the Senate in Connecticut as a Democrat the year that Lowell Weicker won. Anne Wexler -- super lobbyist and political influencer in Democratic political circles -- is here and has organized much of the meeting.

Former Ambassador-equivalent to Taiwan Douglas Paal, IT wunderkind Larry Irving, Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky, and former New Republic Editor Peter Beinart are part of the American delegation. Charlie Cook -- one of America's great interpreters of campaigns -- gave a brilliant talk here yesterday morning. And former CIA Director Porter Goss sat a couple seats from me at breakfast and did a tour of the Victoria Governor's mansion with me. I've been a critic of Goss's regime in the past, but between Goss and James Woolsey in such a role -- I prefer Goss.

Clinton domestic policy adviser Bruce Reed, Obama advisor and Brookings fellow Susan Rice, former Clinton administration Asst Secretary of State Stanley Roth, and former Pennsylvania Republican Congressman and race car driver Bob Walker are here.

Phil Scanlan, founder of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue, is proud of the fact that in 15 years, no one has leaked any of the internal conversations of the conference. I won't either. . .unless I get permission from one of the speakers or commentators to do so which is allowed by the rules.

But I will say that this kind of encounter is a great template for meetings focused on serious policy quagmires. We don't have many sessions in the U.S. where so many obvious political and intellectual rivals (even enemies) work through problems and have serious, clear-headed discussions.

We are deep into commentary now by UC San Diego/Scripps Institution of Oceanography Director Tony Haymet, scientist Larry Smarr, and Victoria Premier John Brumby on climate change policy choices and challenges.

Yesterday was the Iraq War, grand strategy, geoeconomic and geostrategic realities. No one pulled their punches -- not even me. But that's all that can be said.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

This blog entry was posted on Senator Chris Dodd's campaign site today but was also written for publication as a guest post by Senator Dodd on "The Washington Note" and "Huffington Post." I view this statement as the kind of truth-telling and honest candor that aspirants to the White House should exhibit in all of their foreign policy and national security commentary. I could not agree more with Senator Dodd's views. -- Steve Clemons

Senator Chris Dodd is the senior Senator from Connecticut, serving his fifth term, and is running for the Democratic Party nomination to run in our nation's 2008 presidential race.

I want to see the peaceful transition to democracy occur on the Island of Cuba in my life time.

That isn't going to happen if we continue the misguided policies of the last forty-six years. We must open the flood gates to contacts with the Cuban people. We must remove restrictions on the ability of Cuban Americans to provide financial assistance to their loved ones. Even small sums of money in the hands of ordinary Cuban families can serve as catalysts for private investment to gain a foothold in Cuba.

I have long supported the freedom to travel to Cuba, which is why I have joined with twenty of my colleagues in a bi-partisan way to co-sponsor S.721 the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act of 2007.

It is simply un-American to bar American citizens from traveling to foreign countries. In fact, Americans are currently free to travel to both Iran and North Korea, two countries which pose far more serious threats to American national security than the government of Cuba.

But more than that, the United States' most potent weapon against totalitarianism is the influence of ordinary American citizens. They are some of the best ambassadors we have, and the free exchange of ideas and the interaction between Americans and Cubans are important ways to encourage democracy in Cuba.

For more than forty-six years, the United States has maintained an isolationist policy toward Cuba, which I believe has not achieved its intended objectives, namely to hasten a peaceful and democratic transition on the Island of Cuba. Rather, it has solidified the authoritarian control of Fidel Castro, and has adversely affected the already miserable living conditions of 11 million innocent men, women, and children on the Island.

I have long opposed restrictions on the sale of food and medicine to the Cuban people. Frankly I believe it is immoral to deprive innocent people from access to American medical and farm products. Moreover, we hurt our American farm families with such an ill conceived policy. It is a commonsense policy to encourage Cuban authorities to purchase US food and medicine rather than other foreign purchases that may impact adversely on our nation's security.

The Island of Cuba is in the throes of a transition to a post-Castro Cuba. A US policy of staying the course leaves us on the sides as the future of Cuba is being written. It is time to engage before it is too late to have a positive influence on the political landscape which is rapidly taking shape there. In a Dodd administration the United States will engage with the Cuban people in support of a peaceful transition to democracy.

-- Chris Dodd, United States Senator

I shared some views on Saudi Arabia's steely-eyed, unsentimental assessment of the deteriorating situation in Iraq and the consequences of America's decline in the region with this Radio Free Europe journalist, Abubakar Siddique.

What I see evolving in the Middle East today is a regional Cold War manifested through regional contests between Iranian and Saudi proxies with hot moments.

Even though Israel is a regional nuclear and conventional superpower, it has little long term viability unless it either comes to terms with its moderate Sunni Arab neighbors or convinces the US or Europe or other major security patrons to fully and politically acquire Israel as one of their own domestic states.

I spent Monday in Los Angeles and met an insightful next generation Arab-American thinker, Sama Adnan, who told me he believed that there was something like a mathematical equation in the Middle East that few Americans -- Democrat or Republican -- understand. He said that democracies or more self-determining populations in Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East were impossible as long as the Palestinian-Israeli standoff over Palestine's state status remained unresolved.

He said that if true democracies governed in any of these states, then those democratic movements would focus on their outrage that Israel was continuing to illegally occupy Palestinian territory. The more totalitarian governments in the region are bulwarks against a popular will that is focused on grievances involving Israel. The only way to create a more liberal and stable order in the Middle East, according to this young observer, is to deliver on Palestine -- develop an effort towards regional confidence building between Israel and other states -- and then try to encourage incremental change in the region.

But given the decline in American power, in American moral credibility and legitimacy as a fair broker in the region, regional order can't be established unless Palestine, as a state, is launched. Until then, the region will convulse and American and European basic interests will whither.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) just shot a cannon blast across the bow of John Edwards' presidential campaign.

After release of the news that John Edwards would be lowering Nevada's place on his political priority roster and moving personnel out of the state, Reid said: "Any candidate who chooses to ignore Nevada and its rich diversity does so at their own peril."

Edwards' campaign has responded that Nevada continues to be important in his "early state" strategy -- focusing on Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina -- but many folks aren't buying the line. Hillary Clinton in the mean time has issued a statement that she is expanding her offices and campaign representation in Nevada.

Why is this important? On a couple of levels. . .

First, this blog reported last year that a major Democratic funder had stated that Reid had quietly, subtly offered Hillary Clinton a deal: that he would step down as Senate Majority Leader in 2009 in her favor if she would not run for the presidency.

Both Reid and Clinton have vigorously denied that this exchange took place but neither office has rejected that the comments were made by the well-placed donor. Such an effort would have had all of the trappings of full deniability -- and whether true or not true -- some in the Hillary Clinton camp believed that this was an effort by Reid's office to prod Clinton -- if not to keep her from running, then at least to keep the nascent, then undeclared Clinton campaign on edge.

Others saw this juicy rumor which I and others reported as a ploy of the Edwards' operatives to create a viral insurrection against a potential Hillary Clinton juggernaut. At the time, Obama's name had really not emerged as a viable competitor.

The thinking among insiders -- again, whether this was true or not true (and I have made comments in the past suggesting that if Harry Reid did make such an offer, that it would be ridiculously bad for him to offer and Clinton to accept) -- was that Harry Reid was using his influence to pry apart the stranglehold that the Northeastern liberal establishment had in picking presidential aspirants.

Harry Reid also maneuvered moving up the dates of the Nevada caucus between the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary to assure a solid voice for the West -- and for working class, Hispanic-American, and non-WASP Democrats who were not as well represented in the Northeast voting establishment.

The move then by Reid was perceived by some to be pro-Edwards and anti-Hillary. I doubt that Reid was focused on personalities, but it is clear that his success in sculpting a new roster of political contests in the primary process threw up new speed bumps for the Clinton campaign.

But the Clinton campaign seems pretty immune to speed bumps. Hillary Clinton now leads with nearly 40% of voters among Democratic Nevadans. Edwards trails in third place behind Clinton and Obama.

Reid didn't care so much about who the candidate emerged to be, he has said, but he did want Nevada and the American West in general to count much more substantially in the primary process.

Reid is one of the party's big king-makers now, and Edwards' new course -- while perhaps essential given realistic calculations of resource constraints -- may signal the foreshocks of a collapsing campaign.

-- Steve Clemons

Hm. NOAA is undertaking a mission to map out areas to claim in the American extended continental shelf. Of course, unless the U.S. ratifies the Law of the Sea convention, the mission's findings are absolutely worthless.

Also, a note to AHN writers and editors, who first broke this story: to say that "A new Cold War is brewing in the Arctic Circle" distorts the fact that the Law of the Sea, which the other four "combatants" in this "war" have already ratified, is specifically intended to peacefully settle competing claims and prevent conflicts over resources from turning violent. The metaphor is cute, but it's also inaccurate and alarmist.

-- Scott Paul

Steve just called in from Spectacle Lake via satellite phone to make sure readers have not abandoned TWN in his absence. He's happy to report no run-ins with any bears thus far but is prepared to fend them off with his self-taught Davy Crockett maneuvers. Apparently the wilderness air does wonders for strategic planning.

--Sameer Lalwani

I'm honestly not sure which is more hysterical: Frank Gaffney's most recent Washington Times column, which argues that the Russians laid claim to the North Pole in a cunning gambit to corner the U.S. into ratifying the Law of the Sea convention; or the Times' decision to print his ridiculous column even though it was published - verbatim - on another site the previous day.

I've held my fire since reports first emerged of a Russian submarine symbolically planting a titanium flag at the North Pole. I'm naturally interested in all things related to Russia and ocean law, but I kept quiet. After reading Gaffney's column - twice - I simply can't choke back the laughter.

Under the terms of the Law of the Sea, each State Party enjoys an Exclusive Economic Zone that extends 200 miles off of its coast. If a State Party's continental shelf extends beyond this area, it can claim exclusive rights there too.

Russia is essentially saying that the North Pole (specifically, the Lomonosov Ridge that cuts the Arctic circle in half) is part of its extended continental shelf. Other Arctic countries that have ratified the Law of the Sea can dispute this claim, as surely they will. None of this, by the way, is a surprise: when my colleagues and I were drafting our Law of the Sea fact sheet earlier this year, we suggested in an early draft that by refusing to ratify, the U.S. would miss out on "the great Arctic land grab" (the phrase was imprecise and alarmist, so we removed it from later versions).

As the State Department acknowledges, this is just one of many compelling reasons to ratify the treaty. According to the St. Petersburg Times, Senator Mel Martinez, Chairman of the Republican Party, has come on board, too.

But Frank Gaffney thinks this is just a secret ploy by the Russians:

Two deep-ocean submersibles were dispatched to the Arctic floor ostensibly for the purpose of laying claim to the Lomonosov Ridge - and, more importantly, to the potentially vast oil, gas and mineral resources that may lie within a zone 200 miles wide on either side of that underwater mountain range. This move may have been a grandmaster's feint, however, masking another purpose: blackmailing the United States into ratifying the defective Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST).

This makes even less sense than Gaffney's America: World Police-like proposal that force (or the threat of force) be used to the protect deep seabed mining activities of U.S. firms as an alternative to the legal framework provided by the Law of the Sea.

Gaffney's column in the Times is entitled "Lost at Seize." He also wrote a column called "Russian L.O.S.T. and Found" that was published yesterday on renewamerica.us, a site that supports "the "Declarationist" ideals of Alan Keyes." Here's what he wrote on that site:

Two deep-ocean submersibles were dispatched to the Arctic floor ostensibly for the purpose of laying claim to the Lomonosov Ridge - and, more importantly, to the potentially vast oil, gas and mineral resources that may lie within a zone 200 miles wide on either side of that underwater mountain range. This move may have been a grandmaster's feint, however, masking another purpose: blackmailing the United States into ratifying the defective Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST).

Apparently, the Washington Times is about as interested in obtaining original, exclusive submissions from its columnists as Gaffney is in...well...the facts.

-- Scott Paul

Note: This is not the first of Frank Gaffney's columns that the Washington Times has reprinted a day after it's gone up on renewamerica.us. STP

The firestorm of controversy that ignited this week over the arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other gulf states opens up an important debate that needs to be thoroughly explored, yet the thrust of the discussion--typified by Bret Stephens fulminating this morning against supposed Saudi malevolent intentions in his column "A Kernel of Evil"--has largely sidestepped the more important question: What do we want our relationship with Saudi Arabia to look like? Unfortunately when it comes to Saudi Arabia, analysts, commentators and in particular our Congress, have instead chosen moral antipathy and political theater with wanton disregard for our long-term strategic interests in the region.

Take for instance the House foreign ops bill from late June where a bipartisan amendment to prohibit use of funds for assistance to Saudi Arabia (mainly linked to counterterrorism cooperation), was adopted by voice vote with a whole eight minutes dedicated to a one-sided debate, or rather rant, on the evils of the Saudi government. The consequence of the amendment vote was not the money itself (just over $1 million) but the symbolic effect it has given the rhetoric that surrounded it.

Rep. Shelley Berkeley (D-NV) introduced the amendment stating:

The Saudis are not our allies. They're not our friends...We cannot trust them and we should not fund them. That is why every year, more and more members of this body vote to cut off funding to the terrorist regime.

And Rep. Ferguson (R-NJ), who also stated that Saudi "is not a partner of the United States in any effort," co-sponsored the amendment along with Reps. Weiner (D-NY) and Crowley (D-NY) and had sent out Dear Colleague letters titled "Top Four Reasons the Saudis are not American Allies" earlier that week.

Unfortunately these statements belie the rich history of US-Saudi intelligence and counterterrorism cooperation. In 2004, Coordinator for Counterterrorism Amb. Cofer Black testified before the House International Relations Committee stating:

The Saudis are a strong ally and are taking unprecedented steps to address an al-Qaida menace that threatens us both. We believe that they are headed in the right direction, are committed to countering the threat of al-Qaida, and are giving us extremely strong cooperation in the War On Terrorism. There remains, of course, much work still to be done, both singly and jointly, but we are optimistic that our efforts are paying off.

Given that Reps Berkeley and Crowley currently serve on the House International Relations Committee and did so at the time when this testimony was issued, they would have been wise to at least take the time to read and carefully consider the expert testimony before making sweeping judgments on the House floor.

Counterterrorism Cooperation

Anyone seriously evaluating Saudi intelligence and military cooperation needs to take a look at Anthony Cordesman's testimony before Congress that dispels the accusations of most Saudi critics (which should be read in its entirety). One could only hope that House members had bothered to read his testimony from late 2005 which credits the invaluable role Saudi has played in military and counterterrorism cooperation and praises their strides, though acknowledging vast greater room for improvement, in reigning in the financing of terrorism, the education system, and the role of the clergy:

Saudi Arabia did not support our invasion of Iraq at the political or diplomatic level. The idea of such a war was (and is) very unpopular among the Saudi people. Moreover, the foreign minister warned us of the problems we would encounter in the aftermath of such an invasion, and the Kingdom's fear it could destabilize the region.

Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia provided critical support to the US in the war against Saddam Hussein, in spite of the fact the Saudis had strong reservations about the war. Saudi Arabia opened up its airspace, made available its airbases, and housed special forces when Turkey reneged on basing US forces at the last moment. The town of Ar Ar on the Saudi border, for example, virtually became a US base.

Unlike Turkey, which was offered a $30 billion aid package for its support, the Kingdom did not ask for any compensation. In fact, it provided free and subsidized fuel to US forces.
(...)
We need to remember that that the United States put intense and consistent pressure on Saudi Arabia to aid Islamist freedom fighters in Afghanistan during the Cold War, and that the US then saw Saudi support of Islamists as a counterbalance to communism. We were both slow to see the risks of what we were doing and how extremist might take advantage of such efforts -- just as Israel once made the mistake of aid Islamists as what it hoped would be a counterbalance to the PLO.

Like the US, Saudi Arabia was slow to commit itself to the struggle against terrorism and extremism, but it drove Bin Laden out of the country in the mid-1990s and helped push him out of the Sudan.

Saudi Arabia was slow in taking substantive action after 9/11 -- and some Saudis lived (and still live) in a world of denial and conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, Saudi leaders immediately condemned terrorism after 9/11, as did leading Saudi clerics. Saudi cooperation with the US has steadily improved over time, and has become far closer since when Saudi Arabia came under attack in mid-2003.

Saudi Arabia is now actively involved in an internal battle with Al-Qa'ida terrorists. Many such terrorists have been killed or captured, and many Saudi security personnel have lost their lives in the line of duty. This battle is being fought with considerable US support, and US and Saudi cooperation has become much stronger in recent years.

The full scale of this cooperation, like Saudi cooperation with the US in the Iraq War, is highly sensitive. I have discussed this cooperation at length with US and Saudi officials in Saudi Arabia, however, I would urge the Committee to seek a briefing on the details from the Bush Administration in closed session, on why the State Department praised Saudi Arabia for its internal and foreign efforts to fight terrorism in the annual report on "Patterns in Global Terrorism" that it issued in April 2004. Ambassador J. Cofer Black, Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism, stated in his introductory remarks that: "I would cite Saudi Arabia as an excellent example of a nation increasingly focusing its political will to fight terrorism. Saudi Arabia has launched an aggressive, comprehensive, and unprecedented campaign to hunt down terrorists, uncover their plots, and cut off their sources of funding."

(In fact the Senate Foreign Relations Committee did receive closed member briefing which went into greater depth on Saudi counterterrorism cooperation in April 2004 and I suspect the same must have been offered to the House as well).

The difficulties the military has had in finding a location for the newly established AFRICOM demonstrates that strategic cooperation cannot be taken for granted, especially with declining public support for the US throughout the world.

With Saudi Arabia cultivating strong ties with China, and to a lesser extent with India, members of Congress and their advisors need to start taking a step beyond puerile tirades on the House floor, to asking themselves what we lose--in terms of security cooperation and a potential ally to help us regain some credibility in the Middle East--if Saudi Arabia continues to turn eastward.

And in terms of fighting extremism, the government has a vested interest in doing so. Saudi officials are well aware that al Qaeda's endgame, after the US eventually withdraws from Iraq, is to topple the "near enemy", and simply regime self-preservation will motivate the government to cooperate with the US to fight al Qaeda. And because they have to deal with the effects of Iraqi blowback, the Saudis have introduced novel approaches to fight terrorism at home and abroad waging a war of ideas through intensive de-radicalization programs and countering jihadist websites, methodologies we could stand to learn from through further counterterrorism cooperation.

Recently accusations have shifted to blame Saudis for the foreign fighters coming over the border into Iraq. First of all the accounts and blameworthiness of the Saudis are disputed by US intelligence officials as they have tried to control their borders and build a security fence. But given that Saudi shares an 814 km border with Iraq, most of it desert, it is small wonder that recruited, brainwashed extremists manage to find their way through to Iraq. Though we share a border with Mexico that's four times longer, somehow over 485,000 Mexicans manage to evade border patrols and illegally make their way to the US.

Changes and Reforms, From the Symbolic to the Structural

Aside from the factually inaccurate and counterproductive statements during the foreign ops debate in June, the House displayed an acute propensity for exceptionally poor timing. The day before Interior Minister Prince Nayef, considered by Saudi scholars as one of the more conservative and orthodox princes in such a high position of power, strode in front the Saudi religious clerical establishment and denounced those who lent support to jihadists in Iraq or who sent hapless Saudis on suicide bombing missions going so far as to describe it as a "virus". This was not as simple as it sounds--the Sauds' reign rests on a deal struck with the clergy and to challenge it in such a fashion incurs great risk. Dispatching Nayef to confront the clergy signaled a public shift in Saudi stance. It was no longer sufficient to simply try and stop the flow of foreign fighters crossing into Iraq--now the Saudi government was making public strides and demanding the cooperation of the religious leadership.

This was not the first significant signal being sent by high-ranking government officials to go completely unnoticed--just three weeks earlier, Crown Prince Sultan announced that 1/3 of all government jobs would be filled by women. For a country that is often derided for its mistreatment of women, this is a significant departure, one that again fell on the deaf ears of the US Congress. I'm all but certain the voice vote made on June 23rd against the funding was made by Congress oblivious to the sea changes taking place around them. Instead, members dusted off talking points from five years ago to critique the Saudi Arabia of today.

During the Cold War, Sovietologists were highly valued for their ability to pick up on even the slightest domestic political movements of the Soviet Union to decipher their next moves and in turn, our next move. Despite the authoritarian nature of the Soviet regime, there was value in studying and encouraging moderate elements for at minimum, stability of relations, at best, changes in the nature and actions of the regime.

This valuable experience seems to be lost in today's political climate where scoring cheap political shots is much easier than thinking through how we ought to re-define our strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia. Combing through key domestic political movements would reveal a distinctive pattern and significant shifts:

--the recent speeches by the two conservative prices staking out decidedly moderate or reformist positions,
--the plans underway to reinvent the Saudi economy and decentralize power away from the conservative heartland,
--the overhaul of investment in education, particularly science and engineering, and
--the reinstatement of journalist Dr. Jamal Khashoggi as editor of a leading daily Al Watan, years after his outspoken criticisms of the religious establishment's extremist wing and the threat they posed to the country got him fired, as the editor of a leading Saudi paper. (I've been informed that all editorial appointments must be cleared by the King which means this was no mere oversight but a deliberate and significant maneuver to bring the reform debate back into the fold).

These events over the past year reveal King Abdullah to be firmly in control and calling the shots for his country. Since he formally assumed the throne in the summer of 2005, the King immediately began the heavy lifting for a reform agenda that included over 50 bureaucratic reforms to steer the country into the WTO and reap the rewards of the international trade regime. A moderate leader with a religious piety that secures him credibility both with religious leaders and his constituents, King Abdullah is a man who can produce real productive change for his country, the region, and the US-Saudi relationship, though it may be deliberately carried out below the radar.

The Strategic Fulcrum of the Region

The Saudi government has also emerged as what we have hoped of other players in the region--a responsible stakeholder with a significant capacity to move agendas. Its leadership on the Arab-Israeli conflict can be traced back to 2002 with the launch of the Arab Peace Initiative but in the past year, it has taken on a more active role facilitating dialogue with Hezbollah leaders in December of 2006 (despite Saudi being a Sunni state and Hezbollah a Shiite organization), brokering the Mecca deal for a Fatah-Hamas unity government earlier this year in the face of a failed Quartet policy to isolate Hamas, re-launching the Arab peace initiative with Syria present at the summit, and now as Clayton Swisher has detailed, indicating support for the fall conference that President Bush has called.

And contrary to the popular belief of oil windfalls recklessly squandered, there is good evidence to suggest Saudi's constructive investments in the rest of the region affords it considerably political leverage. Dr. Steffen Hertog has analyzed the most current regional economic data that reveals a marked increase in cross-border investment by Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states in the Middle East. As a result, he concludes the GCC, with Saudi as the most pivotal heavyweight, are poised to play a key stabilizing role in the region (particularly Syria and Lebanon) that would certainly be in America's interest:

With its emerging role as the dominant economic hub of the region, the GCC arguably is a potential anchor of stability in the Arab world. Relatively weak in military terms, it has a vested interest in political calm, as it can then flex its economic muscle. At a time in which American hegemony has become of questionable value even to its "moderate" allies, the GCC might be willing to play a more assertive role based on its economic resources.

Needless to say, no amount of Gulf capital can buy stability amid a mess of epic proportions, as in Iraq (although Gulf money has been helping significantly to shore up the economy of the war-wrecked country). Still, the "soft power" of Gulf capital is not an academic point. As more and more GCC money is channeled into Syria, for example, Gulf political influence there is bound to increase. Its regime in rather dire economic straits, Syria will be increasingly reluctant to alienate Gulf governments--which are not capable of micromanaging the investment decisions of their business classes but can certainly use their moral suasion to indicate which investment destination is not palatable. Similarly, Gulf FDI imparts considerable soft power in Lebanon, where it will play an important role in reconstruction.

When Congress is ready to trade in petty ad hominems for a constructive approach to dealing with the Saudi Arabia of the 21st century, they ought to consult New America fellow Afshin Molavi and Georgetown professor Jean-Francois Seznec, who in their recent article in Foreign Policy, sketch the beginnings of a role the US and EU can play in ushering Saudi Arabia into the modern era and influencing the trajectory of their economy, and as a result their society:

Here's where Europe and the United States can step in. Europe and the United States should embrace Saudi Arabia's newfound economic openness with strategic investments and trade agreements aimed at bolstering the Kingdom's manufacturing and industrial capacity, creating jobs for the country's growing middle class. By doing this, Washington and Brussels will be supporting the civil service and merchants who favor modernization and contributing to the marginalization of Salafists. A growing, industrializing economy will provide a virtuous loop that reinforces education reform as more Saudis seek the skills to compete. Issue number one on the minds of many Saudis--nearly two thirds of whom are under 30--is unemployment. If the civil service, the merchants, and the reform-minded king can create new jobs, their new alliance will gain the legitimacy of success.

Part of the king's jobs strategy includes the creation of six massive new special economic zones (essentially free-trade zones) that will provide much-needed diversification to an economy still dominated by oil. It will also contribute to the "backdoor" modernization that takes place as middle classes grow and economies become interlinked with the world. The zones are seeking joint ventures in research and high technology from the United States and the European Union, and the zones are also expected to be a freer environment socially as well.

A modernizing, moderate Saudi Arabia could be a lodestar for an Islamic world in turmoil. For most of modern Saudi history, the Kingdom has simply poured fuel on the burning oils of the Muslim world. Getting its own house in order by empowering the forces of modernization is a positive first step. But Europe and the United States need to realize that they have an important role to play in writing the country's next chapter

Professor Cordesman closed his testimony summarizing our strategic options:

In short, any effective strategy to deal with terrorism and extremism means addressing two key strategic issues that go far beyond the so-called war on terrorism. One is whether the Arab world can recognize the need for reform and achieve it. The second is whether the West, and particularly the US, can learn to work quietly with nations for effective reform, rather than seek to impose it noisily, and sometimes violently, on an entire region.

It is apparent that the Saudi government, under the leadership of King Abdullah, has begun the quiet reforms. The jury is still out whether the US can carefully work with them on these efforts, as Molavi and Seznec suggest, or whether noisy theatrics like the ones experienced this summer are just too tempting for politicians who forgo the opportunity to be leaders.

--Sameer Lalwani

I hinted in a couple of posts last week that I attended an interesting meeting with a White House official last week to discuss the summit planned for this fall on climate change. The White House policy is changing for the better - it's a long way from decent, but it will hopefully create room for others to lead. Here's a quick download of my meeting:

Background:

During the G8, as the U.S. was feeling the heat for rejecting calls to set an emissions target to prevent what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change agreed would be "dangerous climate change," President Bush announced that the U.S. would hold a high-level meeting with major emitters to discuss the issue.

U.S. officials originally wanted the meeting to take place in early October, but they didn't take into account the Chinese holidays and the selection of Chinese Communist Party committee posts taking place at that time (we really ought to know these sorts of things!).

The initial meeting is now scheduled for September 27-28 and is intended to be the first in a series of 4-5 over the next year or two. Invited: U.S. (host) EU President/European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, UK, Japan, China, Canada, India, Brazil, S. Korea, Mexico, Russia, Australia, Indonesia, S. Africa, United Nations.

Key Details:

One of the first details that the White House official disclosed is that this is no longer being called a "major emitters" summit. In deference to some developing countries that don't currently emit a whole lot, this is now being called a "major economies" summit.

The White House wants a "roll up your sleeves" working meeting, with representation at the minister and sub-minister level. They've asked for countries to send senior delegations with specialists on environment, energy security, finance, and commerce.

Many critics, including yours truly, have been concerned that the summit will distract attention and divert energy from the UNFCCC and Kyoto processes, which are scheduled to convene in Bali this November. The White House says it is attuned to these concerns and want to complement the Bali process - though I still have major doubts.

Here's a brief summary that the White House is putting out on its current stance vis-a-vis the meeting.

Good News:

For starters, the White House official said - to the surprise of perhaps everyone in the room - that the administration is not opposed to a domestic cap & trade regime. I'm still having trouble swallowing this, but the official maintains that the administration has always been open to considering a proposal that doesn't involve international carbon markets. I'll believe it when I see it.

I mentioned that the summit would strive to reach a global emissions goal, and even if the goal is voluntary, it's important for two reasons. First, it means the Bush administration no longer thinks it can fool the world into using an irrelevant metric, "emissions intensity," in place of raw emissions. Second, pursuing a voluntary goal probably won't limit the ability of the next president to pursue a binding one.

The other good news is that helping stakeholders deal with the development impacts of climate change (adaptation, in climate-speak) is becoming part of the administration's agenda. It is now included in President Bush's speech, it figures to be the focus of much U.S. diplomacy in Bali, and the White House is open to new initiatives on this front. The WH official acknowledges that this is a major "shift in diplomacy." This may mean that the U.S. has found a way to be a positive influence in the UNFCCC process. I'm hopeful, but - again - I'll believe it when I see it.

One more notable piece of good news: while the State Department has a role in the planning for this meeting, the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the National Security Council are taking lead roles. That means Harlan Watson, the administration's Obstructer-in-Chief at UNFCCC meetings and one of the most outspoken and effective defenders of a backwards U.S. policy, will probably take a back seat.

Bad News:

The U.S. has proposed four tracks for the meeting: Land use (to include agriculture and forestry and touch on aspects of sequestration and adaptation), transportation (broken up into vehicle efficiency and fuel technology), advanced coal technologies, and energy efficiency.

A sectoral approach makes sense with this group as a complement to the UNFCCC process, but an entire track on clean coal technologies is taking us in precisely the wrong direction. Hopefully, other countries will push back and make a counterproposal that takes a more holistic view of alternative technologies for electricity.

Also, I still do feel this meeting will distract from the UNFCCC and Kyoto processes; if it does, it will be a net negative even if it's productive.

Oh, one more piece of bad news: the U.S. still has one of the most anti-science climate policies in the world and the administration refuses to do what scientists unanimously agree is its share to limit emissions. That fact will overshadow this fall's meeting - no matter how productive it turns out to be.

I'll be getting more info on this throughout the summer and I'll share more soon.

-- Scott Paul

Sam Rosenfeld and Matt Yglesias (the duo that brought you The Incompetence Dodge) each make excellent points about today's Ivo Daalder/Robert Kagan op-ed, which argues that the Security Council should no longer have the final say on authorizing armed intervention. Retorts Matt: "to survey the wreckage in Iraq, and conclude that despite the lessons seen there we can't defer to the UN…on the grounds that the UN might sometimes say no is very weak tea."

And Sam makes the basic point that it is not terribly surprising that these two would pen an op-ed questioning the relevancy of an institution that would not authorize a war they both initially supported.

Still, the actual substance of Daalder and Kagan's argument deserves closer inspection. Their main reason for abandoning the Security Council in favor of a "Concert of Democracies" is that the latter would be less constrained by a Chinese or Russian veto, and thus free to authorize humanitarian interventions around the world. In fact, as I respond in detail on UN Dispatch the Security Council frequently votes to authorize the use of force for humanitarian ends, China and Russia notwithstanding. The debates over Iraq and Kosovo are the only two instances over the last eight years in which the council failed to authorize the use of force when one or more of the P-5 democracies wanted it to. There are eighteen other examples to the contrary. We just don't hear about these cases all that often.

-- Mark Leon Goldberg

Mark is a Senior Correspondent for the American Prospect magazine and writes UN Dispatch. The opinions are his own.

I'm about to head off with journalist Jim Lobe and another friend to commune with big mountains and tough hiking trails and plan strategy in the Cascades.

I'm not used to this stuff and think I'll look a bit like Oakley and Annie above -- though they aren't on this trip.

Scott Paul, Sameer Lalwani, and Dave Meyer will govern the blog this next week.

-- Steve Clemons

It would be no great feat of punditry to suggest that John Edwards is running as an outsider in this year's campaign. Some thought that Edwards, who has held no office since the 2004 election, would struggle to stay relevant. Instead, he has used his absence from government to put the heat on those who still serve.

It's been good to have him in this position. Edwards has pushed his party to stand up to President Bush on Iraq. He's also tapped grassroots energy on climate change and poverty (both domestic and global) in ways that I think more candidates should. He's also shown, contrary to conventional political wisdom, that acknowledging mistakes isn't political suicide.

But I'll admit I'm skeptical that he would do more to change the culture of Washington or stand up to special interests than other candidates - at least for now. The sitting senators who are running for president are reforming the way money leverages influence in the capital, even if the change is incremental and painfully slow.

Why am I bothering to write any of this? Because the Edwards Campaign just sent a 16-sentence e-appeal in which the word "Washington" appears 11 times.

The truth is that members of both parties use the "change Washington" talk year after year to challenge for seats in Congress and for the Presidency. Few of these candidates do much to change the way the process works.

I should add that the comment that has given Edwards this opening, made by Hillary Clinton, isn't exactly wrong. Lobbyists do represent Americans and many of them do important work educating policymakers so they can make informed decisions. It's the money that's the problem, especially in elections.

I'm glad to see Edwards is pushing reform. He does support public financing of elections, which is hugely important. But if Edwards is going to hit us over the head this hard with anti-Washington rhetoric, I think we have the right to expect a little more in the way of specifics.

After all, only two years ago, John Edwards could have helped change the system as a U.S. Senator. We deserve to understand what sets him apart from the others running besides no longer having any responsibilities in government.

For effect, I'm copying the Edwards campaign e-mail below the fold.

-- Scott Paul

The New Yorker's Jane Mayer has an extremely important piece in the 13 August edition of the magazine titled "The Black Sites: A Rare Look Inside the CIA's Secret Interrogation Program."

I knew from other sources that Mayer was working on a major article that would expose a closely held International Committee of the Red Cross report finding that American interrogators were using torture techniques -- but did not know that her piece would be so comprehensive. This article -- which is very long -- should be read in full by anyone who wants to understand the details of the "darkness at noon" like intrigue that we have created. And it doesn't even produce results that are dependable.

Much of this story is about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession that he beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Pearl's wife and many others close to the case don't have confidence in the confession or the CIA interrogators involved and their techniques for extraction of information from detainees.

The two parts of the essay that are of particular interest to me are first, the section about the ICRC report on US torture habits and second on the view that many have that despite all of the drama about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and the various "black sites," it turns out in one of the highest profile cases involving Mohammed, there is enormous doubt about the information he coughed up.

Jane Mayer writes about the ICRC report:

Since the drafting of the Geneva Conventions, the International Committee of the Red Cross has played a special role in safeguarding the rights of prisoners of war. For decades, governments have allowed officials from the organization to report on the treatment of detainees, to insure that standards set by international treaties are being maintained.

The Red Cross, however, was unable to get access to the C.I.A.'s prisoners for five years. Finally, last year, Red Cross officials were allowed to interview fifteen detainees, after they had been transferred to Guantanamo.

One of the prisoners was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. What the Red Cross learned has been kept from the public. The committee believes that its continued access to prisoners worldwide is contingent upon confidentiality, and therefore it addresses violations privately with the authorities directly responsible for prisoner treatment and detention. For this reason, Simon Schorno, a Red Cross spokesman in Washington, said, "The I.C.R.C. does not comment on its findings publicly. Its work is confidential."

The public-affairs office at the C.I.A. and officials at the congressional intelligence-oversight committees would not even acknowledge the existence of the report.

Among the few people who are believed to have seen it are Condoleezza Rice, now the Secretary of State; Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser; John Bellinger III, the Secretary of State's legal adviser; Hayden; and John Rizzo, the agency's acting general counsel. Some members of the Senate and House intelligence-oversight committees are also believed to have had limited access to the report.

Confidentiality may be particularly stringent in this case. Congressional and other Washington sources familiar with the report said that it harshly criticized the C.I.A.'s practices. One of the sources said that the Red Cross described the agency's detention and interrogation methods as tantamount to torture, and declared that American officials responsible for the abusive treatment could have committed serious crimes.

The source said the report warned that these officials may have committed "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions, and may have violated the U.S. Torture Act, which Congress passed in 1994. The conclusions of the Red Cross, which is known for its credibility and caution, could have potentially devastating legal ramifications.

Mayer's meticulous reporting could potentially contribute to a legal case against those inside the US government who approved these torture techniques. It's interesting to go back and read Jane Mayer's brilliant expose on Cheney chief of staff David Addington, who is well known as the administration's pro-torture advocate. David Ignatius dubbed him "Cheney's Cheney."

And the kicker of the story is also extremely important. To put it bluntly, all of the secret interrogation sites, military tribunals, rendition programs, and all of the intelligence drama has "undermined certainty" in these legal cases and introduced huge doubts.

As Jane Mayer reports:

Critics of the administration fear that the unorthodox nature of the C.I.A.'s interrogation and detention program will make it impossible to prosecute the entire top echelon of Al Qaeda leaders in captivity. Already, according to the Wall Street Journal, credible allegations of torture have caused a Marine Corps prosecutor reluctantly to decline to bring charges against Mohamedou Ould Slahi, an alleged Al Qaeda leader held in Guantanamo. Bruce Riedel, the former C.I.A. analyst, asked, "What are you going to do with K.S.M. in the long run? It's a very good question. I don't think anyone has an answer. If you took him to any real American court, I think any judge would say there is no admissible evidence. It would be thrown out."

The problems with Mohammed's coerced confessions are especially glaring in the Daniel Pearl case. It may be that Mohammed killed Pearl, but contradictory evidence and opinion continue to surface.

Yosri Fouda, the Al Jazeera reporter who interviewed Mohammed in Karachi, said that although Mohammed handed him a package of propaganda items, including an unedited video of the Pearl murder, he never identified himself as playing a role in the killing, which occurred in the same city just two months earlier.

And a federal official involved in Mohammed's case said, "He has no history of killing with his own hands, although he's proved happy to commit mass murder from afar." Al Qaeda's leadership had increasingly focussed on symbolic political targets. "For him, it's not personal," the official said. "It's business."

Ordinarily, the U.S. legal system is known for resolving such mysteries with painstaking care. But the C.I.A.'s secret interrogation program, Senator Levin said, has undermined the public's trust in American justice, both here and abroad. "A guy as dangerous as K.S.M. is, and half the world wonders if they can believe him -- is that what we want?" he asked. "Statements that can't be believed, because people think they rely on torture?"

Asra Nomani, the Pearls' friend, said of the Mohammed confession, "I'm not interested in unfair justice, even for bad people." She went on, "Danny was such a person of conscience. I don't think he would have wanted all of this dirty business. I don't think he would have wanted someone being tortured. He would have been repulsed. This is the kind of story that Danny would have investigated. He really believed in American principles."

It seems that the best protection Americans and even victims of America had as far as the protection of their basic human rights was when the Soviet Union was challenging us in a global Cold War. Then, the U.S. had to be different -- to present an alternative model.

Without the Soviet Union to juxtapose ourselves against, Bush's dark and cynical leadership has taken this nation not towards increased liberty but to a place where we have our own kind of gulags.

And to some degree Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Vice President Cheney are conspiring with one another to knock the legs from beneath our democracy. They feed on each other and help each other while pretending to be enemies -- but both harm us.

-- Steve Clemons

Jim Lobe brilliantly chronicles a key point of tension between various AEI stakeholders -- on one hand a group of firms who help fund the place and are mostly focused on government deregulation and on the other, those who have helped shape and drive a neoconservative War in Iraq and national security strategy.

Lobe writes:

Today's quotation in the Financial Times attributed to Danielle Pletka, the Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), was a stunner. "If we. . .begin to sanction foreign companies through more stringent sanctions in the Iran Sanctions Act, I think there will be serious repercussions for our multilateral effort."

Whatever would possess AEI and Pletka, who personally has been one of the most prominent and enthusiastic cheerleaders of the rapidly spreading state divestment movement against companies doing business in Iran, to offer a cautionary note about adopting unilateral sanctions, let alone stress the importance of preserving multilateral unity with limp-wristed European allies in dealing with a charter member of the "Axis of Evil"? Judging from its provenance at what must be considered Neo-Con Central, it certainly couldn't be common sense.

In fact, Pletka's observation probably reflects growing tensions between AEI's corporate contributors, many of whom are represented on its board of trustees, on the one hand, and, on the other, the hard-line neo-conservative views of its foreign-policy fellows, such as Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, Michael Rubin, Joshua Muravchik, and Pletka herself; academic advisers, such as Gertrude Himmelfarb, Eliot Cohen, and Jeremy Rabkin; and its board chairman, Bruce Kovner.

Lobe's article should be read in full. My only view is that it should not be only those worried about multinational corporate welfare who are worried about the neoconservative agenda. We all should be trying to create substantial costs for those who led us into the Iraq War and who decimated the condition of America's national security portfolio.

Buf it multinationals are going to be tough on those raising concerns about human rights in China, or global warming, or product safety standards -- then they might as well be tough on the neocon crowd too.

-- Steve Clemons

Over the next week, starting tomorrow, I'm going to be hiking with journalist Jim Lobe and some other pals in the Cascades mountains on a working, walking retreat.

I'm going to try to post some thoughts tomorrow and when I am finished next Friday or Saturday on what's brewing on various national security and foreign policy fronts as we trip towards September. My blogger colleagues Sameer Lalwani and Scott Paul will keep the place humming while I'm doing some strategic planning near Mt. Rainier.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

This is a hilarious video interview with super-blogger Matthew Yglesias who just didn't get the treatment he deserves at YearlyKos.

Then I did a video interview talking about my encounter with Peter Beinart over what we'd tell the next President about U.S. foreign policy if we had five minutes.

Here is Juan Cole on anotther TMPtv video interview. Check out Juan Cole's new book as well, Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

General Wesley Clark delivered a humdinger of a speech this morning in Chicago at YearlyKos.

There's much to it -- and he puts the target for the failure in Iraq not on the military, nor on the Congress, nor other participants in this mess other than President George W. Bush.

Others will get the text and audio file up. I'll try to link later.

But his commentary on engaging our foes and rivals was right on target. He called Bush out and demanded that the President stop trying to look like a leader by chewing up the lives of American men and women in combat. He told Bush to stop hiding behind General David Petraeus.

I want to remind readers and journalists that getting a Democratic presidential contender to state that we ought to be negotiating with Iran directly used to be difficult. It was not Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or Bill Richardson or John Edwards or Joe Biden or Chris Dodd who were in that space first.

Wesley Clark was. He made his first major statement that we should be talking directly to Iran in September 2005 at a conference titled "Terrorism, Security and America's Purpose." (video link here)

Clark then underscored his position in a "Real State of the Union" address he gave for the New America Foundation in January 2006 and then shortly after on Meet the Press with Tim Russert.

Clark has an approach to national security and foreign policy that is very solutions-oriented. He has clear-headed views on how complex military, political, and economic systems need to be molded to achieve results. And he is open to the feedback of failure -- so that systems can learn.

It's probably late in the day for Wesley Clark to get into the race, but the various Democratic presidential competitors would find it well worth their time to learn from Clark who can both get beyond vapid, binary responses on foreign policy issues and still give a straight answer.

Very interesting morning here at McCormack Place Convention Center. The main hall was packed to the gills at 8 am. These folks attending are hyper-motivated.

The last time I saw this kind of enthusiasm in a huge crowd was at AIPAC's 2007 annual conference. Maybe balance will be restored to the American political universe.

-- Steve Clemons

I just arrived in Chicago super early this morning and will be speaking in two Yearly Kos Convention panels today.

The first is titled "The Next Progressive Foreign Policy" and takes place from 10:30 - 11:30 am and will include Peter Beinart whose famous article "A Fighting Faith: An Argument for a New Liberalism" is arguably one of the most impactful articles written on foreign policy in recent years -- though I have serious disagreements with it and think that Peter does now as well. Also participating are Andrei Cherny and Ken Baer who publish the new journal, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and myself.

Second is "Progressive Foreign Policy and its Importance for Elections and Activism" at 2:30 pm. This is going to take some more head-scratching because I feel that one hasn't seen the kind of grassroots interest in national security policy issues since the 1960s. Lessons from then are not clearly applicable, but this should be a good discussion and will include Lorelei Kelley, Alex Rossmiller, Sarah Howelenski, Jonathan Singer and myself. Full deck.

Congrats to Gina Cooper and her incredible team on pulling this all together. Major press all over the place on the Yearly Kos Convention as the Dem's "Other national convention."

E.J. Dionne, a great pal, also has a good piece, "The Rise of Kos." Markos once mentioned that he thought I resided in some cocooned state of unreality about the ability to generate progressive progress with moderates of both parties. To both of our benefit, we didn't spend our time and energy knocking heads over this and I think we both along with many others have broadened the "types of vehicles and political engagement" to pursue our progressive objectives. I just see more value than most in building allies with like-minded independents and Republicans whenever possible.

However, unlike Fox's Bill O'Reilly, I believe that Markos and his followers are a vital part of the progressive movement and American civil society today.

More on this and the role of blogs later.

-- Steve Clemons

Over the last day and a half, I've been connecting with folks in the military, in intelligence, from the Department of State on the American side of the equation, as well as chatting with some well-placed Brits and even Iraqi government officials, and a good passle of journalists in order to kick the tires of the O'Hanlon/Pollack New York Times oped that Dick Cheney is now favorably referencing in his talking points.

My sources are at odds with the anecdotes these writers shared. But unlike John McCain's SWAT-Team aided escort through a marketplace, Pollack and O'Hanlon offer a litany of detail that probably are fair reads of how they see micro-circumstances now compared to similar micro-circumstances during their last trip. To their credit, they don't try and suggest that the political order is any healthier -- and they say that the place is still in a huge mess, and fragile.

They just say morale is up in the ranks and that the military is succeeding for the most part in securing its objectives. Again, this doesn't square with my data sets -- but they are on the line for their own report.

But to take their micro-observations further, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at a recent Maria Leavey breakfast, the plural of anecdote is not data. She did not buy the story being promulgated by the Brookings writers mostly because the only measure that can matter at this point in Iraq is a change in the paralyzed political standoff in Iraq's quasi-government.

Here is Speaker Pelosi's response to a question posed at a small breakfast I attended Tuesday:

Tom Oliphant: I'm just curious in advance whether, from people you trust in the past few weeks, you have a sense of what's going on in Iraq?

Speaker Pelosi: I've had a pretty good idea about what's been going on in Iraq. And it's not a pretty sight. It's a terrible sight.

The question is what will be the report in September? General Petraeus, I always keep thinking about this report, something we used to say in appropriations. . .the plural of anecdote is not data. (Laughing from crowd)

So, they will tell us about an isolated 'well over here hey did that, here they did that' and we have to keep the standard high. That is to say, 'is this worth what we're doing?' I'm very concerned that they will kick the can further down the road or talk about a few anecdotal successes that they'll try to pass off as the situation in Iraq.

The corruption, the no bid contracts, by the way, that's almost no bid and no performance contracts.

Any piece of it that you take is terrible on the ground in Iraq. The civil war is terrible in Iraq we have no business being in it.

So I think the standard people want to see is don't tell me anecdotally that you captured and held for five minutes someplace because some local Sunni decided to shoot his neighbor but what's the political change that is there? If there is no political change, there is no way that we should have our troops stay there.

On a related front, I just got an intriguing anonymous tip -- not double sourced -- but from a source I have confidence in.

Apparently, the State Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has commissioned some real heavyweights in the foreign service -- several high-ranking former ambassadors and others -- to participate in a large scale exercise on how non-combatant American personnnel would be evacuated from Kabul and Baghdad where America's largest embassy operations are now based. These are called NEO plans, or non-combatant evacuation operations.

Perhaps they have been watching the Department of Defense squirm in response to Hillary Clinton's question about planning for military withdrawal and are getting the State Department ready for her next letter on the subject. Or perhaps the State Department has reasons to worry given on the ground realities that we might not know about.

According to someone close to this effort, the evacuations from Liberia and Saigon are on peoples' minds, not the more rosy outlook offered by O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack.

This effort has been coordinated with CENTCOM and the 5th Fleet, in part because the latter would deploy anti-terror Marine teams to secure escape perimeters.

The word is that the "tone" of the diplomats was "not good" and "quite pessimistic about conditions." My source said that "there is a high level of concern."

According to another source, Al Jazeera posed a question to State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher about this NEO effort, and his response was "I'm not gonna comment on that."

Perhaps Dick Cheney will quote The Washington Note now in his next reference of contending outlooks on America's mess in Iraq.

-- Steve Clemons

I just got a fascinating note in my inbox from Mark Goldberg, who writes regularly for UN Dispatch and the American Prospect. Since he's not planning on writing this up himself, I'm going to post his note in full. It's worth a read.

Also, I hope my two posts today don't discourage readers from scrolling down to see what James Wolfensohn wrote this morning or the announcement of Sameer Lalwani as our third partner in crime here at TWN. Welcome, Sameer!

I also want to recap my WH meeting on this fall's climate summit, take a few hard shots at Barack Obama's latest foreign policy speech, and link Russia's claim on the North Pole to the U.S. effort to ratify the Law of the Sea - but I unfortunately don't have time for any of that today.

Without further ado, Mark's note:

In May 2005, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for cable traffic and other items that spoke to the development of Darfur policy at the State Department. Finally, last month, I received a package of some 800 documents. Not all of the documents are that useful, but there are some fascinating tidbits hidden therein --- including documents pertaining to the winter/spring 2005 debate at the Security Council over whether or not the International Criminal Court should be given jurisdiction to prosecute alleged war crimes in Darfur.

(Some background: Since taking office, the Bush administration has been openly hostile to the ICC out of a fear that the court would launch politically motivated prosecutions of Americans. At times, the administration's opposition to the court has bordered on monomaniacal obsession. The administration, for instance, imposed military and economic sanctions on allies that support the court, even as those allies had troops deployed in Iraq. Then, in late January 2005, an Italian judge named Antonio Cassese suddenly put the administration in a bind. Cassese had led a UN investigation into suspected war crimes in Darfur, and in a report to the Security Council he recommended that the council authorize the ICC to investigate.)

The documents I've obtained detail the administration's headstrong reaction to a potential Security Council vote on an ICC referral for Darfur.

In early January 2005, upon learning that Cassese was to recommend ICC referral, UN Ambassador Jack Danforth sent a cable to Washington asking for instructions. The cable, addressed to Secretary of State Rice, recounts a meeting Danforth held with French Perm Rep Jean-Marc de la Sabliere (and an individual whose name is redacted.) Danforth was informed by de la Sabliere that France would, in fact, take up Cassese's recommendation. Danforth, therefore, asked Rice for some direction: should the US seek to A) block the ICC referral all together, or B) simply carve out US exemption (that is, insert language into the resolution that would grant immunity to any Americans that might be somehow be caught up in the investigation.)

Danforth recommended the later course, saying that doing so would make life easier for everyone. His advice was not heeded. Rather, for the next three months, the US sought to block a resolution giving jurisdiction to the ICC, because in the words of a cable from Foggy Bottom "we do not want to be confronted with a decision on whether to veto a court resolution in the Security Council." In place of the ICC, the United States proposed creating an alternate "accountability venue" that would be an African Union-United Nations hybrid court that would prosecute Darfur's war criminals using the facilities of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

I followed this story closely at the time, but until I read these cables I had no idea the lengths to which the administration was willing to go in pursuit of this alternate option. Rice directed the US mission to the UN to "position ourselves to table our text before any other member formally proposes language seeking accountability through the ICC." But the Europeans did not confuse first with best. EU members of the Security Council held firm against the AU-UN hybrid option, so the administration sought to circumvent them.

"The proposal might gain momentum...if the Africans supported it," reads one cable. Pierre-Richard Prosper, the US Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues, traveled to Africa to press AU member states to agree to the American proposal for a hybrid, AU-UN court. Prosper delivered talking points and a so-called "concept paper" about the hybrid option to the president of Senegal, who was to travel to Chad to discuss it with regional powers like Nigeria and South Africa during an AU summit on Sudan.

The talking points Prosper delivered show real desperation. One point says the hybrid court would be less costly than the ICC -- which was a point the Europeans strenuously denied. (Further, the Europeans countered that they would not agree to fund the hybrid court when they are already paying dues to the ICC). Also, the talking points argue that the ICC is a lesser option because it cannot prosecute crimes prior to 2002. (Never mind that the fighting in Darfur did not break out until 2003-2004.) Finally, as if the ICC were some European plot against Africans, one point cynically says "so far the only referrals have related to activities in Africa."

The administration had hoped that Senegal would convince other AU member states of the wisdom and utility of the hybrid option. Alas, this effort to failed. On March 31, 2005, the United States abstained from resolution 1593, which gave the ICC jurisdiction to investigate crimes in Darfur. The US sought -- and won -- exception from the ICC as was originally counseled by Danforth. In the meantime, three months of diplomacy were needlessly wasted as the US pursued the hair-brained hybrid option.

When people say that the international response to Darfur has been slow, you can point them to this anecdote.

I want to congratulate the governments that worked through the UN Security Council to pass Resolution 1769 on Tuesday. It officially creates a hybrid UN-AU peacekeeping mission to Darfur, with authority under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to "support early and effective implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement, prevent the disruption of its implementation and armed attacks, and protect civilians..."

This is a huge development. It essentially means that no more political obstacles stand in the way of true protection for the people of Darfur.

While Ambassador Khalilzad did not lead this effort, he deserves credit for his flexibility and willingness to satisfy Chinese concerns. That China voted in favor of 1769 speaks volumes to the progress that's been made on this issue at the UN. This could never have been possible with John Bolton at the helm of the U.S. Mission. Mark Goldberg at UN Dispatch has more.

But it's too early to wave the victory flag. A high-ranking UN official privately admits that UNAMID, as the force will be called, isn't getting there anytime before January. Not that it's a secret - any number of UN or government officials would probably say the same thing.

If the United Nations had an Emergency Peace Service today, it could be en route to Darfur right now. It wouldn't be a silver bullet, but its team of professionals with diverse skills, thorough training, and a unified command structure could be protecting civilians right now and getting things under control until UNAMID arrives.

The time for this idea has come.

I'll be back tomorrow to download a bit on a very interesting meeting with a White House official on the major emitters...er, now "large economies" climate summit that will take place this fall.

-- Scott Paul

We are expanding our team. Sameer Lalwani will be joining us as a regular commentator at the The Washington Note.

Sameer is a policy analyst with the New America Foundation's American Strategy Program concentrating on the geopolitics of the Middle East and South Asia.

Prior to joining the American Strategy Program, Lalwani worked at the Center for South Asia Studies and before that as a research assistant for Professor Kiren Chaudhry of the University of California, Berkeley. He is a contributor to the Young Professionals in Foreign Policy blog and wrote for TPM Cafe's now successfully defunct Bolton Watch.

He is also obsessed with softball and has enjoyed destroying a couple of the administration's ball teams -- as well as pulling ahead in a squeaker against the Carnegie Endowment.

-- Steve Clemons

Jim Lobe has written a terrific response to the stridently arrogant oped, "Britain Cannot Have Two Best Friends," by John Bolton in yesterday's Financial Times.

I also just learned that Fox News Sunday will feature Brookings Scholars Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack this weekend to further explore their rosy report on the state of America's current "military successes" in Iraq. One question I have is that it the generals are to be believed that there is "no military solution to Iraq," then why are Pollack and O'Hanlon suggesting that "we may just yet win this war" when Iraq's Parliament is on vacation (though US and coalition troops are not) and the Sunni bloc in government has just quit?

For a new take on Japan's recent elections, I penned this piece, "The Sins of the Sons," for the Guardian's Comment is Free Blog. Essentially, I suggest that anti-science fundamentalist Christians are politically synonymous with Japan's strident, hawkish, history-denying agitators who fuel Shinzo Abe's nationalist pretensions. I also suggest that Abe's father and George W. Bush's father each provide models that we may need to fix the messes created by their sons.

Finally, Eric Edelman gets some scrutiny from Jim Lobe. What Jim did not write is that Edelman was on the short list to become Deputy Secretary of State -- and Condi Rice ultimately, finally blocked it when she realized what damage a warmer, fuzzier version of John Bolton who reported to Dick Cheney would mean to her operation.

I had forgotten that Eric Edelman had been a close aide of Strobe Talbott's before he joined Vice President Cheney's national security team. Another close aide of Strobe's was Victoria Nuland, now Ambassador to NATO and spouse of neoconservative Robert Kagan.

Kudos to Lobe for his excellent research and expose on the few surviving visible neocons outside of Cheney's office -- though those not in government today ought not to be underestimated.

Finally, here is a short FT article on Obama's plan to handle terrorism in which I offer a comment.

-- Steve Clemons

(New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg outlines PlaNYC proposals)

In the coming days, the U.S. Government will make a critical decision that has the potential to change America's standing in the world: whether to approve a $537 million grant that will help make New York City the first environmentally sustainable megacity in the 21st century.

Officials at the Department of Transportation must appreciate that their decision to fund Mayor Michael Bloomberg's visionary PlaNYC will determine the quality of air that more than 10 million New Yorkers breathe daily and the amount of CO2 emissions the city coughs into the atmosphere.

Already, New York City produces more carbon dioxide emissions than the whole of Norway. More importantly, officials must realize that their actions will determine America's response to the global challenge of unparalleled urbanization and carbon induced climate change.

This year, for the first time in human history, more people will live in urban areas than rural communities. In the U.S., the urban population has grown from 97 million in 1950 to 222 million in 2000. Today, nearly 80 percent of America lives in urban areas. Such unprecedented and unplanned urbanization wreaks environmental havoc by increasing carbon emissions, since higher population density results in greater automobile and energy use.

PlaNYC encourages the use of public transportation systems by creating real disincentives to automobile use. The proposed congestion charge on automobile use during peak times in select parts of the city will reduce traffic and generate revenue that would go toward improving public transportation.

Mayor Bloomberg's plan comes at the right time for a city burdened by worsening traffic and pollution problems.

Nearly a fifth of New York City's carbon dioxide emissions are caused by vehicles. Traffic congestion, in particular, is not only environmentally detrimental; it also imposes substantial time and resource costs on drivers. Americans lose around 3.7 billion hours and 2.3 billion gallons of fuel sitting in traffic jams. This translates to an annual cost of around $200 billion. Due to congestion, New Yorkers face the highest commute time in the nation, and their children have the highest rate of child asthma hospitalization.

The program would charge the 4.6% of New York City residents who drive to work, while its benefits would accrue to everyone.

New Yorkers will enjoy cleaner air, shorter commutes, higher average speed times, and better public transportation. Neither the economy in general, nor the retail sector in particular, should be adversely affected by the plan. In fact service and delivery providers in Manhattan, among others, will benefit from shorter travel times and fewer delays.

However, despite its many advantages congestion pricing faces some skepticism. Fortunately, we can learn from other cities such as Stockholm, Singapore and London which have successfully implemented congestion charges. In all cities, CO2 emissions declined sharply and congestion was significantly reduced, with Singapore experiencing an immediate 45% drop in traffic. These cities have also benefited from more efficient public transportation.

In London, bus-travel rose by 46%. According to an independent report, almost 60% of the businesses in London judged the program's impact on the economy as positive or neutral.

The bottom line is that in an automobile dependent America needs smart solutions for environmentally sustainable development. Having one of the largest urban population and the highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions, the U.S. has the responsibility - and the means - to lead the world on this front.

If we do not act soon, American cities will not only lag behind European capitals but also developing country cities such as Bogota (Colombia) and Curitiba (Brazil), which are already implementing innovative environmentally friendly solutions.

As the largest city in the country, New York is an ideal candidate for creating a blueprint for cleaner and more efficient urbanization in the U.S. and the world.

-- James Wolfensohn

James Wolfensohn is founder of the Wolfensohn Center for Development at the Brookings Institution. He previously served as President of the World Bank and most recently as Special Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East

(Max Blumenthal took this picture in the Gila National Forest, near Silver City, New Mexico. TWN used this picture during the effort to block John Bolton's confirmation as US Ambassador to the United Nations.)

Max Blumenthal is sort of a morphed Michael Moore and Jon Stewart and has become a viral web hit master exposing the warts of the political right and left.

In my estimatiion, Blumenthal -- son of Jackie and Sidney (yes, that Jackie and Sidney) -- has emerged from the cesspool of contemporary political punditry as one of America's great (subversive) video journalists. I have no doubt that if America was more like the Soviet Union, he'd be in a gulag.

(Max -- watch out, America is becoming sort of gulag-ish).

As a devout secularist, I'm basically out of step with the new trends towards faith-embedded politics, but Blumenthal has a knack for sliding into anti-Enlightenment institutions like Christians United for Israel Conference and exposing them. I learn much from his video journeys and writing.

This video clip -- which you must watch in full -- has priceless vignettes with Senator Joe Lieberman and former House Republican Leader Tom "The Hammer" DeLay. For those that prefer it, here's a version of the same, "Rapture Ready," that has just gone up on YouTube.

But like any fair and balanced social chronicler, Blumenthal deploys his edginess to tease out myths on the left and right. For those who want more Max, here is a clip of Blumenthal's video essay on the Take Back America Conference that got taken back -- as well as the 2007 Conservative Political Action Committee Conference.

I organize big conferences on occasion -- and just for the record -- it would be a privilege to have Max Blumenthal there exposing the contradictions in my own meetings. He's a vital part of our civil society I think -- and he is making all of this more fun.

-- Steve Clemons

(Vice President Richard Cheney, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal and TWN guest blogger Clayton Swisher)

Clayton E. Swisher, a former Marine, is director of programs at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC and is author of The Truth About Camp David (New York: Nation Books, 2004).

If news that Saudi Arabia will attend the US-sponsored peace conference this September is correct, it is in fact a very big deal.

There will be no dusty conference chairs next to the Quartet and Israel's usual Arab partners: Egypt and Jordan. Following US acceptance of the Arab League Peace Initiative this week during Secretary Rice's visit to the region, first proffered by then Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in 2002 -- it means the Initiative will also be the basis for discussion. That's terrific news.

What's more, the Saudis have denied the US and Israel the ability to allege -- as they generally have since the collapse of US President Bill Clinton's 2000 peace drive -- that there is no Arab "partner for peace."

Despite Arafat's death in 2004, the US and Israel have relied on the "no partner" mantra, pointing to Palestinian internal dysfunction, factional violence between Fatah and Hamas, and the "lack of democratization" canard which was nothing more than a stall attributable to pro-Likud White House ideologues coupled with US preoccupation with Iraq and the so called "Global War on Terror."

The US also excused its non-involvement because of Sharon's pledge to quit Gaza, which in reality only bought Israel more time to increase its hold on the settlements of the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Seven years on the question now will be if there is an Israeli partner willing in word and deed to recognize the Palestinians right to exist on the land occupied since the 1967 war. With the US bogged down in Iraq, and with the Bush Administration's hopes to confront the growing regional influence of Iran in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine, there is an understanding that any US-Arab-Israeli alliance against Iran will hinge on progress on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ergo the recent US proposal to provide so-called moderate Arab states (including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE) with a stunning military arms package.

The heretofore-diplomatic vacuum on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict means Palestinians are now dependent on larger power brokers more than ever before. That Saudi Arabia -- with all its significance throughout not just the Arab world but Islamic world writ large -- will attend this conference and give Israel the de facto recognition President Bush called for in his July 16th speech means the onus will be on the US and Israel to produce the big deliverable: Palestinian statehood and an end to Israeli occupation.

The Bush Administration has a terrible credit rating in the peace process, and one could envision regional distractions producing a US default to the tried-and-failed drawn out, incremental peace process in order to "kick the can" down the road for the next US President.

Which is why Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies should not stop there. They should bookend the Arab Peace Initiative with a timeline for the US and Israel. The Arabs should make clear that the Arab Peace Initiative and commitment to a two-state solution ends with the Bush Administration in January 2009.

The Arabs took a big risk by tabling the Arab Peace Initiative and signing on to the US-sponsored peace conference in terms of provoking the domestic Islamic radicalism that continues unabated, thanks in large part to prior US indifference towards Palestinians, the bungled Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, and the overall perception of US hostility toward Muslims.

This may in fact be a very long shot. But if the Saudis continue to deny the US and Israel excuses towards an end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, history will correctly judge where the majority of responsibility should rest.

-- Clayton Swisher