In between dodging indictments, Jacques Chirac has made great play of attacking George W. Bush for his supposed arrogance, unilateralism and all-round nastiness. Well, let's take a look at how Chirac has behaved in pushing the candidacy of slimy Guy Verhofstadt for the presidency of the EU bureaucracy. We needn’t waste too much time discussing Verhofstadt himself. He’s the Belgian prime minister, a job roughly on a par with being emperor of Wyoming. Talentless, sleazy and vain, he’s just the latest nonentity to crawl out of the cesspit that makes up that unfortunate country's political establishment. But Chirac wanted him installed as the EU’s top bureaucrat, and what Chirac wants, Chirac often gets, and if he doesn't...

Let the Independent take up the story:

“Another source said of the French President's stance: "It had overtones of Chirac's performance when he told the new countries of eastern Europe to shut up over Iraq. He was trying to bully them into dropping their positions. He was accusing small countries that didn't declare their support for Verhofstadt of moral cowardice."

Or the Daily Telegraph

“Mr Chirac said it would be better if the EU executive were headed by someone from a country with long experience of the EU and which was a member of all its activities, including the single currency and the Schengen open-border agreement. That ruled out contenders from Britain, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden and all 10 new eastern European member states - most notably Chris Patten, one of Britain's EU commissioners, who had won last-minute backing from the centre-Right European People's Party, the biggest group in the European Parliament.”

None of my comments on this issue, of course, should be taken as derogating from my support of the Barnier! campaign for the Commission presidency. Mysteriously, this latter-day Richelieu, this Mazarin, this Talleyrand, was omitted from the Independent’s roll-call of candidates. Just for a moment, why not admit it, I was tempted away from the Barnier! camp by the splendid credentials of Portugal’s Antonio Vitorino (“a Socialist, he is little known outside Brussels and his home country”), but then sanity reasserted itself….

Barnier! Barnier!

However noble in inspiration, some of the foreign policy dreams we have seen touted in recent years are just that, dreams, but ‘realism’ should never be used to kick in the teeth of the defenseless. This comes from an intriguing column by David Brooks:

“Sometimes in the unscripted moments of a campaign, when the handlers are away, a candidate shows his true nature. Earlier this month, Andres Oppenheimer of The Miami Herald asked John Kerry what he thought of something called the Varela Project. Kerry said it was "counterproductive." It's necessary to try other approaches, he added.

“The Varela Project happens to be one of the most inspiring democracy movements in the world today. It is being led by a Cuban dissident named Oswaldo Payá, who has spent his life trying to topple Castro's regime. Payá realized early on that the dictatorship would never be overthrown by a direct Bay of Pigs-style military assault, but it could be undermined by a peaceful grass-roots movement of Christian democrats, modeling themselves on Martin Luther King Jr.”

Even if Kerry were right about the Varela project (I don’t think he is, but that’s a legitimate debate), why say what he said aloud?

On the EU ‘constitution’s’ ratification process (from the Telegraph):

“If a single country fails to ratify the treaty it is legally - though not politically - null and void. In reality, a "Petit Non" by a small country is not the same as a "Grand Non" by one of the big players.”

From Animal Farm:

"All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others."

From the Daily Telegraph today:

"We must take the constitution seriously. Mr Blair has made perhaps the most serious blunder of his premiership by signing it. He should have rejected this mind-numbing, 260-page document on principle. It is the capstone of a federal state, and gives the EU a foreign minister, a criminal code, a European prosecutor and a police force. We face a net loss of vetoes in about 40 areas and the constitution sets in stone an outdated, over-regulated economic model just at the moment that it is failing."

Idiot.

James Taranto on the NRA’s new radio station:

"In a direct challenge to federal limits on political advocacy, the National Rifle Association plans to begin broadcasting a daily radio program on Thursday to provide news and pro-gun commentary to 400,000 listeners," the New York Times reports.”

”In a direct challenge to federal limits on political advocacy, the New York Times Co. plans to continue publishing a daily newspaper to provide news and antigun commentary to 1.1 million readers.”

With the EU Constitution done for now, discussion now shifts to a successor to Prodi as president of the EU Commission. Prodi is as venal as he is ineffective and was thus perfect in the job. Where to look now? Well, here’s the Guardian’s take:

”Neither leader made much attempt to deny the continued deadlock over the choice of a new president for the Brussels commission - with Mr Blair leading a six-nation bloc against the French-backed Belgian candidate and Mr Chirac giving the thumbs down to Britain's Chris Patten. The prime minister said his rejection of the Belgian premier and anti-American federalist, Guy Verhofstadt, meant "no disrespect". Mr Chirac is now promoting Michel Barnier, the lacklustre French foreign minister, against the Portuguese prime minister, Jose Manuel Durao Baroso.”

Barnier sounds perfect. Barnier! Barnier! Barnier!

I’m still getting angry e-mails from readers outraged, outraged, by my remarks on the pronunciation of Cervantes’ epic. That doesn’t change the fact that ‘Don Kwixott’ is how it used to be pronounced (in England). Yup, that’s how it was. Live with it. No comments, interestingly, from these folks so far on that rather awkward ‘quixotic’. Or should that be Keeyotic?

Whilst on this topic, however, lets take a look at the Irish word for ‘prime minister’, taoiseach. It’s a perfectly good word, even a splendid word, but it’s an Irish language word, not an English one. For some reason, probably to do with some vague blend of political correctness and guilt, the British press (particularly its more liberal sections) regularly describe the good Mr. Ahern as ‘Taoiseach’ rather than Prime Minister. That’s odd. The only precedents I can think of for this sort of treatment were Mussolini, regularly described as Duce, and old Adolf, the Fuhrer, and neither of these precedents is exactly, well, flattering.

Leung, the tour guide at Harvey Mudd, said he wanted his parents with him when he was a high schooler visiting colleges "because I wanted them to be okay with my coming to a college that they knew very little about . . . and I wanted to see their reactions during the tour." But for many families, he said, tours without parents would work well because students would be more apt to ask about issues of concern to them, like the social scene, roommates, parties and dating.

BBC, October 28th, 2002:

"Valery Giscard d'Estaing has been heading a 105-member convention aimed at simplifying EU treaties, putting them into a language everyone can understand and bringing the organisation closer to citizens. "

BBC, June 18th, 2004:

"The constitution probably faces a bigger battle to get ratified than it did to get agreed. One of its major problems is that it is so complex that it is completely inaccessible to most EU citizens. "

I have an idea about the torture tapes shown at the AEI the other day.

Just shut up about them because you're making your emotional response to them the issue, not the tapes themselves.

You (NRO) give a general link to AEI which is for all intents and purposes worthless because the site is so big and the tapes apparently so deeply buried that finding them appears to be well nigh impossible.

So either give us a direct link or just drop the matter altogether.

I'm a big boy and perfectly capable of deciding for myself.

What I'm not is interested in is your stream-of-consiousness keening over the horror… the horror of it all.

"This act of revenge is to heal the hearts of believers in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula," the statement said.

"This is God's voice rising in anger... at the treatment of Muslims in Abu Ghraib, al-Hair (prison), Guantanamo, Ruwais (Saudi prison) and others," it added, referring to U.S. military prisons in Abu Ghraib, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Johnson was an employee of defense contractor Lockheed Martin, which manufactures U.S. helicopter gunships.

The statement said al Qaeda had killed him because of "what Muslims have suffered from American Apache planes and their rockets."

Tony Blair, Warsaw, October 6th, 2000:

"It is perhaps easier for the British than for others to recognise that a constitutional debate must not necessarily end with a single, legally binding document called a Constitution for an entity as dynamic as the EU. What I think is both desirable and realistic is to draw up a statement of the principles according to which we should decide what is best done at the European level and what should be done at the national level, a kind of charter of competences. This would allow countries too, to define clearly what is then done at a regional level. This Statement of Principles would be a political, not a legal document. It could therefore be much simpler and more accessible to Europe’s citizens."

Via the bloggers over at EU Referendum who note that the text of this speech is "strangely, no longer available on the No, 10 Downing Street web site."

I wonder why that could be.

There are times when the best response, perhaps the only response, to the hard blows of existence is to embrace each lump as a badge honoring the determined striving that produced it. In 1918, Teddy Roosevelt’s son Quentin (who had left Harvard during his sophomore year to serve in World War I) was shot out of the sky in one of aerial warfare’s early dogfights. German propagandists took photos of his maimed body amidst his plane’s wreckage and, hoping to dampen American morale, sent one to Mrs. Roosevelt. Rather than let herself be cowed, however, she insisted that the picture be framed and displayed over a mantelpiece, a symbol of her family’s sturdiness and their pride in sacrifice for a high cause.

As I traveled across Iraq with our soldiers, I thought of this incident. What Edith Roosevelt did was both a very hard and a very soft thing. She pushed aside her own grief and expressed admiration and undying love for her son by celebrating his bravery--and by refusing to abandon his fight.

Invective to follow.

But before that, it's worth noting that the Treaty has not yet been "adopted", but, hey, I've long since given up hopes of any accuracy from Reuters. Adoption depends on ratification at the national level, and that is where things will get interesting. In the UK, Tony Blair's task will be to persuade a skeptical British public that the white flag he has just waved is in fact tinted a reassuring shade of gray.That won't be easy. The historically-minded, meanwhile, will note that today is the anniversary of the victory at Waterloo. The Iron Duke, one imagines, would not be impressed by the way this June 18th has turned out.

I want to express my deepest condolences to the family of Paul Johnson. We send our prayers and sympathies to them during this very troubling time.

The murder of Paul shows the evil nature of the enemy we face. These are barbaric people. There's no justification whatsoever for his murder, and yet they killed him in cold blood. And it should remind us that we must pursue these people, and bring them to justice before they hurt other Americans. See, they're trying to intimidate America. They're trying to shake our will; they're trying to get us to retreat from the world. America will not retreat. America will not be intimidated by these kinds of extremist thugs.

May God bless Paul Johnson. Thank you.

Q On Tuesday, the American Enterprise Institute held a media event where a video of Saddam's atrocities was shown. The tape showed fingers being cut off, tongues being cut out, and beheadings. None of the networks showed the tape. And few media outlets even mentioned it. Did anyone in this administration ask that these images not be showed to the American people?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, Jeff. But it is important to remind people of the atrocities that Saddam Hussein's regime committed. Saddam Hussein was a brutal oppressive dictator who carried out atrocities over a period of years against his own people and against his neighbors. And it's important that the public --

Q Well, how do you explain a virtual media blackout on these horrendous acts, when every single day there are pictures about what American soldiers have done in Iraq when these things are far worse? How is there any explanation for that? Is there somebody in the administration that doesn't want the American people to see that?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think you're going to see the Iraqi people hold Saddam Hussein accountable for the atrocities that he committed. We will be turning him over to the Iraqi people to face a tribunal by the Iraqis for the atrocities that you mentioned. And I don't think the Iraqi people will ever let people forget those atrocities. It's important to remember that this was a regime that had mass graves, torture rooms, and rape rooms, and engaged in the kinds of atrocities that no one should stand for.

Q There is visual physical evidence out there. Why is not being put out there for Americans to see and make their own judgment against?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, I think I've expressed it from our standpoint. If you're talking about it from the media standpoint, I'll leave it to the media to address those issues?

"Since the most important element of a night out in Britiain - an overwhelming sense of impending violence - is already present, all that is needed is the stench of urine and vomit in the street and it'll feel just like Blighty."

Ouch.

Well said, Andy. Now, who was it that signed that disgraceful piece of legislation into law?

Conservative House Members Back Colleagues with Resources

Washington, DC -- Mainstream conservative House members, led by Congressman Pat Toomey, R-Pa., today announced that they have contributed significant resources to fellow Republican Study Committee members and former members who are running for the U.S. Senate.

To date, House conservatives have contributed $88,500 from their re-election committees and their political action committees to four mainstream Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate. They also have commitments that will put them over the $100,000 mark. The candidates for U.S. Senate who will receive the funds are Reps. Jim DeMint, R-SC and David Vitter, R-LA. and former Reps. Tom Coburn, R-OK, and Bob Schaffer, R-CO.

Toomey flanked by several members of the RSC stated, “We all came to Congress, in part because we believe in the mainstream, conservative ideas at the heart of the Republican Party. We are all part of a group -- the RSC -- that exists to help advance these principles within the Republican Conference and within the House. We’ve enjoyed considerable success in moving this agenda forward. However, all too often our momentum is stymied by the Senate.”

Toomey continued, “That is why we decided it was time for us to help several candidates for the Senate, all of whom, have proven their commitment and leadership on Republican principles and are currently, or were recently members of the RSC. To date, we have collected, in-hand $88,500 for these 4 great candidates. All of these funds have come from our own campaign committees or our PACs and we hope to continue to raise more to assist these folks in becoming U.S. Senators.”

All over the wires this morning:

ASTANA, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, in comments sure to help President Bush, declared Friday that Russia knew Iraq's Saddam Hussein had planned terror attacks on U.S. soil and had warned Washington.

Putin said Russian intelligence had been told on several occasions that Saddam's special forces were preparing to attack U.S. targets inside and outside the United States.

"After the events of September 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, Russian special services several times received information that the official services of the Saddam regime were preparing 'terrorist acts' on the United States and beyond its borders," he told reporters.

"This information was passed on to our American colleagues," he said. He added, however, that Russian intelligence had no proof that Saddam's agents had been involved in any particular attack.

Now I don't trust Putin in the slightest. But if he's lying that's interesting and if he's telling the truth, that's interesting.

From a reader:

Seems to me that Congressional Democrats are more willing to give Saddam the benefit of the doubt over his contacts with Al Qaeda than they are to give Cheney with his post-election contacts with Halliburton.

You can download the whole EU study mentioned in the Journal here. Here's the summary:

If the European Union were a state in the USA it would belong to the poorest group of states. France, Italy, Great Britain and Germany have lower GDP per capita than all but four of the states in the United States. In fact, GDP per capita is lower in the vast majority of the EU-countries (EU 15) than in most of the individual American states. This puts Europeans at a level of prosperity on par with states such as Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia. Only the miniscule country of Luxembourg has higher per capita GDP than the average state in the USA. The results of the new study represent a grave critique of European economic policy.

Stark differences become apparent when comparing official economic statistics. Europe lags behind the USA when comparing GDP per capita and GDP growth rates. The current economic debate among EU leaders lacks an understanding of the gravity of the situation in many European countries. Structural reforms of the European economy as well as far reaching welfare reforms are well overdue. The Lisbon process lacks true impetus, nor is it sufficient to improve the economic prospects of the EU.

Two good ones today. Reg Req'd. The first is on the 9/11 Commish. The second on the ever-declining (in relative terms) wealth of Europe. I'll post a chunk of that one because it's harder to get to on the site:

The growing split between the U.S. and Europe has been much in the news, mostly on foreign policy. But less well understood is the gap in economic growth and standards of living. Now comes a European report that puts the American advantage in surprisingly stark relief.

The study, "The EU vs. USA," was done by a pair of economists -- Fredrik Bergstrom and Robert Gidehag -- for the Swedish think tank Timbro. It found that if Europe were part of the U.S., only tiny Luxembourg could rival the richest of the 50 American states in gross domestic product per capita. Most European countries would rank below the U.S. average, as the nearby chart shows.

The authors admit that man doesn't live by GDP alone, and that this measure misses output in the "black" economy, which is significant in Europe's high-tax states. GDP also overlooks "the value of leisure or a good environment" or the way prosperity is spread across a society.

But a rising tide still lifts all boats, and U.S. GDP per capita was a whopping 32% higher than the EU average in 2000, and the gap hasn't closed since. It is so wide that if the U.S. economy had frozen in place at 2000 levels while Europe grew, the Continent would still require years to catch up. Ireland, which has lower tax burdens and fewer regulations than the rest of the EU, would be the first but only by 2005. Switzerland, not a member of the EU, and Britain would get there by 2010. But Germany and Spain would need until 2015, while Italy, Sweden and Portugal would have to wait until 2022.

Higher GDP per capita allows the average American to spend about $9,700 more on consumption every year than the average European. So Yanks have by far more cars, TVs, computers and other modern goods. "Most Americans have a standard of living which the majority of Europeans will never come anywhere near," the Swedish study says.

There's more, though I'm a bit more skeptical about the numbers in the part on inequality.

The good news: Chicago Tribune (Reg. Req'd) names National Review one of the 50 Best Magazines!

The bad news: Here's what they have to say: "National Review. This right-wing glossy offers smart, certain ideology for these uncertain times. More serious than Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh and less Air Force One-obsessed than the Weekly Standard, the middlebrow NR even manages to squeeze the pretentious arts through its conservative wringer."

Apropos of Rich's post about the Navy, I found this email particularly interesting:

I’ve been an Army interrogator since 1990, and just finished up a hitch as an interrogation instructor and interrogation training developer. I think that was a good piece (Barbarians at the Geneva Gates), but I think there are a couple points people never seem to mention.

But first let me say, Abu Ghraib was idiotic and it wasn’t interrogation or interrogators.

The first thing is that these “harsh” techniques that make the press quite often are not the standard procedure. The US Army has only about 500 interrogators, worldwide, that’s very thin. Even if we wanted to, we really don’t have time to mess with prisoners. The thing that makes an interrogator happy is a prisoner that talks immediately and not with all the psychological ruses that we get trained to use. Thankfully, over 90% of the prisoners talk. We will not even use harsher techniques every time for the truly hardcore prisoners – it really depends on the potential value of the information that the prisoner may have. If he’s belligerent, but useless, we essentially give him the minimum demanded by Geneva and essentially ignore him. Something that bothers me about all this is that all of the techniques adopted by FM34-52 have survived legal review for decades (and DOD lawyers are not stupid – they have a focus towards a war effort where the objective is killing the enemy, as opposed to US civil/criminal lawyers) – all of a sudden all of this stuff is illegal? I am a GW1 vet, with 3,000 interrogations under my belt, nothing was off limits and suddenly we are all wrong?

(FYI, in Gulf War 1 – GW1, we had female MPs and female interrogators – and we strip searched Iraqi soldiers by the battalion…no outcry there)

The second thing which concerns me the most is that now that we’ve had the congressional debates, the WSJ articles and all of the hand wringing, Gen. Sanchez has banned 9 more techniques overseas – and this isn’t the crazy stuff you’ve heard of, like simulated drowning, which we don’t teach – including sleep deprivation, hooding (which is as much a safety technique for us and the prisoner as an interrogation preparation technique). I figure than any more DOD knee jerking and we’ll be reduced to singing “Kumbayah” to guys that we’ve caught either planning to kill Americans or who have killed Americans.

Some parting shots.

Interrogation has saved thousands of US and US military lives – especially in Afghanistan with that thug Gulbudin Hekmatyr, with his 50,000 soldiers (sic), who has publicly stated that his goal is the overthrow of the Karzai Gov’t and the expulsion of all US forces – who daily plots ambushes, road side bombs, and sniper attacks against US personnel. It was two interrogators that got the information that lead to the capture of Saddam. People in my office in 1999 (can’t say where) helped wrap up the millennium plot. Despite the bombings you see regularly in Iraq, interrogations are foiling on a daily basis plans to kill Americans (big country, unfortunately you can’t interrogate everybody).

If you go back a couple years, you’ll find out that there was a document published in the press called the “al Qaida Training Manual” – still available online – its states pretty plainly that the objective of taking prisoners (US, Western, etc) is for the purpose of public execution. No concerns for Geneva of course – Biden can whine all he wants about treaties that protect US personnel, but I can tell you, that proper treatment of US personnel has never been part of the Islamist game plan.

Last shot. I think what somebody really needs to do is to have an educated and rational debate on interrogation techniques. Really, is sleep deprivation that bad? CNN was whining about prisoners being kept up 20 hours a day. So? I do that all the time just as an instructor with papers to grade. Stress positions? The way that we (us and NATO interrogators) train on those during NATO exercises (like ILRPS) is to rotate the prisoners (NATO SF, infantry, etc) out of the position every 15 minutes (into another one). I’ve been in these stress positions and would describe them as aggravating for the most part. If I explained them to you, you wouldn’t be all that impressed – its not torture. Taking away the Koran from belligerent prisoners?

Anyway, thanks for the article, it seemed pretty objective.

[Name withheld]

PS – I’m still active duty, please do not repeat my name anywhere, the military has become pretty hostile with people talking to the press.

In 1983, I was a young man without political interests until my experience in Grenada made me a conservative, and a Reagan devotee. We were welcomed as liberators. I will never forget the gratitude I received from the people of Grenada. When I cam home, and to this day, the American news media refer to Operation Urgent Fury as the “Invasion of Grenada.” Yet, in Grenada, October 23rd is celebrated as “Thanksgiving Day.”

From a reader:

Greetings from a long-time reader of both you and Andrew Sullivan,

I would think that of all the faults that one might (fairly or otherwise) ascribe to Sullivan's writings, among the last would be coyness, indirection or other such subtleties that would make a reader have to parse his sentences carefully to get at his true meaning. I would argue that one of his best aspects as a writer is his remarkably honest and direct polemical style, which enables him to cut through a lot of bull. Then again, what's also his strength is also a very glaring fault at times, in that his rhetorical style leads him into excessive, hyperbolic statements that stretch his arguments at times to absurd levels.

Look for example at the post from today titled "What is Sexy?" where Sullivan turns what had been a fairly reflective and even innocuous discussion over at The Volokh Conspiracy into a tirade of generalizations against the habits of heterosexual men and especially women (not to mention homosexual women).

Look even more at "The Marriage Thing" post, where he claims you have insulted him by allegedly saying that his own writing for a gay magazine doesn't count as being real writing; in his words specifically, "if you write something for the gay press, you haven't really written it".

Look most of all at his attempt in his post "Over at Lucianne" to tie a few really repugnant statements made by some people over at Lucianne's website to broader conservatism (and of course to you and your mother as well).

These are all stretches of rhetoric in the extreme and are all various forms of logic fallacies. Now I think it is a little telling about you that you skipped over that "Marriage" post at first (but then you yourself have said that homosexual marriage isn't a big issue for you, so you are being consistent), but I'm not sure how he can make the leap he did from what you wrote in your initial post on the subject of the Advocate article.

Say what you will about the man, but the meaning behind what Sullivan writes is anything but unclear.

Dear Jonah, If you're serious about getting a raise, don't let Lowry find out that you can afford such luxuries as midday meals.

I just got back from lunch. Yes, yes, yes. I've seen that Andrew Sullivan has taken the time to criticize some postings at Mom's site. No, I don't know if this was intended as a sort of "your mother wears combat boots" jab but I kind of doubt it. I will say I don't agree with, like, or condone some of the things folks over there are saying and, I must say, it feels kind of nice to be in a position to tell mom I think she should clean up her room for a change. Then again, she stopped telling me to do that a long time ago and I'm sure she can defend herself is she decides it's even worth it without help from me.

But, I will say I've always treated Andrew and his arguments with respect and plan to keep doing that. So, if the point of cherry picking some off-color comments from a few LDotters is to make a guilt-by-association claim about where I'm coming from, I think it's a very lame effort and a form of argumentation that could be applied to thousands of sites on the web, left and right, without being particularly revealing or interesting.

Oh, one last thing. As for the social price Andrew has paid for his views compared to my own, I'm sure he's right. I'm just not sure what that has to do with anything I've said, done or believe.