Richard Clarke: what we should do to stop the next set of attacks

The New York Times > Opinion > Richard Clarke: Honorable Commission, Toothless Report

Americans owe the 9/11 commission a deep debt for its extensive exposition of the facts surrounding the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Yet, because the commission had a goal of creating a unanimous report from a bipartisan group, it softened the edges and left it to the public to draw many conclusions.

Among the obvious truths that were documented but unarticulated were the facts that the Bush administration did little on terrorism before 9/11 ...

So what now? News coverage of the commission's recommendations has focused on the organizational improvements: a new cabinet-level national intelligence director and a new National Counterterrorism Center to ensure that our 15 or so intelligence agencies play well together. Both are good ideas, but they are purely incremental. Had these changes been made six years ago, they would not have significantly altered the way we dealt with Al Qaeda; they certainly would not have prevented 9/11...

First, we need not only a more powerful person at the top of the intelligence community, but also more capable people throughout the agencies - especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. In other branches of the government, employees can and do join on as mid- and senior-level managers after beginning their careers and gaining experience elsewhere. But at the F.B.I. and C.I.A., the key posts are held almost exclusively by those who joined young and worked their way up. This has created uniformity, insularity, risk-aversion, torpidity and often mediocrity...

Second, in addition to separating the job of C.I.A. director from the overall head of American intelligence, we must also place the C.I.A.'s analysts in an agency that is independent from the one that collects the intelligence. This is the only way to avoid the "groupthink" that hampered the agency's ability to report accurately on Iraq. It is no accident that the only intelligence agency that got it right on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department - a small, elite group of analysts encouraged to be independent thinkers rather than spies or policy makers.

... Either the C.I.A. or the military must create a larger and more capable commando force for covert antiterrorism work, along with a network of agents and front companies working under "nonofficial cover'' - that is, without diplomatic protection - to support the commandos.

Even more important than any bureaucratic suggestions is the report's cogent discussion of who the enemy is and what strategies we need in the fight. The commission properly identified the threat not as terrorism (which is a tactic, not an enemy), but as Islamic jihadism, which must be defeated in a battle of ideas as well as in armed conflict.

We need to expose the Islamic world to values that are more attractive than those of the jihadists. This means aiding economic development and political openness in Muslim countries, and efforts to stabilize places like Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Restarting the Israel-Palestinian peace process is also vital.

Also, we can't do this alone. In addition to "hearts and minds" television and radio programming by the American government, we would be greatly helped by a pan-Islamic council of respected spiritual and secular leaders to coordinate (without United States involvement) the Islamic world's own ideological effort against the new Al Qaeda.

Unfortunately, because of America's low standing in the Islamic world [jf: One of GWB's gifts to America], we are now at a great disadvantage in the battle of ideas...

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The CIA and FBI would never hire me. If they did hire me, I'd last about 2 days.

Problem is, the fight against evil needs a few (maybe not a huge number!) of people like me. They need nerds intellectuals and geeks who question authority and established thinking; people who don't fit military and paramilitary structures. The Manhattan project and the WW II crypto projects had "my people" (ok, 10 times smarter than me); but we've been shut out of this effort. It doesn't help that most us think GWB is incompetent!

The FBI had people who spotted parts of the 9/11 story, but they were shut out and shutdown. They didn't fit the established culture.

Changing hiring practices is a necessary but not sufficient component of reforming our security apparatus. We need to change cultures as well as adding new capabilities to the best of the old.

Clarke's treatise reads very much like Kerry's foreign policy plans.

Enhanced luggage

alibi . may 20 - 26, 2004

Dateline: Canada—A routine test of airport security turned into a Marx Brothers routine after security officers mistakenly sent a passenger home with a suitcase full of TNT. The TNT was supposed to be planted in the bags of a Montreal security agent. Instead, it somehow ended up stuffed into the luggage of an unsuspecting overseas passenger who arrived at Pierre Elliot Trudeau International Airport last Friday. The unnamed passenger went to a friend's house where he found the explosives concealed in a jam jar and placed inside his suitcase. The man immediately called Quebec provincial police. The TNT, which officials say had no detonator attached, was meant as part of a weekly test for bomb-sniffing dogs at the airport. Ironically, the dogs failed to detect the explosives. The passenger and his baggage were able to pass though airport security unchecked. “Our investigation is going to reveal exactly what happened,” airport security spokesman Pierre Goupil told TV network TVA.

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About once a year or so we hear stories like this. Imagine if the explosives HAD been detected by security; this would have made international news. Since they weren't detected it's an obscure local story.

Faughnan defends Bush

The New York Times > Opinion > Maureen Dowd: Spinning Our Safety

He explained to the commissioners that he had stayed in his seat making little fish faces at second graders for seven minutes after learning about the second plane hitting the towers because, as the report says, 'The president felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening.'

What better way to track the terror in the Northeast skies than by reading 'My Pet Goat' in Sarasota?

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Ok, I've had enough. I've cracked. I have to defend GWB.

One of the few things GWB has done right (deciding to invade Afghanistan doesn't count because that was an inevitable act) was to sit calmly and continue reading to those school kids.

I've got to stop reading Maureen Dowd.

Terror and the fear of swarthy men

Telegraph | News: Was an al-Qaeda plot unfolding on Northwest Airlines flight 327?
By James Langton 7/25/04

As Annie Jacobsen boarded Northwest Airlines flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles, she was starting to feel sick with nerves.

... she was worrying about six Middle Eastern men waiting to board their flight, two of whom were carrying musical instrument cases, while the third was wearing an orthopaedic shoe. None was checked as he boarded the aeroplane.

... By the time the aircraft reached cruising altitude and the seatbelt lights had been switched off, one of the men, wearing a yellow T-shirt and carrying a bulging McDonald's bag, had already disappeared into the lavatory next to first class. When he reappeared, the bag was empty.

... Another man stood up. From an overhead locker, he removed a foot-long object wrapped in cloth, then walked to the back of the plane. Five others from the Middle Eastern party then began using the forward lavatory consecutively. Several others made for the rear bathroom.

... Before he could finish, the flight attendant pulled him aside. "In a quiet voice, she explained that they were all concerned about what was going on," Mrs Jacobsen says. "The captain was aware. The flight attendants were passing notes to each other. She said there were people on board 'higher up than you and me watching the men'


... With the "fasten seatbelts" lights on and the cabin crew strapped in their seats for landing, seven of the men stood up and made for the front and back lavatories. As they waited, speaking in Arabic, one pulled out his mobile telephone. None of the flight crew, Mrs Jacobsen was alarmed to note, intervened to stop the telephone call or to make the men sit down.

... Moments later, the last man came out of the bathroom. As he passed the man in the yellow T-shirt, Mrs Jacobsen saw him draw his finger across his throat and mouth the word "no".

... As the passengers walked into the terminal, Mrs Jacobsen saw men in dark suits gathering. Los Angeles Police Department agents rushed past them. Several other men from the aircraft, believed to be air marshals, pulled the group of 14 Arab men to one side.

... However, she did get a swift telephone call from the Federal Air Marshal Services. Under questioning, a spokesman revealed, the 14 men had said they were musicians travelling to a concert at a Californian desert casino. None showed up on the FBI's most wanted list and since their story checked out they were allowed to go. The band, the spokesman said, "gave their little performance in the casino ...

... Gary Boettcher, a member of the board of directors of the Allied Pilots Association, wrote to Mrs Jacobsen, saying that he and many fellow captains had witnessed similar practice runs. "I am a captain with a major airline," he said. "I was very involved with the Arming Pilots effort. Your reprint of this airborne event is not a singular nor isolated experience. The terrorists are probing us all the time."

Another pilot, Mark Bogosian, with American Airlines, said: "The incident you wrote about, and incidents like it, occur more than you like to think. It is a 'dirty little secret' that all of us, as crew members, have known about for quite some time."

... But what no one knew - not the frightened passengers or the apparently untroubled Syrian band - was that June 29 was far from an ordinary day. Only hours earlier, the Department of Homeland Security had issued an urgent alert at half a dozen airports for a group of six Pakistani men believed to be training for a terrorist attack in the US. Two of those airports were Detroit and Los Angeles.

... Two days after Mrs Jacobsen's trip, the US Transport and Security Administration ordered pilots to stop passengers from congregating around aircraft toilets and told flight crew to check bathrooms every two hours for suspicious packages. Six days after that, customs officers at Minneapolis arrested a Syrian who was carrying a suicide note and DVDs containing what has been described as "anti-American material".

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This is an incoherent article. It took some study to determine that the flight in question took place on 6/27/04. A few comments:

1. I fly a lot, almost weekly. I'm rarely searched. I don't think I look either innocent nor suspicious, so I suspect my search rate is about average. The Bush administration downsized the security force last year; they don't have the staff to search many people.

2. I'd be saddened and surprised if there really were a rule that no more than two men of ethnic arab appearance could be searched per flight. If that were so, a team would simply require that two decoys act so as to draw a search -- thereby ensuring others would not be searched.

3. Every time someone of a "suspicious" ethnicity and gender is searched, some blond white woman should be searched too. It's the only way to make the bitterness of what is effectively ethnic profiling even barely tolerable. Share the pain.

4. If this journalist thinks throwing out trash in the men's room is suspicious, she doesn't fly enough. Who wants to sit around with trash in one's cramped seat? In first class I'd hand it to an attendant, but in cargo class attendants can be hard to find.

5. It would be interesting to interview a few pilots and learn if this "probing" theory is plausible or paranoid.

I'd guess if there was anything going on, it was a group of Syrian musicians who were playing cruel games with the minds of anxious passengers. Not polite and not wise, but not illegal. Even, given the glares they doubtless receive, almost understandable ...

Anyone remember anthrax?

Our Forgotten Panic (washingtonpost.com)

My point is that we were panicked. Yet that panic never gets mentioned. Last month the New Republic published a 'special issue' in which a bevy of very good writers wondered whether they had been wrong to support the war in Iraq. Most of them admitted to having erred about this or that detail or in failing to appreciate how badly George Bush would administer the war and the occupation. But none confessed to being seized by the zeitgeist. I read the magazine cover to cover and unless I somehow missed it, the word anthrax never appeared. Imagine! Not once! Not a single one of these writers admitted to panicking over anthrax.

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I also remember smallpox. There was a lot of talk about smallpox before we invaded Iraq, and a lot of talk about "Dr. Germ", the evil Iraqi biologists. (Ever wonder where she is now?)

The Bush administration pushed for largescale smallpox immunizations, then scaled back to a smaller group. I thought they were right -- back then I had some trust in GWB. Once the invasion of Iraq began the smallpox threat apparently evaporated. Later we discovered that more Americans are immune to smallpox than we once thought -- so the need for immunization was less than we'd thought. But this was discovered after GWB had lost interest. It's almost as if the immunization program, which did injure some people, had served its true purpose.

Warren Buffett on the Stock Market: The best short summary on the market?

Fortune.com 2002 - Intro - Warren Buffett on the Stock Market

The thoughts that follow come from a second Buffett speech, given last July at the site of the first talk, Allen & Co.'s annual Sun Valley bash for corporate executives. There, the renowned stockpicker returned to the themes he'd discussed before, bringing new data and insights to the subject. Working with FORTUNE's Carol Loomis, Buffett distilled that speech into this essay, a fitting opening for this year's Investor's Guide. Here again is Mr. Buffett on the Stock Market.

Blodgett wrote a fascinating 3 part series for Slate recently. In it he references this piece, calling it the best written in recent times.

JBL - Home Audio - new TOUR travel speakers

JBL - Home Audio

These look very interesting! Compact indeed.

The official site: best guide to the race?

T D F - 2 0 0 4 : canal le Tour - OLN

It was a moment of encouragement for the German’s fans. Ullrich had put time into Armstrong. At last. But it wasn’t much – a minute was the maximum gain – and it didn’t cause any panic in the Postal camp.

“We weren’t very concerned,” said Armstrong. “The climb that he attacked on doesn’t really have a descent. I know it well; we raced a similar stage in the [Criterium] du Dauphine in June… had I been alone,” continued the stage winner, “it would have been a different story.

“But Ivan had some guys and so did I, so it was absolutely not a problem.” Armstrong was nonchalant about this sortie by the rider who is almost seven minutes behind on the general classification after 15 stage. And he can afford to be. Lance seems to have an answer to every move his rivals make. He knows what he wants and with the help of clever tactics, a cool head and phenomenal form The Boss is back in charge of the Tour de France.

Big days are yet to come but Lance continues to dictate the terms while most of his rivals either abandon or resort to seemingly senseless tactics. All but Basso and his CSC colleagues.

The elastic band which had kept Thomas Voeckler within touch with the overall lead for nine days finally snapped. It was only a matter of time before this happened and the French champion can be proud of what he’s done. He has risen from relative obscurity only a month ago and acquired enough anecdotes of new-found fame to last him the rest of his career. With the Tour now in the Alpes, Armstrong back in the yellow jersey, and his rivals slowly running out of opportunity there will be many who will remember this village high in the Isere department by another name. Villard-de-Lance is, after all, likely to be the place where the rider who will win an unprecedented sixth Tour title reclaimed the yellow jersey.

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This official tour site may have the best coverage of the race, better than the newspapers.

The strength of postal ... and CSC

BBC SPORT | Other Sport | Cycling | Armstrong rides into yellow

But Tuesday's stage was thrown into turmoil when Ullrich attacked up the first-category Colde l'Echarasson, at one stage pulling more than a minute clear of Armstrong.

The American refused to panic, though, and reeled Ullrich in with the help of his US Postal team and Basso's CSC riders.

The group were reduced to just four riders in the final sprint after the climb to Villard-de-Lans, with Armstrong edging out Basso, Ullrich in third and Andreas Kloden back in fourth.

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I wish I understood more of this. There appears to be a defacto alliance between Basso/CSC and Armstrong/Postal. Armstrong/Postal's calculated cool is fascinating.

Osama's candidate: the movie version

The New York Times > Opinion > Krugman: The Arabian Candidate

... The Arabian candidate wouldn't openly help terrorists. Instead, he would serve their cause while pretending to be their enemy.

After an attack, he would strike back at the terrorist base, a necessary action to preserve his image of toughness, but botch the follow-up, allowing the terrorist leaders to escape. Once the public's attention shifted, he would systematically squander the military victory: committing too few soldiers, reneging on promises of economic aid. Soon, warlords would once again rule most of the country, the heroin trade would be booming, and terrorist allies would make a comeback.

Meanwhile, he would lead America into a war against a country that posed no imminent threat. He would insinuate, without saying anything literally false, that it was somehow responsible for the terrorist attack. This unnecessary war would alienate our allies and tie down a large part of our military. At the same time, the Arabian candidate would neglect the pursuit of those who attacked us, and do nothing about regimes that really shelter anti-American terrorists and really are building nuclear weapons.

Again, he would take care to squander a military victory. The Arabian candidate and his co-conspirators would block all planning for the war's aftermath; they would arrange for our army to allow looters to destroy much of the country's infrastructure. Then they would disband the defeated regime's army, turning hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers into disgruntled potential insurgents.

After this it would be easy to sabotage the occupied country's reconstruction, simply by failing to spend aid funds or rein in cronyism and corruption. Power outages, overflowing sewage and unemployment would swell the ranks of our enemies.

Who knows? The Arabian candidate might even be able to deprive America of the moral high ground, no mean trick when our enemies are mass murderers, by creating a climate in which U.S. guards torture, humiliate and starve prisoners, most of them innocent or guilty of only petty crimes...

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Wicked! All this piece needs is the recent Doonesbury strip with Osama's Bush campaign ad. Every word is correct, GWB is the terrorist's unwitting ally.

The Economist's editorial this week is saying surprisingly similar things, though weakened by their desperate desire to find some face saving way to endorse Bush for the presidency. It's fun to watch the Economist writhe in pain; their editorial policy has been spectacularly craven over the past 6-8 years (since they went mainstream). They know that they'll lose a chunk of their readership when they endorse Bush; I'm looking forward to reading something else for a while.

Team Postal: a different view

Armstrong catches the Blue Train to Tour de France glory

Just before the final climb, his legs still whirring, Armstrong suddenly sat straight in his saddle, limbered up by twisting side-to-side, wiped his nose with his right hand and unzipped the top of his blue jersey. Let the carnage begin.

Led by Hincapie, the Postals stormed into the steep, 9.9-mile ascent like a typhoon. Behind, the trailing pack slowly disintegrated.

Jose Luis Rubiera, a powerful climber riding with his shirt open, took over when Hincapie was spent. Rivals gasped like fish out of water. Fewer than a dozen cyclists continued to cling to Armstrong's group.

And still the Postals had unused reserves. Sunglasses propped on his head, Portuguese mountain-tamer Jose Azevedo stepped in for Rubiera to perform the coup de grace with another burst of uphill pace. First to go: Jan Ullrich, the 1997 Tour champion who simply couldn't keep up.

When Azevedo peeled off with 5 miles still to climb, only two riders had survived: Armstrong and Italian Ivan Basso, who rode together through the massed crowds. Armstrong beat Basso with a sprint finish.

The stage standings read like a list of wounded. Ullrich, 2:42 back, his Tour all but done. Roberto Heras, who quit the Postals to try to beat Armstrong, 21:35 back. Mayo, 37:40 behind -- nearly 11 minutes slower even than Ekimov, Armstrong's trusted Russian sidekick still going strong at age 38.

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Most of the Tour coverage reads like plagiarism run amok. John Leicester's article is different. It really gives some insight into the race.

I know nothing of the Tour, so I can't comment on whether Armstrong has really won. It seems as though there are many ways to lose the Tour, and few ways to win. It is incredible, however, to read of his team -- including Ekimov "the ancient".

The 9/11 commission report: the interesting parts and the assault on Iran

9/11 Panel Calls for Major Changes (washingtonpost.com)

The commission staff has already absolved Saudi Arabia's government of direct support for al Qaeda and debunked widespread reports that Osama bin Laden inherited $300 million. (He received a $1 million annual allowance for about two decades, the commission found.) Panel members also have knocked down questions raised by last year's congressional investigation into Sept. 11 intelligence failures involving possible help for the hijackers by the Saudi Embassy in Washington....

... The report will expand on the commission's earlier findings that al Qaeda's contacts with Iran were far more advanced than previously believed, and that the two may have developed a relationship of convenience that included cooperation in attacks such as the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. Time magazine reported that the commission has found that eight to 10 of the Sept. 11 hijackers may have passed through Iran before joining the hijacking plot.

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I suspect most of the interesting parts of the report aren't going to get much press attention. If not for the spur of the professional journalist bloggers (eg. not hobbyists like myself) I think journalism would have died in the US last year.

On a related tack, a plot of co-occurences of "Iran", "al Qaeda" and "9/11" would show a steep rise in the past few months. It looks like Bush is preparing to go after Iran next. Of course since he has no credibility left outside of a core group of supporters, the question of Iran's true guilt or innocence is almost irrelevant. Bush's deception and incompetence has made it impossible for him to make any kind of case at all.

Korean: Meat Pancakes (Gogi-Jun)

New York Times Recipe: Meat Pancakes (Gogi-Jun)

Time: 45 minutes

1 pound firm tofu
1 pound ground beef
10 scallions, trimmed and minced
2 long hot red chili peppers, or about 1 teaspoon crushed red chili flakes
1 teaspoon black pepper
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Large pinch salt
2 tablespoons minced chives
2 eggs
Corn oil or other neutral oil as needed
1 cup poo-chim karo (vegetable pancake mix, available at Korean markets) or Wondra or other fine flour.

1. Put the tofu in a fine kitchen towel, and wring as much water as possible out of it. Combine it in a bowl with the next 9 ingredients (through the chives). Squeeze the mixture with your hands for a minute or two, until it is very fine and well combined. Adjust seasoning as necessary; the mixture should be well seasoned but not very hot.

I'm not as extreme as I thought I was

The Independent Weekly: With trembling fingers

I thought I was reasonably extreme in my extraordinarily low opinion of our President, but by comparison to Hal Crowther I'm quite restrained. Quoting Goering is hitting pretty low -- though the quote is rather fitting.

... But the Chinese aren't coming to save us. Nothing and no one can stop these people except you and me, and the other 100 million or so American citizens who may vote in the November election. This isn't your conventional election, the usual dim-witted, media-managed Mister America contest where candidates vie for charm and style points and hire image coaches to help them act more confident and presidential. This is a referendum on what is arguably the most dismal performance by any incumbent president--and inarguably the biggest mistake. This is a referendum on George W. Bush, arguably the worst thing that has happened to the United States of America since the invention of the cathode ray tube.

One problem with this referendum is that the case against George Bush is much too strong. Just to spell it out is to sound like a bitter partisan. I sit here on the 67th birthday of Saddam Hussein facing a haystack of incriminating evidence that comes almost to my armpit. What matters most, what signifies? Journalists used to look for the smoking gun, but this time we have the cannons of Waterloo, we have Gettysburg and Sevastopol, we have enough gun smoke to cause asthma in heaven. I'm overwhelmed. Maybe I should light a match to this mountain of paper and immolate myself. On the near side of my haystack, among hundreds of quotes circled and statistics underlined, just one thing leaped out at me. A quote I had underlined was from the testimony of Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trials, not long before Hitler's vice-fuhrer poisoned himself in his jail cell:

"It is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."

... Kerry made a courageous choice at least once in his life, when he came home with his ribbons and demonstrated against the war in Vietnam. But Sen. Kerry could turn out to be a stiff, a punk, an alcoholic and he'd still be a colossal improvement over the man who turned Paul Wolfowitz loose in the Middle East. The myth that there was no real difference between Democrats and Republicans, which I once considered seriously and which Ralph Nader rode to national disaster four years ago, was shattered forever the day George Bush announced his cabinet and his appointments for the Department of Defense.

... As Kevin Phillips recounts in American Dynasty, officials of the Reagan and first Bush administrations eagerly supplied Saddam with arms while he was using chemical weapons on the Kurds. They twice sent Donald Rumsfeld to court Saddam, in 1983 and 1984, when the dictator was in the glorious prime of his monsterhood.

This scandal, concurrent with Iran-Contra, was briefly called "Iraqgate," and, yes, among the names of those officials implicated you'll find most of the engineers of our current foreign policy. (They also signaled their fractious client, Saddam, that it might be all right to overrun part of Kuwait; you remember what happened when he tried to swallow it all.) Does any of this trouble you? Does it worry you that Dick Cheney, as president of the nefarious Halliburton Corporation, sold Iraq $73 million in oilfield services between 1997 and 2000, even as he plotted with the Wolfowitz faction to whack Saddam? Or that Halliburton, with its CEO's seat still warm from Cheney's butt, was awarded unbid contracts worth up to $15 billion for the Iraq invasion, and currently earns a billion dollars a month from this bloody disaster? Not to mention its $27.4 million overcharge for our soldiers' food.

Does it bother you even a little that the personal fortunes of all four Bush brothers, including the president and the governor, were acquired about a half step ahead of the district attorney, and that the royal family of Saudi Arabia invested $1.476 billion in those and other Bush family enterprises? Or, as Paul Krugman points out, that it's much easier to establish links between the Bush and bin Laden families than any between the bin Ladens and Saddam Hussein. Do you know about Ahmad Chalabi, the administration's favorite Iraqi and current agent in Baghdad, whose personal fortune was established when he embezzled several hundred million from his own bank in Jordan and fled to London to avoid 22 years at hard labor?

That's just a sampling from my haystack. Maybe I can reach you as an environmentalist, one who resents the gutting of key provisions in the Clean Air Act? My own Orange County, chiefly a rural area, was recently added to a national register of counties with dangerously polluted air. You say you vote for the president because you're a conservative. Are you sure? I thought conservatives believed in civil liberties, a weak federal executive, an inviolable Constitution, a balanced budget and an isolationist foreign policy. George Bush has an attorney general who drives the ACLU apoplectic and a vice president who demands more executive privilege (for his energy seances) than any elected official has ever received. The president wants a Constitutional amendment to protect marriage from homosexuals, of all things. Between tax cuts for his high-end supporters and three years playing God and Caesar in the Middle East, George Bush has simply emptied America's wallet, with a $480 billion federal deficit projected for 2004, and the tab on Iraq well over $100 billion and running.

... All it takes to make a Bush conservative is a few slogans from talk radio and pickup truck bumpers, a sneer at "liberals" and maybe a name-dropping nod to Edmund Burke or John Locke, whom most of them have never read. Sheep and sheep only could be herded by a ludicrous but not harmless cretin like Rush Limbaugh, who has just compared the sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners to "a college fraternity prank" (and who once called Chelsea Clinton "the family dog"--you don't have to worry about shame when you have no brain).

I don't think it's accurate to describe America as polarized between Democrats and Republicans, or between liberals and conservatives. It's polarized between the people who believe George Bush and the people who do not. Thanks to some contested ballots in a state governed by the president's brother, a once-proud country has been delivered into the hands of liars, thugs, bullies, fanatics and thieves. The world pities or despises us, even as it fears us. What this election will test is the power of money and media to fool us, to obscure the truth and alter the obvious, to hide a great crime against the public trust under a blood-soaked flag. The most lavishly funded, most cynical, most sophisticated political campaign in human history.

Bush's crusaders: the cancer he can't oppose

The New York Times > Opinion > Kristof: Jesus and Jihad

If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of 'Glorious Appearing' and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit. We have quite properly linked the fundamentalist religious tracts of Islam with the intolerance they nurture, and it's time to remove the motes from our own eyes.

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By Kristof's description the last book in the series is sick, brutal, and ugly. The cult of Left Behind has created an "alternate Jesus" who would be very comfortable in the Old Testament, and completely antithetical to the New Testament. These writings legitimize any act of cruelty against the unbeliever -- who are unworthy of compassion.

These are Bush's Crusaders, and he cannot part from them.