The Last Assassin is Here

Hi all, I hope you'll forgive what I hope will be no more than an annual indulgence: an announcement that my new books goes on sale today. It's called The Last Assassin, and it's the fifth in the award-winning series about half-Japanese, half-American "contract killer with a conscience" (EW) John Rain.

I had a great time writing this book -- partly because the research took me to Barcelona and the Sea of Japan, of course, but more importantly because of the opportunity to spend more time with Rain as his character evolves. In The Last Assassin, our hero finds himself in unfamiliar circumstances -- not just geographically, but emotionally, as well. His romance with Israeli agent Delilah is deepening, but at the same time he learns of the existence of an infant son by a former love, Japanese jazz pianist Midori Kawamura. Even for an ordinary citizen, a love triangle is dangerous business. But for a guy like Rain, it's going to be downright deadly...

In the first four Rain books, the stakes, generally speaking, are Rain's life. In The Last Assassin, Rain's life, although in constant danger, hardly matters to him -- in fact, he would gladly trade it to protect his child from enemies who look at the child as a way to get to Rain. And the harder Rain tries, the worse the danger becomes, such that you can think of the plot line of the book as a series of increasingly desperate double-or-nothing bets Rain is forced to gamble, with his son's life and his own soul the stakes of the game.

My interest in those stakes and what Rain would do if forced to play for them became first the backbone, and finally the heart of the new book. The flesh, as ever, is suspense and action; realistic tradecraft and other operator tactics; evocative locations, in this case Barcelona, New York, Tokyo, and Wajima; steamy sex; most of all, a fascinating ensemble of characters led by Rain himself, a "multifaceted killer with the soul of a poet" (Mystery Ink Online).

The Rain who will take you through this book isn't the same man we met (seemingly so long ago!) in Rain Fall. Rain is aging, for one thing, and as he does so his priorities begin to shift. His outlook changes, too, in reaction to the loves he's known and losses he's endured throughout the series. Most of all, Rain isn't the loner he was, nor does he want to be. But building a clan -- his lover Delilah, his partner and friend, ex-Marine sniper Dox -- presents its own dangers to a man used to freedom of maneuver. As Rain notes in the opening of the book when he reconnoiters Barcelona before meeting Delilah there, "Barcelona was unfamiliar, but the real territory I was trying to navigate isn't marked on any map." That new territory, and Rain's attempt to find his way safely through it, is the story of The Last Assassin. I hope you'll enjoy it. And if you find yourself in one of the more than 30 cities I'll be promoting in through June and July, stop by. It would be good to see you.

Seeing Ourselves Through Other Eyes

Last week, the Pentagon released its annual China Military Power Report. In the course of detailing China's ongoing military buildup, the 58-page report notes that "China's leaders have yet to adequately explain the purposes or desired end-states of their military expansion."

This phrase struck me as strange. Why would we expect China, or any country, to explain itself to our satisfaction? Would we believe them if they tried? Isn't the job of divining China's true intentions the job of our State Department experts and CIA spooks?

Besides, don't we already know the answer? China's economy is increasingly dependent on foreign-sourced energy. China therefore seeks a stronger ability to project power to secure sea lanes and otherwise protect those energy supplies. China also wants to pressure Taiwan, possibly to reacquire the island by force, but, even short of that, to cause the US to devote more forces to protecting its democratic ally.

Other explanations: China fears a US-North Korean conflict that could spill over its border. China has fought wars with neighbors India, Russia, and Vietnam, and if new tensions arise would like to deter or defeat them through greater military strength. China has a restive muslim population in its hinterland and would like to be better able to deal with it militarily.

Finally, China probably doesn't trust US intentions. They want to deal with us as equals on all fields, including militarily.

(I think that about covers it. Maybe now China won't have to explain.)

But the phrase isn't just strange; it's also probably unhelpful. China is nationalistic, sometimes to the point of prickliness. During a visit to the Macau museum several years ago, I was struck by the obvious "we are a great power and deserve to be treated like one!" subtext in the displays on the return of Macau by Portugal. I have western educated Chinese friends who are surprisingly vehement in insisting that Taiwan will always rightfully belong to China. And remember how way back in those halcyon, pre 9-11 days, Colin Powell persuaded China's leaders to release a US aircrew only by assuring them that we were "very, very sorry" (for once, a sensible, deliberate use of the double very!) to have unintentionally crossed into Chinese airspace?

(BTW, that episode also involved some thoughtful linguistic choices. Wishing to avoid inflaming public opinion, the administration never referred to our airmen as hostages or even captives. They were instead "being detained.")

So I can only imagine how an implicit demand that China's leaders explain their military policies to us will go over in Beijing. "Explain to you?" I would guess Hu and company are thinking. "No, you explain to us!"

And maybe we do explain ourselves to China, at least in our own eyes. But are those explanations any more satisfactory to the Chinese than theirs would be to us?

By way of explaining the request for an explanation, the report also notes that "Absent greater transparency, international reactions to China’s military growth will understandably hedge against these unknowns."

Something tells me the Chinese are aware of this possible problem. It's hard for me to imagine them saying, "Hey, that's a good point... maybe we should be a little more transparent with these guys."

The notion that we could insist on an explanation like this from China suggests to me that we don't have a good idea of how China, or probably other countries, perceives us. We see ourselves as the good guys, with a concomitant right to demand explanations from others. But whether we're good or not good isn't the point. How others perceive us is. For those who don't share our view of ourselves, demands like this one will come across as arrogant, irritating, suspect, and weak.

This isn't some touch-feely notion. If we misapprehend the other side's perceptions, there's little chance that our demands or other initiatives will achieve the results we want and expect. What do we do after that?

Part of knowing your enemy is knowing how he perceives you. Without it, the war on terror is going to be a long one indeed.

Gasaholic Communists

There's a lot of angst in the air, and much hand wringing in Congress, regarding the current price of gasoline. There should be. Gasoline is way too cheap.

What am I, one of those social-engineering, green-minded, soft-headed knee jerk liberals who wants to foster a utopia where everyone would commute to work by bicycle and the only place to find an SUV would be a museum?

Not at all. I'm just a plain old, market-oriented conservative -- a dying breed, it's true, and so a quaint way to picture oneself, but that's what I am. I trust markets to set prices and don't trust governments when they interfere. All I want, really, is for the price of gasoline to reflect its true cost. To let the market work.

"What do you mean, its true cost?" you're saying. "Between federal and state taxes, there's already an average of a 59 cent surcharge on every gallon of gas we buy at the pump. Doesn't that mean the price of gasoline is already higher than its true cost?"

No. The true price of a gallon of gasoline is whatever it costs the nation to secure it. How much of the size and scope of our military is devoted to securing access to foreign oil? How often do we in fact have to wage war to secure that access? After all, while there were doubtless many reasons for the first and the current gulf war, it's impossible to imagine either of them if Iraq didn't have the world's second largest oil reserves.

Our use of oil, which involves the transfer of hundreds of billions of US dollars to regimes like those running Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, strengthens these anti-democratic regimes and finances their foreign agendas. What does that cost us?

Add these and other costs up, subject them to rational economic analysis, and you'll have the true cost of a gallon of gasoline. The difference between the true cost and the current price can be closed with a tax. Anything less than a full tax is simply a hidden subsidy. And as a good, market-focused conservative, I don't want the government to be in the business of subsidizing commodities.

And I know you don't, either. We're all Americans, after all; we know how silly it is when communist regimes like China and North Korea subsidize rice, or when the Soviets used to create those terrible Moscow queues by subsidizing bread. We're smarter than that and wouldn't want to dabble with that sort of communist market interference here.

Except... maybe we would. How long does an American politician last after suggesting that road access be priced higher during rush hour? Only until the next election, typically. But roads are in higher demand during rush hour. If the price of access is the same when the demand is higher, you'll get... why, you'll get queuing. Of course, we prefer to call road queuing "traffic jams." It helps obscure the real cause of the problem: rush hour road access is artificially cheap.

But everybody needs access to roads! And everybody has to buy gasoline! If it were more expensive, only the rich could afford it!

Well, that sounds like the definition of a market economy to me. After all, what could be more natural -- and desirable -- than items in higher demand commanding higher prices? If you think there should be exceptions to this rule, I hope you'll have a little sympathy for those Chinese peasants. They can as reasonably claim to need to eat as we claim to need to drive. Why are subsidies and artificially low prices communist claptrap for them, and a fundamental right for us? What is it about roads, cars, and driving that perverts our principles and sullies our common sense?

It's an odd thing. The same pundits and politicians who insist that medical marijuana be prohibited across the board because ordinary people might want a toke, too, simultaneously insist not only that Americans should be able to drive whatever fuel-inefficient vehicles they want, but that the government should subsidize their ability to do so. Why do we focus only on the potential costs of the first, and only on the public's appetites for the second? If we had to diagnose politics like these, we might call them... schizophrenic.

Still not convinced that something's wrong here? Try this: when it comes to cars, we're so neurotic that our favored means of creating fuel economy is by having Congress ordain it, in the form of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. This is classic, Soviet-style, command economy stuff, yet when it comes to cars we embrace the practice as though it's Adam Smith himself. Congress ordering fuel efficiency, rather than permitting the market to create demand for it? It's worse than embarrassing. It's un-American.

President Bush made headlines in his January State of the Union address when he described America as "addicted to oil." He was right about the addiction, but wrong about the source. We're not addicted to oil. We're addicted to subsidized oil. And the way to cure our addiction isn't through "technology," as the president suggested with Dr. Feelgood sincerity and a magician's sleight of hand, but simply by ending those insidious, hidden subsidies and letting the market work the magic we Americans know it will.

FAM Management a Disgrace

While we're on the subject of airplanes, here's something considerably less lighthearted than pretentiousness at 30,000 feet.

It seems that the Federal Air Marshals -- the men and women who fly undercover on commercial flights as the last line of defense against another airborne terrorist attack -- are being put at risk, along with the passengers they're charged with protecting, by the gross ineptitude of FAM management.

Such is the conclusion of a report by the House Judiciary Committee, which recently completed a two-year investigation (the investigation took a while because of FAM management stonewalling).

Here's an article link. Google air marshal anonymity and you'll get much more.

Some of the idiocy of FAM management is mind boggling. Grooming and dress codes, for undercover operators? And even if, as a FAM spokesman claims, those policies have been modified, why have any dress code at all? It's not as though management has to worry about the public impression FAMs might make because -- are we all taking notes? -- these men and women are under cover. No one is supposed to know who they are.

The reason they're under cover, I hope to needless to say, is because we don't want to make it easy for terrorists to know who to take out first. We want to make it hard for terrorists, not easy, right?

Don't be so sure. On several occasions, FAM management invited news crews to film FAMs training for their missions, and the footage and commentary were subsequently broadcast on network news. I imagine al Qaeda has been grateful for the opportunity to learn FAM tools, training, and tactics.

Think about the burden that FAMs accept. One mistake, and an entire plane full of people, including the FAMs, will die. It's possible that a FAM could have to stand by while passengers were executed before making his move if that's what were required to save everyone else on the plane. Imagine the emotional burden you would have to carry after such a "success." Imagine what it would cost you.

I'd say it's a pretty tough job, and a hell of an important one. So why are the people who purport to manage this organization making it so much harder? What are their motives? What is going on in their minds?

Cronyism in FEMA. And in the CIA. Maybe that's what's ailing the FAMs, too.

None of this is a coincidence. There's a pattern here. You might even call it a culture. And in my experience in business, cultures are always set at the top.

Pretentiousness at 30,000 Feet

Coming back from the Much Ado About Books convention in Jacksonville, Florida on Sunday, I managed to upgrade to first class on my United flight. The steward (yes, I know it's fashionable to call them flight attendants, but I don't see what was wrong with steward and prefer two syllables to four, other things being equal) greeted each first class passenger and inquired, "And will you be joining us for lunch today?"

I couldn't help myself. When he got to me, I glanced left and right, then inquired back, "Is there somewhere else I could go?"

Is United training its people to talk this way? (Obviously, I need to fly first class more often to collect more data.) Help me understand: is the idea that by having the steward ask, "Will you be joining us for lunch today," instead of simply, "Will you be having lunch," you'll suddenly forget that you're strapped into a flying tin can breathing recycled air and be fooled into thinking you're enjoying the eight course gustation menu at Le Cirque, instead?

Look, I'm all for politeness and nuance and I believe in the power of language, but you have to use words properly to achieve the desired effect. You can't join people for lunch when you're already sitting down and have nowhere else to go without a parachute. The phrase just doesn't translate at 30,000 feet. And for the steward to suggest otherwise feels like the cheap gimmick it is.

United, if you want people to think they're having a fine dining experience in first class, you're probably going to just have to provide one. It would be more expensive than aping the customs of terrestrial restaurants, but it would have a better chance of success.

I mean, what's next, lunch reservations?

Questions About the NSA's Data Mining

Although the Bush administration hasn't formally acknowledged it, it seems clear that at some point after 9/11 the NSA began a data mining operation in which the NSA examined phone numbers called by tens of millions of Americans with the aim of creating "a database of every call ever made." Email addresses and internet use might also be subjects of the program (I'd be surprised if they weren't). The ostensible goal of the operation is to tease out and expose terrorist networks.

Revelations about the program are acting almost as a political litmus test. The Wall Street Journal thinks CIA Director nominee Michael Hayden, who ran the program at the NSA, should get a Medal of Freedom; Frank Rich of the New York Times calls him "yet another second-rate sycophant."

Here are the questions that I think will take us toward the heart of the matter:

1. What is the program's benefit? That is to say, does it expose terrorists?

I'm not sure. On the one hand, I doubt terrorists would be so stupid as to use traceable phones to call each other. On the other hand, terrorists, like other criminals, sometimes do remarkably stupid things. I can imagine terrorists believing they could call each other as long as they used code in their conversations and not realizing that it was the fact of the calls themselves that might lead to exposure. Or they might use pay phones, but those pay phones could then be monitored more closely.

Even if the program could theoretically expose stupid terrorists, though, we still have to ask whether it could adequately single them out from under mountains of false positives. Think of how many phone calls are made on any given day in the United States. That's a lot of data. Even if the program could narrow the likely hits down to only a few thousand, that's still a huge number of people for the FBI to investigate.

Without hearing from someone with expertise in the field of data mining, for me the answer to the question, "Does it expose terrorists?" is, maybe.

2. What does the program cost? That is to say, how much of a civil liberties intrusion does it represent?

It seems that the program hasn't involved listening to the content of phone calls (that was the earlier NSA program, exposed in December); rather, it seems the program's focus has been solely an examination of who's been calling whom. How invasive this feels is going to vary from person to person. My own feeling is, it's a gray area. If the government comes into my house, that's an intrusion. If they look at my house from the street, it's not. If they go through my garbage, that's a gray area (BTW, there is judicial law on all these scenarios. I'm not (yet) talking about the legal outcomes; I'm talking about how these government activities feel to me as an individual). Similarly, if the government listens to the content of my phone call, that feels like an intrusion. If they observe me with a cell phone, it's not. If they examine records to see whom I've been calling, that feels like a gray area. Your mileage may vary.

Another aspect of the program's cost is its potential for abuse. Frank Rich, in his May 14 New York Times column, suggests that the program was aimed not at al al Qaeda, but at domestic leakers. My guess would be slightly different: I imagine the program was indeed originally targeted at AQ, but regardless of whether if was found useful for its original purpose, I can all to easily see it being continued for, shall we say, domestic purposes. This is just speculation, of course, but when I imagine what it's like to be part of this embattled administration, with a sub 30% approval rating, no way out of a foreign disaster of its own making, and upcoming midterm elections, I can easily imagine the desperation and paranoia that would make certain players turn the NSA on the "traitors" in the government and media who are causing all their problems.

But my take in this regard is partly a function of my distrust of the current administration. If you trust Bush et al and believe they're good men, you might not share my concerns. Still, I think a program like this one would lead almost any administration to abuse, and I'm not much more comfortable with it in the abstract than I am in its particulars.

(By the way, remember when the first NSA domestic-surveillance program was revealed last year by the New York Times? Bush assured us that "one end of the communication must be outside the United States." I wondered at the time how, given the program's objectives, such a limitation could possibly be relevant. It now seems that it wasn't true, either.)

Let's stop here for a moment. Part of the reason reactions to the program are so divided, I think, is because it's inherently difficult to measure the program's benefits (the administration claims that the program and others like it have saved thousands of lives, but I place no weight at all on those claims given the source. Maybe the program has saved lives, maybe not. The administration has too much incentive to lie to be trusted on this) and individual impressions of the cost are idiosyncratic. Accordingly, people are coming to radically different answers to the cost/benefit question.

3. But there's another important question. Regardless of its cost effectiveness, is the program legal?

The leftist reaction is, "Of course it's illegal. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Congress passed in 1978, created so-called FISA courts that must issue warrants before Americans can be subjected to eavesdropping. The administration conducted this program in the absence of FISA warrants. Ergo, illegal."

The rightist reaction is, "All the NSA did was look at what phone numbers were calling what phone numbers. That's not eavesdropping. No eavesdropping, no need for warrants. Ergo, legal."

I'd like to know more before answering. But I will say this: I've never been able to understand why the administration refused to get FISA warrants for the program that was disclosed in December, a program that apparently does involve actual eavesdropping. I can't think of any legitimate reason for the administration's failure to do so. The FISA courts almost never even refuse a requested warrant, and the FISA act provides even for retroactive warrants in cases where an agency like the NSA has to act too quickly to get a warrant in advance. The administration has already blown the "but this wasn't eavesdropping" argument with the first program. It's too late for them to claim it here.

In fact, it's probably inaccurate to think of these as two separate programs. First, the NSA plays connect-the-dots with the phone numbers. Next, it listens in on phone numbers that look suspicious. Same program, different steps.

One other thing I'd like to know is, why were the phone companies turning over these records in the absence of subpoenas? Qwest refused, but AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth cooperated. Was this out of a sense of patriotism? Were there implicit threats involving government contract awards?

What do you think? What am I missing?

More Leadership from Congress...

Representative Patrick Kennedy, a six-term Democrat from Rhode Island, admitted being addicted to prescription drugs after driving his green 1997 Ford Mustang convertible into a security barrier near the Capitol Friday and almost creaming a police officer heading in the opposite direction. The police report said that, at the time of the accident, Mr. Kennedy's "eyes were red and watery, speech was slightly slurred and, upon exiting his vehicle, his balance was unsure."

Well, that sounds like prescription drugs to me.

(This isn't the first time for Kennedy, BTW. He went to rehab as a teenager for cocaine addiction, and has since said he was in recovery for depression and alcoholism.)

Kennedy said he was rushing to a vote. It was 2:30 in the morning.

Here's Kennedy's mea culpa: "I struggle every day with this disease, as do millions of Americans."

Translation: this isn't my fault, any more than it's the fault of all the other victims who suffer from it.

Look, I'm not an expert. Maybe alcoholism and other forms of drug addiction are a disease. But is that really the point? Shouldn't we -- shouldn't Kennedy -- be focusing on whether, as a victim of this disease, he's capable of fulfilling his responsibilities as a representative to the US Congress?

Glaucoma is a disease, and it can cause blindness. What would be the relevance of the cause of the blindness if a sufferer wanted a job as a bus driver? We would say, with sincere sympathy, that the person was unqualified, and should find another way to contribute to society.

Longtime Kennedy friend and former campaign manager Jack McConnell said calls for Kennedy's resignation were misguided.

''If Congressman Kennedy had had a heart attack, nobody at all would be calling for him to step aside.''

Well, I guess if Kennedy had suffered a heart attack instead of being so blotto that by his own admission, "I simply do not remember getting out of bed, being pulled over by the police or being cited for three driving infractions," we wouldn't be having this discussion. But what if, after the heart attack, Kennedy had been brain damaged? Or lapsed into a coma? Would we be discussing the origins of his condition then? Or only the condition itself?

Bill Lynch, chairman of the state Democratic Party, said people in Rhode Island "respect the fact that [Kennedy is] courageous enough to deal with this in the public eye, which is very difficult.''

Do they really? I don't. Where else was Kennedy going to deal with this? He crashed his car in public. The police arrested him in public. And all right, getting caught in this kind of behavior in public is difficult, I'll give Lynch that. But I can't muster a lot of respect for someone who's doing something difficult when there's simply no alternative, easy or otherwise.

Senator Edward Kennedy said of his son: "I love Patrick very much and am very proud of him. All of us in the family admire his courage in speaking publicly about very personal issues and fully support his decision to seek treatment."

Look, Patrick is Edward's son, so the senior Kennedy had to say something. And he gave it his best, with those three "verys" trying to pump up a shaky vote of confidence.

But again, what, precisely, is PK's courageous act? And why is it even noteworthy that EK supports PK's decision to seek treatment? Could EK have conceivably counseled PK against treatment?

I'd also like to know when it become a virtue to discuss personal issues in public. Call me old-fashioned, but I find this kind of behavior weak and vaguely embarrassing. I'd much rather see our leaders doing their job and not insisting that I get to know them so well.

Predictably, Kennedy made sure to say "I'm taking full responsibility." But responsibility for what, and to do what, exactly? Let's go back to sympathetic Jack McConnell's heart attack analogy, and substitute the words "heart attack" for the words "drug and alcohol addiction:"

"I take full responsibility for my heart attack, meaning I will promptly check in to the nearest emergency room."

That would be a non sequitur, of course. And in fact, Kennedy's use of the "I take full responsibility" dodge is implicit acknowledgment that his condition is nothing at all like a heart attack. Taking full responsibility for Kennedy's problems would mean resigning his seat and finding some other way to serve the public weal, a way for which he has not disqualified himself. But that would also entail a genuine regard for the people of Rhode Island, rather than a narcissistic focus only on what's best for Patrick.

I don't mean to be harsh here. Kennedy clearly has problems, and clearly needs help. I hope he'll get that help and solve his problems. But in the meantime, I don't want him driving the bus.

I only wish Rush Limbaugh were here to offer some guidance on all this.

Our Luminaries in Congress

The rumor is, outgoing CIA Director Porter Goss's replacement will be Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, currently deputy to National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.

Representative Pete Hoekstra, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, offered the following insights on Fox News Sunday: "Bottom line: I do believe he's the wrong person, the wrong place at the wrong time."

There might have been some actual thinking behind Hoekstra's "bottom line" commentary. If so, he concealed it well. If Hayden is the wrong person for the job, why not just focus on that? The CIA isn't wrong. The time isn't wrong. It's the person we're talking about... or should be.

Hoekstra added, "I don't think anything I've said is new to the White House."

No, I don't think so either.

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic House leader, argued that we shouldn't have a military man leading the civilian CIA.

"There's a power struggle going on between the Department of Defense and the entire rest of the intelligence community," she said, "so I don't see how you have a four-star general heading up the CIA."

I don't know. Sounds like a four-star general in the position might be a way to end that power struggle right quick. Does Pelosi want the power struggle to continue?

Republican senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia said he believed that even if General Hayden resigned his military commission, serious conflicts would remain.

"I think the fact that he is part of the military today would be the major problem," Chambliss said on ABC-TV. "Now, just resigning commission and moving on, putting on a striped suit, a pinstriped suit versus an air force uniform, I don't think makes much difference."

Why wouldn't resigning his commission, ending his right to issue orders to those below and obligation to obey orders from those above, and removing himself from the dictates of military law, make a difference? What is Chambliss arguing? That Hayden has too many friends in the Air Force? That military service should be a permanent ban on certain government positions?

I know polls show that 22% of Americans approve of Congress's performance. If you're among that 22%, could you tell me what I'm missing?

More Verbal Sleight of Hand

Porter Goss, head of the CIA, has just resigned. At the announcement, sitting next to President Bush, Goss said, "I would like to report to you that the agency is back on a very even keel and sailing well."

First, note that unnecessary "very." At least he didn't say "very, very."

Now, I don't know if it was conscious or unconscious, but I'd expect that if things really were going well at the Agency, let alone very well, Goss would have said, "I'm pleased to report," or "I'm proud to report," not something that's perilously close to "I wish I could report..."

The other quote I read was, "I believe the agency is on a very even keel, sailing well, I honestly believe that we have improved dramatically."

Again, Goss's focus on his belief, rather than on actual conditions, is telling. His additional, unnecessary protestation that his belief is "honestly" held is more telling still.

Bush's take is also interesting: "Porter's tenure at the CIA was one of transition, where he's helped this agency become integrated into the intelligence community, and that was a tough job."

You bet it was a tough job! The Agency used to be at least nominally in charge of all US intelligence, and the DCI -- Director of Central Intelligence -- was supposed to be head not only of the CIA, but of all the other intelligence agencies, too. Now the DCI reports to John Negroponte, the new, post 9/11 Director of National Intelligence, not directly to the president, and the CIA has been "integrated" as just another intelligence agency among many others run by the DNI's new bureaucracy.

I don't know about you, but all this has the same feel to me as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Peter Pace's defense of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld against criticism by six retired generals. The generals criticized Rumsfeld on grounds of competence, leadership, and style, and Pace defended the secretary's work ethic and patriotism. If I had been Rumsfeld, I would not have found this a robust defense. In fact, I would have interpreted it as implicit agreement with my critics.

Read between the lines, and you'll see that these men are trying to tell us something they can't, won't, or don't realize they want to say out loud.

Verbal Tics

If you've read any of the periodic communiques issued by Osama Bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri, you'll see that al Qaeda likes to call the White House the Black House. I found this monumentally immature... and then I read Ann Coulter, calling the New York Times the Treason Times. Hmmm...

Why are people always described as "visibly moved," or "visibly agitated," or "visibly shaken?" To distinguish from those frequent occasions when we come to these conclusions by means other than visible?

When people say, "in a very real sense," they mean the opposite.

Why do reviewers like to describe movies as "visually kinetic?" I mean, these are motion pictures we're talking about, right? If it weren't visually kinetic, it would be a portrait. Or a still life.

Why do people have to say "past master?" What ever happened to just being a master? And wouldn't you rather be a present master than a past one?

Why is it a "sea change?" Couldn't it just be a big change, or maybe a profound change?"

Why do people think they sound educated when they use the wrong preposition? As in: "Jane will speak to that." No, Jane will speak to her audience about that subject. You can't speak to a subject. Or maybe you could, but it would be the same as talking to yourself.

If you don't think words have power, check out these euphemisms. Are the places we're keeping people we capture in the war on terror undisclosed detention facilities, or secret prisons? Are the people we're keeping there detainees, or prisoners? If we interrogate them hard, are we abusing them or torturing them? Sample these two headlines: "America abuses detainees at undisclosed detention facilities." "America tortures prisoners at secret prisons."

Speaking of which, there seems to be a subclass of euphemism that uses the definition of a word instead of the word itself (what's a prison if not a detention facility?). I think this is because the word itself has picked up too much emotional baggage (as good words should), and people come to prefer the drier, underlying definition -- sometimes because of discomfort, sometimes because they want to bullshit you. So bombs become Improvised Explosive Devices; stewardesses become flight attendants; maids become housekeepers or cleaning staff; now becomes "at this time."

Israel is a master (not a past master) at choosing the right word. The barrier Israel is building between Israel and the West Bank is typically called a fence, not a wall. "Fence" has such friendly connotations... good fences make good neighbors, picket fences. "Wall" sounds like the Berlin Wall, or the thing Montresor built in The Cask of Amontillado to bury Fortunato alive. And when Israeli forces kill their enemies, it's known as sikul memukad, or “focused prevention,” more commonly rendered in the western press as "targeted killing," which is of course precisely the definition of the word "assassination."

Can we all solemnly vow to stop using the hackneyed phrase "a cool million," or billion, or whatever? Yes, the idea is that the buyer didn't bat an eyelash as she made out the check, but surely there's a better way to convey this notion? And no, "he was visibly cool" isn't it...

Book reviewer David Montgomery shared with me this verbal pet peeve: "...and stuff." And now of course I hear it everywhere, and wish it would stop...

And Rain fan Harold Davey wrote me with these two: first, people who use nouns as verbs -- such as an engineer saying "I architected that program" (as opposed to more humbly merely designing it). That's why they say verbing nouns weirds the language...

Second, people who make every sentence into a question by using rising inflection at the end...?

(Join the good fight here)

"Very" is severely overused, usually because the speaker lacks confidence. But when it's used twice in a row, there's a good chance someone is trying to bullshit you. Repetition and other unnecessary words are also evidence of attempted bullshit (sounds like a crime, and ought to be one).

It's notable, therefore, that the chief drafter of the new House ethics bill, House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier of California, called the bill a "very, very strong package," and went on to explain that "our aim, our goal, is a Congress that is effective, a Congress that is ethical and a Congress that is worthy of the public trust."

I feel better already.

Drugs and Nukes

Okay, an op-ed calling for a rational analysis of the costs and benefits of drug prohibition! Mary Anastasia O'Grady, in Friday's Wall Street Journal, notes that "Drugs Beget Thugs in the Americas." For those with a subscription, you can click here.

And it seems that Mexico is coming to its senses on the issue, too: today's New York Times reports that "Mexico Passes Law Making Possession of Some Drugs Legal."

An unnamed US embassy official, apparently toeing the reflexive US prohibition line, reacted to the news by noting that "any law that would decriminalize dangerous drugs would not be helpful."

But that's exactly the question, isn't it? How should we handle the problem? In all other fields of policy (except for oil and automobiles, but let's hold off on that for now), we instinctively know to ask, first, what is our objective; second, what is the most efficient way of achieving it. Only when it comes to drugs do we conflate ends and means; only with drugs does a policy -- in this case, prohibition -- become the objective itself.

I would think our objective with regard to drugs is to regulate them in such a way as to prevent too-high rates of addiction and other societal costs resulting from individual abuse. Prohibition is certainly one way of achieving that end. But prohibition involves costs: diversion of security, intelligence, military, judicial, border, customs, and prison resources; profits to the enemies of democracy in Latin America and Afghanistan; hostility to the US when our military assists in trying to eradicate crops abroad.

Does anyone know of a study that objectively analyzes the costs and benefits of prohibition and compares those costs and benefits to those of other possible policies? I've never heard of one, which leads me to believe that for some reason our country is in denial or otherwise irrational on the subject. Given the undeniable costs of prohibition and its dubious successes, shouldn't we at least be asking whether there's a better way?

My own unprofessional, anecdotal take on what such a study would show: if we ended prohibition today in favor of regulation, taxation, and treatment for addiction, there would be a mild uptick in drug use. Meanwhile the price of drugs, which is kept artificially high by prohibition, would fall, denying profits to the Afghan warlords who are committed to defeating our efforts there and to the narcotrafficantes who are committed to undermining democracy in Latin America. We would also be able to redeploy all the resources noted above to the war that really matters -- the one against Islamofascism.

You know how we'll know when we're really serious about the war against Islamofascism? When the government announces that we're ending the war on drugs. Because one of these wars is a war of necessity -- by definition, an existential war, a war we cannot lose -- and the other is a war of choice. And a society that fights a war of choice while simultaneously fighting a war of necessity is a society that's betting everything it holds dear on a policy that in the end is... nothing more than a policy.

Some congressional wag once quipped that of course it would be easy to smuggle a nuke into the US... all you'd need to do would be to hide it in a bale of marijuana. He meant this mostly literally, true, but there are figurative implications, too. Because if diverting so many resources from the war against Islamofascism increases the risk that we could lose an American city to a suitcase nuke, then one day we may have to add that lost city to the tally of the costs of our war of choice on drugs.

Money for Our Oil Fix

Wow, I haven't seen Congress act this quickly since Terry Schiavo! It was only a few days ago that oil hit 75$ a barrel, and now Senate Republicans -- Republicans, remember, the champions of the free market, the ones who don't want to increase pump taxes because doing so would distort market forces -- want to give taxpayers a $100 rebate to buy gasoline.

It's all doubly strange because the president noted in his State of the Union speech that Americans are addicted to oil, and reiterated the "addiction" word just yesterday. And now Congress wants to cure the addiction by... well, by giving us money to buy a fix. Okay, admittedly, at current prices the fix will only amount to about two tanks of gasoline... but still. I don't really know what to say.

Except this: the latest opinion polls show that 78% of Americans disapprove of Congress's performance and 22% approve. What I want to know is, who are these 22%?

What do we do about Iraq?

What do we do about Iraq?

Let's start with what we want to do. Then we'll ask what can we do.

What do we want to do? The war's original objectives were to find and secure Hussein's WMD. It's clear now that before the war those WMD: (i) didn't exist; (ii) were destroyed; or (ii) were transported to Syria. Regardless of the explanation for our inability to find them, the WMD rationale for war no longer exists.

Following our failure to find WMD, the rationale for war evolved to include removing a dangerous dictator and establishing democracy. Hussein has been removed, so that objective has been achieved. Among the war's stated objectives, therefore, we're left with the establishment of democracy.

Before going on to the question of what we can do, it's important to consider possible unstated objectives, as well. I believe our unstated (and true) objective was to establish an overwhelming US military presence adjacent to Syria and Iran so as to pressure those regimes and possibly to change them. The current scope of the Iraqi insurgency, however, means we have neither the military means nor the domestic political support to invade Syria or Iran. It's likely that Assad and the mullahs understand this. Therefore, our objective of pressuring these regimes through our military presence in Iraq is not achievable -- unless can first achieve the final remaining stated objective of establishing democracy in Iraq. We'll come back to that in a moment.

Another of our unspoken objectives in Iraq was to get the country pumping oil again to build slack into global supply, thereby lowering prices and ensuring access in case of political instability elsewhere (the sequence would be: remove Hussein, end sanctions, rebuild the oil infrastructure). You need look no further than the prices posted at your corner gas station to know that this objective has not been achieved. But it might still be achievable -- more on which in a moment.

Although it would be impolite to say it out loud, let's accept that, at this point, we would settle for reasonably pro-western stability in Iraq as the fruits of our efforts there, even in the absence of democracy. Thus, the whole thrust of the war now boils down to this question: can we stabilize Iraq? If so, how? And what if we can't?

I don't believe we can stabilize Iraq within its present borders. First, the country has become too fissiparous. In the absence of centrally-supplied security, ethnic groups instinctively turn to their own militias, and, as Thomas Friedman has noted regarding his experience in Lebanon, once militias assume a prominent role in society they become extremely difficult to co-opt or eradicate. Moreover, I don't believe the Kurds have ever been interested in re-integrating into Arab Iraq. Why would they be? They've had de facto independence since the end of the first Gulf War, and have enjoyed reasonable amounts of democracy, prosperity, and, most of all, stability as as result. I have yet to read any plausible explanation of why the Kurds would agree to return to the Iraqi fold. Accordingly, I believe the Kurds' game is ostensibly support Washington's goal of keeping the country unified, while simultaneously doing all they can to prepare for and foster the day their independence becomes de jure. If one of the three players we're trying to get to live together has no interest in the project, how can it possibly succeed?

So: the current internal dynamic of Iraqi society tends toward a break-up into three Iraqs: Kurd, Shiite, and Sunni. External forces, chiefly in the form of the US military presence there, act to counter this tendency. Over time, I believe Iraq's internal tendency will prove stronger than the external forces acting to counter it, and the country will split into three.

All right. If it's true that we can't stabilize Iraq within its present borders, what should we be doing instead?

As a first step, we should change our currently stated objectives to make them more open-ended. The new emphasis would be along the lines of "supporting the future that Iraqis choose for themselves." Then, following the failure of some appropriate milestone (perhaps the current efforts to form a national unity government), we could shift our diplomatic efforts toward ensuring as orderly as possible a break-up of the country into three new entities.

To put it in slightly different terms: the first step would be to use different language to describe our current objectives in Iraq (part of our current difficulties lie in the overly lofty objectives the administration articulated following the failure to find WMD). For anyone who would object that we can't change our objectives in Iraq, I would argue that of course it's possible: indeed, we already have. One more change ought to be no more difficult than any of the previous ones.

Then, using the greater linguistic flexibility we have created, we can plausibly (in fact, accurately), note that the future which Iraqis have chosen for themselves involves three Iraqs rather than one, and that we must of course respect that choice. All our diplomatic and military efforts would then be in the service of steering the country in the direction its internal forces are currently taking it, rather than fighting against the tendency of those forces. Windmills, in other words, rather than windbreaks.

(One reason we need to change our view of our own objectives is that, so long as we see a departure from Iraq as a defeat, we will be inclined to stay there much longer than necessary. For more on how a nation decides when enough is enough, click here.)

A three-Iraq solution is probably not as bad as the conventional wisdom would have us believe. In the absence of a foreign military presence to unite them, Shiite Iraq and Shiite Iran would quickly rediscover their historic differences of language, culture, and nationality (China and Vietnam were allies during America's engagement in Indochina, but were at war within four years after our departure from Saigon). The Sunni center of the country is without oil, and could probably be quarantined until its current pathologies receded. As for Kurdistan, I believe the basis exists for a grand bargain between Iraq's Kurds and Turkey: in return for Turkey's recognition and declared respect for Kurdistan's independence, Kurdistan renounces all revanchist objectives with regard to territory that is now Turkey, renounces support for the PKK, and publicly or privately assures Turkey of access to cut-rate oil from Kirkuk.

Moreover, freed of the constant sabotage wrought by a largely Sunni insurgency, the Kurds and Shiites could rebuild their oil industries. The oil they would then make available to the world market would be a huge boon to the US economy.

For anyone who finds my proposed three state solution unacceptable, I ask: compared to what realistic alternative? We have to work with the facts as we find them (indeed, as we have created them), not with what might have been or what we wish could be.

To some, my prescription might seem overly pessimistic. Many people note that there is much good news in Iraq that goes unreported. I'm sure this is true. But I'm equally sure of much bad news that we're missing, too. The country has become so unsafe that journalists no longer have even minimally acceptable access or insights into what's going on. When that's the case, my sense is that what you're missing is more bad than it is good.

As a society, we're probably not ready to accept that a three state solution is now the best outcome we can hope to retrieve in Iraq. But the good news, if you want to call it that, is that three states is where Iraq is heading whether we like it or not. We can always get behind it later. But the effort would be easier, more plausible, and probably less bloody if we did so now.

Outsourcing Foreign Policy

I came across several articles today on the Bush administration; each was interesting by itself, and together I found them fascinating.

First, the latest CNN poll shows the president's approval rating is at 32%. The article notes that the poll "was one of four conducted within the past ten days that have yielded similar results: a Pew Center poll carried out April 7-16 gave Bush a 35 percent approval rating; a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll carried out last Tuesday and Wednesday gave him a 33 percent approval rating; and an American Research Group poll carried out Tuesday through Friday gave him a 34 percent approval rating."

The second article was an op-ed, "Dissident President," by Natan Sharansky in the in the Wall Street Journal. I think you need a subscription to the journal to read it, but here's a link.

Sharansky's strong defense of Bush seems focused on the president's character, or, to put it another way, on the president's intentions: "He is a man fired by a deep belief in the universal appeal of freedom, its transformative power, and its critical connection to international peace and stability... With a dogged determination that any dissident can appreciate, Mr. Bush, faced with overwhelming opposition, stands his ideological ground, motivated in large measure by what appears to be a refusal to countenance moral failure."

Sharansky does offer some criticisms, all focusing on the external expression of Bush's character -- that is, on Bush's execution of his intentions: "I believe that too much focus has been placed on holding quick elections, while too little attention has been paid to help build free societies by protecting those freedoms -- of conscience, speech, press, religion, etc. -- that lie at democracy's core."

Sharansky's op-ed, appearing as it did on the same day as the CNN poll, made me wonder... are the 33% or so of Americans who approve of Bush focusing more on what they see as his character and intentions, while the 67% or so who disapprove are focusing more on his performance? The CNN asked respondents whether they approved of the president's performance, but I'm not sure how important the wording was. When you trust someone's intentions, you're inherently willing to give him or her some benefit of the doubt on performance.

The third article, and the most interesting of all, is a report in the New York Times that "Baker, Bush Family Fixer, Will Advise President on Iraq." Apparently, the president has asked former Secretary of State and family confidant Baker to head a congressionally funded project called the Iraq Study Group and to advise the president on what to do about Iraq.

As someone who is fascinated by the increasing tendency to outsource formerly government functions to contractors, my first thought was, "By the gods, now they're actually outsourcing foreign policy!" But my good and insightful friend, The Slugg, had a slightly different take on the matter: He says they're outsourcing the presidency.

Slugg's thesis, which is only speculation, is that Bush Sr. gave his son a good shaking that finally got through to the lad. "You've been living in a bubble," the imagined conversation went, "and Iraq is dragging your presidency down. Worse, it's dragging the Bush family name down. You need help, and I'm going to tell you who will be helping."

The article reports leaks to the effect that Secretary of State Rice opposed Baker's appointment, which is hardly surprising (the public story is that Rice welcomes Baker's involvement. My experience and take on human nature tell me the leaked version is the one to believe). And given Baker's warm relationship with Brent Scrowcroft (Bush Sr.'s best friend), who in an interview with the New Yorker said, “The real anomaly in the Administration is Cheney... I consider Cheney a good friend—I’ve known him for thirty years. But Dick Cheney I don’t know anymore,” what can we infer about Cheney's continued influence on Iraq policy?

Many political commentators have been advising Bush to shake up his team more than he already has. I wonder if outsourcing policy is a compromise in that direction: Bush keeps the nominal team in place, but bypasses it by appointing outsiders to advise him. It'll be fascinating to see how this turns out.

More on Iran

Two recent articles on Iran. The first is called "Three Reasons Not To Bomb Iran -- Yet," by Edward Luttwak in Commentary.

The other is called "Are We Really Going to Nuke Iran?" by Fred Kaplan in Slate.

Luttwak's thesis is that Iran is still at least several years away from acquiring the bomb and that Ahmadinejad and the mullahs actually want America to attack Iran, as a way of rallying the population around the mullahs (as happened with Hussein attacked Iran in 1980) and consolidating their increasingly shaky control thereby.

Kaplan argues for three possible reasons that the Bush administration could be considering using tactical nukes to prevent Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons (as reported by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker): (i) the "Madman Theory," in which Bush aims to intimidate either the mullahs or recalcitrant European allies or both, by convincing them that if they don't capitulate he will do something crazy (that is, nuke Iran); (ii) factional infighting, in which insiders who oppose using nukes on Iran hope to stop such a course through leaks; and (iii) the "Three Options" gambit, where the administration massages the terms of the debate to create the appearance of three options -- surrender, nuclear war, and a limited air strike -- the last of which will seem a relief by comparison with the other two.

I don't believe the west should accept a nuclear Iran. But whether a nuclear Iran is acceptable to the west, including if so, why; if not, why not; and if not, how and when should the US act, have been well-hashed out elsewhere, including the articles cited above. I want to focus on some related, but distinct points, by posting a few questions here.

1. If Iran really were on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons capability, which is more likely: (i) Ahmadinejad would advertise the fact through repeated public statements, while also calling for Israel's destruction, denying the Holocaust, and suggesting that Iran could cripple the west by blockading the Straits of Hormuz; (ii) Iran would keep quiet about its progress so as not to risk an American or Israeli attack that could set back Iran's nuclear quest.

2. What does Iran have to gain from an American (or Israeli) air strike?

Now, a look at the domestic political landscape:

Current polls put the president's approval ratings in the 33% range. Approval of the Republican-controlled Congress and Senate is the twenties. Bush is sufficiently concerned about Republican prospects in the November midterm election that he's released Karl Rove from various White House duties to concentrate on the election. So the next question becomes:

3. What does the Bush administration have to gain from an American (or Israeli) air strike? Would a pre-election attack on Iran help Republicans, or hurt them? Has the administration considered the political implications of an attack on Iran (okay, that one was rhetorical)? What were their conclusions?

And finally:

4. If both the mullahs and the Bush administration believe they'll gain politically from an American attack on Iran, how likely is it that the attack will happen?

Iran and Iraq

I have a good friend known in some circles as Slugg, former Special Forces of significant rank and experience, who recently posted some fascinating thoughts on the Rumsfeld: Incompetent Patriot? thread. The thoughts were so good that I asked Slugg if he would mind my reposting them here as a guest column, and he generously agreed. There's a lot to the Iran - Iraq connection, I think; let's see what comes out in the responses to Slugg's post, and I may follow up with another post on the subect soon.

Slugg, thanks again for the insightful, provocative, posts. I'm honored to have you here.

**************************


Regarding the public debate kick-started by the six generals, it appears to this observer that most everybody boils the current brouhaha down to a single question: should the SecDef retire... or not?

Intending no disrespect I assert that those who ask this question... are asking the wrong question. A more useful question would be: why would six honorable men do this at best controversial, at worst questionable thing?

Have the generals forgotten their schooling in our nation’s tradition of military subordination to civilian control? Is their true goal really to compel the resignation of the SecDef? Are they petty men working off petty grievances by thumbing their noses in public at a man they just don’t like? Are they working to get every incumbent up for election this year thrown out of office?

If your answer to any of those questions was “Yes,” then you have assumed these six generals are simple men, incapable of subtlety, whose public actions should be taken at their simple face value.
I‘m telling you this knife-fight ain’t about Iraq: it’s about Iran!

Moreover, I’m guessing this fight is specifically about the ongoing, sub rosa discussions that ought to be ongoing, but [according to Seymour Hersh] aren’t ongoing between the Pentagon and the White House concerning the sanity of using nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s fledgling nuclear capability!

Wonder this, before you dismiss my speculations: what choices does the loyal officer corps have when corporately it is ordered to execute a direct order from the commander-in-chief which, in their best corporate judgment, would inflict grievous, irreparable harm not only on the enemy, but also on our own republic?

Some background:
During the Vietnam era—as H. R. McMaster posits in his book, “Dereliction of Duty”—our senior military officers failed their civilian leadership [and the nation] when they did not honor with public action what they privately believed to be true: that prolonging the Vietnam War promised nothing for certain but that more of our young men would be killed or mutilated… and more of our national treasure would be spent without profit for anyone but the military industrialists. The strategic benefit returned to America for this sacrifice of blood and capital would add up to little more than the possibility we could preserve America’s excruciatingly minimal national interests in South East Asia. McMaster’s book became required reading for all senior military officers. The hope was that the officer corps would not flinch from its obligation to fall on its collective sword if that was the only option for true service to the nation left them by their civilian leaders.

Flash forward to today: we have six general officers, all of whom (with the exception of General Zinni) refused promotion to the next higher rank and retired from the military... because they could not continue to serve as loyal officers under the leadership of the current Secretary of Defense. The key phrase here is “continue to serve.” Meaning, the generals retired and spoke out not because of what went down in Iraq, but because they have misgivings about the competency of their current civilian leadership to make wise or prudent decisions during the next war.

Then why, I can hear some of our company demanding to know, do the generals not speak out about their genuine concerns as freely and openly as they are willing to criticize in public the past performance of the Secretary of Defense?

That question is both fair and legitimate to ask. My answer rests on an understanding of the traditional/legal/ethical constraints that inhibit generals, active duty and retired, from indulging themselves in totally free speech:

Iraq is history, and the record of our nation’s actions taken there is available for every American to know and judge for themselves...

But Iran is the future, and for the soldiers with recent or continuing access to the details of our nation’s military plans and intentions, that elite group of men and women who *know* what is going to happen in the months ahead… the future will always be classified!

Therefore I hypothesize that the generals reluctantly elected to step into the unflattering spotlight the media shines on all its subjects and offer America what they feel duty-honor-country bound to deliver... the truth as they see it... circumscribed and restrained by the lifetime oaths of secrecy and of loyalty to the nation that each has sworn... and must honor... or forfeit their honor.

I sincerely believe that not one of the generals truly gives a rat’s ass whether or not Secretary Rumsfeld resigns. I believe they acted in a manner which, although coordinated, falls far short of either disloyalty to, or mutiny against civilian control of the military... acting with intent to force the Secretary of Defense, the President, and The Congress of the United States to hear what they cannot say in public.

I believe the generals acted with the concurrence of many of their peers and subordinates, both those retired and those who continue to serve in uniform on the active-duty force, obliging all to offer their own candid, studied, professional counsel to the nation’s civilian leadership... respectfully, discreetly, and in accordance with their oaths of secrecy... plus the oath of service every soldier freely takes upon entering the military:

“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.” (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

Lastly I predict that when their goal has been achieved [with results for the better or worse], even as once upon a time General McArthur said, each of the six general might say, “...like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Good-by.”

Posted by The Slugg

Mealy-mouthedness and Exaggerations

I detest euphemisms and other mealy-mouthedness. Here are a couple examples:

Former Bush administration counterterrorism analyst Chris Carney is running for Congress as a Democrat in Pennsylvania. The president, Carney claims as quoted in The New Republic, "has been telling untruths about Iraq."

Is Carney afraid of the word "lie"? That is, "The president has been telling lies about Iraq." Which itself can be improved: "The president has been lying about Iraq." Which permits one more improvement, to present tense: "The president is lying about Iraq."

If President Bush is lying about Iraq, why not just say so in plain language, as a statement that demands evidence and can be argued? Maybe Bush is lying, maybe he's not. What we know for sure is that Charney is mealy-mouthed.


Former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown, testifying before a senate panel on February 10, said, "I certainly felt somewhat abandoned" by the Bush administration. Extra points to Brown for combining an intensifier with a hedge in the same sentence! (For more on which click here)

Cut out the fat, and you get, "I felt abandoned." Which itself contains a subtle hedge -- Mr. Brown *felt* abandoned (much like people in New Orleans post-Katrina, doubtless), but he might not in fact have *been* abandoned. This construction annoys me: who cares how Brown felt? We want to know what happened! I might be reading too much into this, but is it possible that Brown's focus remains... misplaced?

So better still linguistically would be, "The Bush Administration abandoned me." Again, a statement that demands evidence and argument. And which has the additional benefit of providing a motto for tee-shirts and coffee cups.


And here's a nice one that's not so much mealy-mouthed as exaggerated and self-important:

In response to recent revelations about steroid use in baseball, commissioner Bud Selig declared, "Nothing is more important to me than the integrity of the game of baseball."

My first thought was, "I hope this guy doesn't have a family... or, if he does, that they don't hear what he just said or think that he meant it...".

Next I started mulling over that odd phrase, "The game of baseball." The game of baseball, the game... you mean, as opposed to the sky of baseball? The floor of baseball? What? Can baseball be anything other than a game? Of course not. So why the weird genitive redundancy?

It sounds important, that's why. You can almost imagine Selig getting misty-eyed as the words passed his lips, or at least wanting his listeners to get misty-eyed. Ah yes, the institution, the edifice, the bedrock of a nation...

Look out: when the genitive is used this way, often someone is trying to bullshit you. People of color, people of faith, a home of luxury (I saw this one in a real estate ad), time of difficulty, time of war... the intended effect is always the same: to impress you with the mouth-filling importance of the subject matter.

Linguistically related, and in intent the same, is the phrase The American People. Politicians use this one constantly (instead of, for example, America or Americans). When they do, they are trying to bullshit you.

Rumsfeld: Incompetent Patriot?

Well, we've got a half dozen retired generals calling for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's resignation. You can read more here.

And here's a fascinating opinion piece on the subject.

(Lest anyone conclude that I get all my news from the leftwing media, I read the Wall Street Journal every day, too, but you need a subscription to read their online content, so it's not very useful to forward the WSJ links).

I haven't done a scientific breakdown of the criticism, but it seems mostly to have to do with war planning, relations with the uniformed services, micromanagement... that kind of thing. Some highlights that seem representative to me:

General Swannack: "Rumsfeld does not really understand the dynamic of counterinsurgency warfare... [he's] not the right person to fight that war based on his absolute failures in managing the war against Saddam in Iraq."

Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton: "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically..."

Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, the former operations director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "the plan was flawed... intelligence distorted to justify a rationale for war... arrogant micromanagement that at times crippled the military's effectiveness..."

Retired Army Major Gen. John Riggs: "atmosphere of arrogance..."

So it struck me as odd that General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, felt compelled to issue this defense of Rumsfeld: "He does his homework. He works weekends, he works nights. People can question my judgment or his judgment, but they should never question the dedication, the patriotism and the work ethic of Secretary Rumsfeld."

I admit I haven't read the transcript of every general's call for Rumsfeld's resignation, but I've read quite a few articles at this point, and haven't come across any denunciations of, or even references to, Rumsfeld's work ethic, dedication, or patriotism. It's all about Rumsfeld's competence.

So why the off-key defense? Is it intended to suggest that criticism of Rumsfeld's competence is the same as an attack on his patriotism? Pace doe seem to recognize that the two are not the same; after all, he refers to Rumsfeld's "judgment" (and his own) as being fair game. Is Pace, in trying to find something positive to say about Rumsfeld on a separate topic, implicitly or unconsciously acknowledging that Rumsfeld is in fact substantively incompetent?

(I know some authors do this when blurbing books they don't think are any good: they try to find some aspect, unimportant as part of the whole, that they can praise so as to say something nice while maintaining a veneer of honesty. I don't approve of the practice, but that's a separate blog entry...).

Am I missing something? Any other interpretations? Anyone here who's served in the Pentagon and can shed some light on the situation?

Origins of the Frivolous Da Vinci Lawsuit

I'm pleased that Da Vinci Code (DVC) author Dan Brown prevailed in the frivolous copyright infringement suit brought against him by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. Baigent and Leigh, the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," claimed that Brown had stolen the "architecture" of their book in writing his blockbuster DVC -- that is, their theory that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child, and that their bloodline survives to this day. For a summary of how hard the court slapped B&L down, click here.

As a former copyright lawyer, I was surprised that B&L's case was even allowed to proceed beyond what in the US is called summary judgment (where, essentially, you get tossed out of court for a meritless claim), but I don't know the UK system. What I do know is that copyright protects expression, not ideas, and that B&L's invention of the word "architecture" in a copyright context was a cheap attempt to distract the court from their lack of a legal claim.

What makes B&L's behavior doubly reprehensible is that Brown went out of his way to thank them in DVC, actually mentioning their book in the text of his own. And that B&L's book, a bestseller when it was published in 1982 but subsequently largely forgotten, became a bestseller again precisely because of Brown's gracious mention in DVC.

The good news is, the court denied B&L's request for an appeal and ordered them to pay 85% of Brown's publisher's legal fees (which could come to a couple million dollars). Still, you have to wonder: how do people bring such baseless lawsuits? How can two people who Brown brought fame and fortune be so ungrateful? Here's my novelist's answer:

B&L read DVC and feel ripped off because Brown obviously took their "Jesus and Mary Magdalene" theory and turned it into a mega-blockbuster.

B&L find a lawyer and say they want to sue. The lawyer advises them that they don't have a case because copyright law doesn't protect theories or other ideas, only expression. But, but, but...

Dan Brown made $70 million last year. He's a busy guy. Maybe he'll settle to make us go away. If he doesn't, we'll probably lose. And we'll have to reimburse him for, say, $2 million in legal fees. But... how do those Mastercard ads read? "Legal fees... $2 million. Publicity for B&L's book just before the worldwide release of the DVC movie starring Tom Hanks and publication of the mass market paperback... priceless."

So there you have it. Two men who Dan Brown made rich and famous decided that they wanted to be even more rich and more famous, and that the way to achieve it was to sue their benefactor, try to smear his reputation, and waste the public's time and money, just to get their names back in the media. And the sad thing is, it probably worked. When I checked on Amazon a few days ago, their book was #16. They'll sell even more copies when the DVC movie comes out in May.

BTW, the book's third author, Henry Lincoln, didn't take part in the suit. My guess is that he has a sense of shame, and some integrity. His coauthors have neither.

Mistakes Don't Matter?

Secretary of State Condi Rice got in trouble on her recent visit to Britain, where she told reporters that in Iraq "I know we've made tactical errors, thousands of them I'm sure."

The media and blogosphere immediately jumped on the "thousands of errors" comment, but I think Rice's next point is the really telling one: "But when you look back in history what will be judged on is" whether the "right strategic decision" was made. Rice tried to clarify the whole thing the next day by adding, "The point I was making... is that, of course, if you've ever made decisions, you've undoubtedly made mistakes in the decisions that you've made, but that the important thing is to get the big strategic decisions right and that I am confident that the decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein and give the Iraqi people an opportunity for peace and democracy is the right decision."

The argument that execution is irrelevant and only the concept matters seems strange to me. I immediately thought of a doctor reassuring the family of a dead patient, "Yes, we operated incorrectly, we operated on the wrong part of the body, hell, we botched the whole procedure and killed the patient. But we were right in thinking the operation was called for!"

Success requires the right concept and the right execution. That Rice, like the negligent doctor in my hypothetical, feels compelled to fall back solely on the arguable correctness of the diagnosis is hard to understand. Does she really believe concept is all that matters? Does she expect the country to believe it? I don't know.

But if you found yourself concerned by Rice's comments, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was on the scene the next day to reassure you: "...the enemy's got a brain; the enemy watches what you do and then adjusts to that, so you have to constantly adjust and change your tactics, your techniques and your procedures," Rumsfeld explained. "If someone says, well, that's a tactical mistake, then I guess it's a lack of understanding, at least my understanding, of what warfare is about."

So Rice says we've made thousands of mistakes, but none of them matter because we were right in deciding that Hussein had to go. And Rumsfeld says we haven't made any mistakes at all.

There's a word for all this: denial. And denial, as Dave Grossman says, has no survival value.

If you weren't sure before how our effort in Iraq was going to turn out, Rice and Rumsfeld just told you all you need to know.