Here’s some more on the Franco-German plan (known, it seems as ‘Mirage’, a somewhat unfortunate choice of name) – in English this time. Meanwhile, a reader has kindly written in with a translation of the Spiegel piece. It’s too long to reproduce in its entirety, but the idea seems to be that ‘thousands’ of UN troops would take control of the entire country for years in order to guarantee a "durable disarmament regime." The US troops already in the region would remain there as guarantors of the UN incursion.

According to the magazine, Iraq would become for all practical purposes a protectorate of the UN, with Saddam remaining as only the formal head of state. If the Saddam regime were to collapse as a result, that would be “acceptable”, but that’s not the primary purpose of the exercise.

Apparently, Mirage has already been discussed “with other critics of the US strategy”, such as Mr Simitis, president of Greece (and, for six months, the President of the EU Council), Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President-Designate Hu Jin Tao.

Here's an interesting article from the Guardian (yes, I know) on morale among Iraqi conscripts. The interviewee is a deserter, so he may not be entirely representative, but his story seems to ring true. His concluding comment is worth noting:

"I haven't heard of Tony Blair. But if George Bush wants to give us freedom then we will welcome it."

The Iranian regime is no monolith. The political situation within that country is more complicated than is often claimed (not least by the Bush administration), suggesting that some form of dialog may be possible and, indeed, desirable. Chris Patten, however, has got it wrong. There's a surprise. The New York Times notes that on a recent three day trip, the EU’s “foreign affairs commissioner” met with Iran’s former president, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, a gesture that has “caused consternation [to] reformists who view [Rafsanjani] with suspicion, even loathing.”

The West should be looking to encourage Iran’s opposition. Patten doesn’t appear to realize that meetings such as his only do the opposite.

Something that gains, however, from translation is this:

“Primates capitulards et toujours en quete de fromages”.

According to the London Times, that's Le Figaro's attempt to translate “cheese-eating surrending monkeys.”

Cap that, Jonah.

A few weeks back, the New Yorker ran an entertaining piece by John Lanchester on writers who write under the influence of various questionable substances. One impressive example was W.H. Auden. He “swallowed Benzedrine every morning for twenty years, from 1938 onward, balancing its effect with the barbiturate Seconal when he wanted to sleep. (He also kept a glass of vodka by the bed, to swig if he woke up during the night).”

Lanchester's piece also contained this quote from Sartre (caffeine, drink, barbiturates):

“But it should be noted that this regulatory totalization realizes my immanence in the group in the quasi-transcendence of the totalizing third party; for the latter, as the creator of objectives or organizer of means, stands in a tense and contradictory relation of transcendence-immanence, so that my integration, though real in the here and now which define me, remains somewhere incomplete, in the here and now which characterize the regulatory third party. We see here the reemergence of an element of alterity proper to the statute of the group, but which here is still formal: the third party is certainly the same, the praxis is certainly common everywhere; but a shifting dislocation makes it totalizing when I am the totalized means of the group, and conversely.”

Perhaps it loses something in translation.

Canadian Natural Resources Minister Herb Dhaliwal is a leading figure in that country’s effort to ratify the Kyoto Treaty. Reason magazine reports that he’s also the owner of two SUVs - one for Ottawa and one for his home in Vancouver. Reason notes that “Canada’s plans to implement Kyoto include a call for people to drive small cars that use less fuel.”

Whoops.

In a week when the chairman of the EU’s ‘convention’ has produced a first draft of a laughably grandiose ‘constitution’, Brussels has shown that its overreach is not confined to the big picture. The latest step in the Commission’s bid to build a united Europe is a requirement that farmers must stamp every egg they sell with their home address, the details of the hen which laid the egg, the method of production, the code for the producer-packer, and a sell-by date.

The Daily Telegraph is not impressed.

Europeans have, as is well known, an aversion to genetically modified food, none more so than Prince Charles. Now James Watson, the Nobel-prizewinning scientist jointly credited with the discovery of DNA, has (the Daily Telegraph reports) taken him to task:

"It is nothing less than an absurdity to deprive ourselves of the benefits of GM foods by demonizing them; and, with the need for them so great in the developing world, it is nothing less than a crime to be governed by the irrational suppositions of Prince Charles and others. As our society delays in sanctimonious ignorance, we would do well to remember how much is at stake; the health of hungry people and the preservation of our most precious legacy, the environment."

Watson makes a good point, although, to be fair, it is worth noting that Charles’ ‘organic’ farms do make some very good cookies.

The New York Sun is running a story (no link available) this weekend about a mosque director arrested on charges that “he helped more than 200 aliens sneak into or stay illegally in America.”

The alleged offenses apparently revolve around the INS’ Religious Worker Program. According to the Sun, the “program allows aliens with religious training and experience to obtain work visas and green cards if religious organizations sponsor them”. It would be interesting to know more about this program, which is justified, presumably, by the assumption that the presence of additional “religious workers” in this country must automatically be a force for the good. That may or may not have been true in the past, but in an age when the US is threatened by an ideology with, to put it mildly, a strong religious component, it is clearly no longer the case.

It’s time for a closer look at this program.

One adjective in the opening paragraph of this week’s New Yorker piece by Hendrik Hertzberg says more about the attitude of certain sections of the intelligentsia to George W. Bush than any number of books, petitions or agonized interviews on NPR:

“The most tasteless passage in last week's State of the Union Message came about half an hour into the speech, as President Bush was enumerating his Administration's successes against Al Qaeda. Three thousand suspected terrorists have been arrested, he said. "And many others have met a different fate," he went on. "Let's put it this way: they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies." Talk about smoking guns. You could almost see the President blowing across the upturned barrel of his Colt .45.”

Tasteless?

I don’t know what is worse about the use that word – the self-congratulatory sense of moral superiority that it implies or the feckless suggestion that this conflict should now be judged on aesthetic grounds. These terrorists are fanatics’ fanatics, foot soldiers or worse in a movement that would eliminate both us and our civilization, a civilization that includes everything that the New Yorker is supposed to stand for. We can – and should – mourn the way that these individuals chose to waste their lives, but their deaths, like the deaths of, say, an SS trooper or a Gulag guard, are hardly a matter of regret.

Rather the reverse, I would think.

The latest attempts to reform Britain’s ‘Senate’, the House of Lords, took place in the early years of the Blair government with significant changes in the membership of that supposedly august body. The hereditary component was greatly reduced, leaving effective control with the so-called ‘life peers’, a motley collection of the (supposedly) good and the great appointed to the House by successive governments. This change was always seen as a first step in the modernization process – the next step was, allegedly, to try and make the House of Lords rather more democratic. Prime Minister Blair, who always rather liked the idea of packing the place with ‘Tony’s cronies’, was never quite so sure.

And, nor it seems, are Britain’s dim Tories. In a number of votes last week, they showed once again that they are incapable of embracing either good sense or popular policies. More Conservative MPs voted for Blair’s preferred option of an all-appointed Lords than opted for their own leader’s proposal - an all-elected Lords.

Losers.

In the Islam means Peace argument:

SAN`A, Yemen (AP) _ A Yemeni man irritated by noisy nut sellers outside his house threw an explosive device at them Friday, seriously injuring four people, security officials said.

The blast rocked a crowded market place in downtown San`a, located near the headquarters of the country's intelligence services.

Security officials speaking on condition of anonymity said the man who threw the bomb was arrested shortly after the blast.

The officials said the man became irritated by the noise being made by people hawking nuts outside his home. The market area was particularly busy ahead of an Islamic holiday period.

The Attorney General announced the security alert? Um what's the Director of Homeland Security for if not to make announcements about homeland security? Just a question.

When I briefly lived in Prague, I heard sentiments like this all the time:

Your pointing out the view from Kosovo reminds me of why my East-bloc-born wife insisted our son be named Ronald when he was born last year. When she was a girl, she remembers her grandfather listening to VOA secretly and she wasn't allowed to tell anyone at about it. She remembers her fathers secret recordings of American jazz, and his greatest prize was a bootleg copy of jimmy hendrix' "star-spangled banner'. She remembers the embers of hope that sparked when Mr. Reagan denounced the Evil Empire, hope that America was aware of their misery and that through this their liberation would come. I have met many people from E. Eur and this story is common, if seldom reported. And none of the people I have met ever said they dreamed liberation would come from France or Germany.

Unlike, say, France some countries are grateful to their liberator. (Found at OpinionJournal)

Hans Blix, the chief UN inspector, appeared flummoxed when questioned about the case this week but said that he would consider raising it in his talks tomorrow in Baghdad....He added that Iraqi scientists could find “more elegant ways” of approaching UN inspectors.

Great, Kathryn. I'm upstairs just now, unable to get to sleep, thinking about Derb's essay. I come downstairs to get a glass of water, log on for a sec to check The Corner -- and ba-da-bing, the FBI is telling us all to worry a whole damn lot.

You know what I thought was so effective about Derb's piece? It was the scariest doomsday scenario essay I've read that didn't require the reader to believe that any of these dire things going on in the world were part of some divine chastisement, or scheme set out in the book of Revelation. It was an entirely secular case for apocalypse now. And thus more chilling, at least to me. One doesn't have to believe in an eschatological vision to recognize, as Derb does, that the world might or might not be ending, but a world certainly is.

I had lunch with an NYPD friend last week. He said to me that he was at a loss to explain why terrorists haven't gotten away with anything else here since 9/11. So many of us get through the day depending on dumb luck and thoughtlessness. I suppose if we really stopped to think about what could happen, we'd never leave the house -- or we'd head for the hills.

Well, that does it. I'm up for the night. Hell, I might as well see if there's a "Jerry Springer" re-run on now...

If you're wondering why I've been a bit absent from the Corner the last couple days it's because I've been getting a couple other things done. I will have a piece in the Wall Street Journal tomorrow on shuttle coverage and a piece in another newspaper next week on the....the French! It was supposed to be for this Sunday but is being held. I'll let ya know for sure when I do. I will have a G-File tomorrow unless my lovely bride's due date comes true and Goldberg the Next Generation arrives tomorrow.

One thing Colin Powell said yesterday, when listing the Iraqi WMDs, might have escaped your notice, but I can't help thinking about it this morning. He spoke of what we know about Iraqi UAV's, small robot drone aircraft. Powell says we know Iraq has tested models that have a range of 500 km (roughly 300 miles). The secretary also said they can be modified to carry biological or chemical agents, and would be devastating to the United States and other countries far away from Iraq if they were transported.

Think about that: the Iraqis could quietly park boats big enough to launch these small planes from in international waters anywhere off the U.S. coast, and launch a swarm of these things against our cities. Little robot planes, on kamikaze missions to spray botulinum over New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Miami, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle... . We'd never see it coming.

I have to say the email from my
syndicated column on animal rights has elicited some fascinating email. Some are fascinating for their thoughtfulness, some for their asininity. The column is basically a teaser for my NRODT piece about going vegan which, if you stopped eating lead paint chips and subscribed to NR, you should have read by now. I didn't have room in my mag piece to get into my thoughts on Matthew Scully's Dominion so I went into it a bit in the syndicated column. Basically I found Scully's book to be outstanding though not fully persuasive. He certainly managed to change the terms of the debate on the right -- by jettisoning the buffoonish arguments over "animal rights" and making the issue about human compassion.

Anyway, what's interesting about the email is that it confirms a point I made in both the column and the magazine article, one which highlights a problem with Scully's analysis. Meat-eaters take food just as seriously as vegans, it's just that they imbue their food with different meaning.

All of your points are well-taken. I have only one objection. Never, ever, ever take Mary McGrory seriously. It can cause dizziness, nausea and blurred vision. Still, if I were a smart Iraqi intelligence guy, I would take her column seriously for one reason. She is a canary in the coal of mine of liberal obstructionism. When McGrory -- for all of the shabby bad faith reasons you list -- gets on the war bandwagon, it's time to get your family out of Baghdad and into a Paris hotel as quickly as possible.

This is probably a bad idea, but wouldn't it have been nice if Powell had said something in his prepared remarks about how the other memebers of the Security Council have "prepared responses." I mean the French and the Chinese chimed in without making any reference to the substance of Powell's comments. If he'd said something like "I know my colleagues here cannot respond intelligently about the evidence I've provided here without consulting their governments..." it would have made their "responses" look absurd.

I know it could have backfired by forcing those governments to lock into the positions articulated in those "responses" but it would have been fun nonetheless.

Here’s more on the latest ten European countries, this time all from the former Communist bloc, to distance themselves from France and Germany. As they explain:

"Our countries understand the dangers posed by tyranny and the special responsibility of democracies to defend our shared values.”

How strange that Germany, in particular, should appear to have forgotten that lesson.

Want to know why the International Criminal ‘Court’ is such a bad idea? Well, for reasons like this.

And this, by the way, is how the court’s ‘judges’ are being selected. Connoisseurs of such matters will note that this whole process has, apparently, been heavily influenced by ‘non-governmental organizations’.

Who elected them?

Before I forget in this post-Powell gullywasher of blogging, I want to say, Kathryn, that the Vatican document is better than I expected, given the statement that Archbishop Fitzgerald gave to the magazine Inside the Vatican, about the thing:

"There is no condemnation here," said Archbishop Michael L. Fitzgerald, President of the Council for Inter-religious Dialogue. "This is a study and we hope to have some feedback. This is not definitive document."

Drudge got a peek at the German papers.

I thought it was a masterful presentation. I think Powell could have been a bit more dramatic in his style. He sometimes seemed to be racing through all of the substance. Still, the substance was very impressive. Beyond all of the obvious points about the power of his argument, I thought the impression of his argument may have been more important and influential. When you watch the Secretary of State run through the phone intercepts, the satellite photos etc. you get the sense that the United States is one serious country. We take our work seriously and we know what we're talking about. The look on the Pakistani ambassador's face seemed to say, "Dang! I wonder if their satellites have the goods on us too?"

The pose from the French -- and it has been a pose -- has been struck to suggest that the United States is a foolhardy cowboy which doesn't have the intellectual heft to conduct serious diplomacy. I think that general myth was deeply punctured by Powell's presentation. You simply couldn't watch that and think America's going off half-cocked to war in order to bolster Bush's poll ratings etc.

There can be no doubt that Iraq is very close to having a nuclear bomb, and has been trying very hard to cross the nuclear line. The missiles they are developing today, Powell just showed, can deliver nuclear warheads as far as Cairo and Ankara -- and even into the southernmost parts of the former Soviet Union. Do the French, the Russians, and the Germans, to say nothing of the Arab/Islamic governments whose people would actually be threatened with mass death, really want to permit a Kim Jong-Il in the Middle East.

Powell also just said that Iraq has been modifying drone aircraft to fly, unmanned, for hundreds of kilometers to deliver biological weapons.

Here's part of that audio excerpt, between two Republican Guard officers:

1st Officer: "Remove."
2nd Officer: "Remove."
1st: "The expression."
2nd: "The expression, I got it."
1st: "Nerve agents."
2nd: "Nerve agents."
1st: "Wherever it comes up."
2nd: "Wherever it comes up."
1st: "In the wireless instructions."
2nd: "In the instructions."
1st: "Wireless."
2nd: "Wireless."

Translation: Quit talking about the nerve agents that we have, because they're listening.

Powell also said defectors have said Saddam is doing chemical weapons experiments on death-row prisoners.

My former landlord Eric Alterman has a piece/advertorial up on NRO today in our new regular debate feature. The subject is media bias and Alterman manages to cram a lot of condescension into a mere 500 words (note how many times he uses the word "smart"). A case in point, he offers this gratuitous swipe:

Here's how I put it in the book: (And for you Goldberg/Coulter fans, those little numbers are called "footnotes." They allow other people to check your work.)

I thought he meant me and posted a response earlier this morning. We Goldbergs may not all look alike, but when I see the name on my own site I sometimes get confused. Anyway, it was quickly pointed out to me that Alterman must mean Bernard Goldberg, author of Bias. And I unthinkingly erased the entry. I probably should have left it up. Good blogger form requires us to leave our mistakes up so we can atone for them for all eternity. Anyway, I acted too quickly and I still think the jibe is a dumb one. As I understand it, Coulter's book has plenty of footnotes. And besides, with condescension like Alterman's, less is more (note how many times he uses the word "smart."). Still, my apologies if you saw the first post and then saw it disappear. I'm not trying to hide anything.

For literally more than two decades my dad has been trying to get me to read The Intelligent American's Guide to Europe by Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (a former NR-nik). I just never got around to it. Last Thanksgiving he brought it down and presse