Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Jesus, what did this poor fücker do to attract the rabid Yahoo message board crowd? Look bespectacled?

Brad, as usual go,...!

This just in from the 'Bloody Shirt' file:

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"...The perpetrators of those attacks -- like the perpetrators of 9/11 -- are despicable and must be fought, killed, and captured utterly relentlessly..."

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About Lynching

Robert L. Zangrando

Lynching is the practice whereby a mob--usually several dozen or several hundred persons--takes the law into its own hands in order to injure and kill a person accused of some wrongdoing. The alleged offense can range from a serious crime like theft or murder to a mere violation of local customs and sensibilities. The issue of the victim's guilt is usually secondary, since the mob serves as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner. Due process yields to momentary passions and expedient objectives.

Vigilantism, or summary justice, has a long history, but the term lynch law originated during the American Revolution with Col. Charles Lynch and his Virginia associates, who responded to unsettled times by making their own rules for confronting Tories and criminal elements. "Lynching" found an easy acceptance as the nation expanded. Raw frontier conditions encouraged swift punishment for real, imagined, or anticipated criminal behavior. Historically, social control has been an essential aspect of mob rule.

Opponents of slavery in pre-Civil War America and cattle rustlers, gamblers, horse thieves, and other "desperadoes" in the South and Old West were nineteenth-century targets. From the 1880s onward, however, mob violence increasingly reflected white America's contempt for various racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. African-Americans especially, and sometimes Native Americans, Latinos, Jews, Asian immigrants, and European newcomers, felt the mob's fury. In an era when racist theories prompted "true Americans" to assert their imagined superiority through imperialist ventures, mob violence became the domestic means of asserting white dominance. Occasionally, this complemented the profit motive, when the lynching of a successful black farmer or immigrant merchant opened new economic opportunities for local whites and simultaneously reaffirmed everyone's "place" in the social hierarchy. Sometimes lynching was aimed at unpopular ideas: labor union organizers, political radicals, critics of America's role in World War I, and civil rights advocates were targets...

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lynching/lynching.htm

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Discussion of material in the "Ol' Bait and Switch" file is left as an exercise to professional politicaleconomists who may or may not read this...

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"...George Bush and José Aznar, however, looked the threat square in the face and then decided to turn around and attack Iraq instead. It was an absurd, irresponsible course of action that's endangered the lives of huge numbers of people around the world...."

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....WITH these 'caveats':

The Enron-Cheney-Taliban Connection?

By Ron Callari, Albion Monitor
February 28, 2002

Enron is a scandal so enormous that it's hard to wrap your mind around it. Not just a single financial disaster, it's actually a jigsaw of interlocking scandals, each outrageous in its own right.

There's Enron the Wall St. con game, where company bookkeepers used sleight of hand to turn four years of steady losses into stunning profits. There's Enron the reverse Robin Hood, which stole from its own employees even as its executives were hauling millions of dollars out the backdoor. There's Enron's Ken Lay the Kingmaker, who used the corporation's fraudulent wealth to broker elections and skew public policy to his liking. And then there are the Enron coverups, as documents are shredded and the White House seeks to conceal details about meetings between Enron and Vice President Cheney.

The coverups are still very much a mystery. What were the documents that were fed into the shredder – even after the corporation declared bankruptcy? What is the White House fighting to keep secret, even going to the length of redefining executive privilege and inviting the first Congressional lawsuit ever filed against a president? Were the consequences of releasing these documents more damaging than the consequences of destroying them?

Could the Big Secret be that the highest levels of the Bush Administration knew during the summer of 2001 that the largest bankruptcy in history was imminent? Or was it that Enron and the White House were working closely with the Taliban – including Osama bin Laden – up to weeks before the Sept. 11 attack? Was a deal in Afghanistan part of a desperate last-ditch "end run" to bail out Enron? Here's a tip for Congressional investigators and federal prosecutors: Start by looking at the India deal. Closely....

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12525

Mike writes:
"Or was it that Enron and the White House were working closely with the Taliban – including Osama bin Laden – up to weeks before the Sept. 11 attack?"

Paul Krugman, a good friend of DeLong, was an advisor to Enron during that time. Do you think there is a Krugman-Enron-DeLong-Taliban conspiracy is being covered up?

That's no longer spamming, that's clogging the toilet with toilet paper.

Abort.

The spanish attack just demonstrated that
Dean was 100% correct when he said that the capture of Saddam did nhot make us any safer.

There is an unstated, and I believe, illegitimate assumption at work here, which is that there are only so many resources available to combat external threats, *and* America is already close to its limits on that score. This strikes me as manifestly untrue. If it *were* true, why is there still supposedly an unemployment problem as we speak?

If America could take down Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan at once, it can certainly take down Saddam *and* Osama bin Laden; Matthew Yglesias' argument has a glib plausibility to it and has the (no doubt considerable) additional merit of striking a partisan blow against George W. Bush, but it simply doesn't hold water. America hasn't been exactly inactive in chasing down Islamic terrorists throughout the last two years, whether in Georgia, the Philippines, Mali or good old Afghanistan.

Mick writes:

"Do you think there is a Krugman-Enron-DeLong-Taliban conspiracy is being covered up?"

No. But then I'm not the one to ask about THAT. Am I, mick?

July 19, 2003, 12:12AM

U.S. tallied up assets well before war

Documents list Cheney group's activities

By DAVID IVANOVICH

Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The energy task force led by Vice President Dick Cheney was examining maps of Iraq's oil assets in March 2001, two years before the United States led an invasion to oust Saddam Hussein, newly released documents show.

The documents, obtained by the public interest group Judicial Watch after a protracted court battle with the White House, show Iraq's oil fields, its major refineries and pipelines.

The papers also list companies from countries that were interested in doing business with Saddam's regime, ranging from Algeria to Vietnam.

The documents also detail oil and gas projects in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and include information on the cost and status of projects in those countries.

The context and importance of the documents remained murky Friday. They were accompanied by a series of e-mails between the State Department and the Commerce Department. The e-mails, however, had been "redacted," Judicial Watch said, and couldn't be read...

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/2001799

BTW, Mick...

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Taliban Met With U.S. Often

Talks centered on ways to hand over bin Laden

The Washington Post

October 29, 2001

WASHINGTON -- Over three years and on as many continents, U.S. officials met in public and secret at least 20 times with Taliban representatives to discuss ways the regime could bring suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden to justice.

Talks continued until just days before the Sept. 11 attacks, and Taliban representatives repeatedly suggested they would hand over bin Laden if their conditions were met, sources close to the discussions said...

http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/timeline/2001/wpost102901.html

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...Are YOU holding a 'flush' in this 'great game'?

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Bin Laden comes home to roost

His CIA ties are only the beginning of a woeful story

By Michael Moran
MSNBC

NEW YORK, Aug. 24, 1998 — At the CIA, it happens often enough to have a code name: Blowback. Simply defined, this is the term that describes an agent, an operative or an operation that has turned on its creators. Osama bin Laden, our new public enemy Number 1, is the personification of blowback. And the fact that he is viewed as a hero by millions in the Islamic world proves again the old adage: Reap what you sow...

http://www.msnbc.com/news/190144.asp?cp1=1

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...Have you met Jane?

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Why was Russia's intelligence on Al-Qaeda ignored?

Back in March Moscow's Permanent Mission at the UN submitted to the UN Security Council an unprecedentedly detailed report on Al-Qaeda's terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan, but the US government opted not to act. To find out why - and to discover the astonishing degree of information contained in that report - buy the latest special issue of Jane's Intelligence Digest online for just $36....

http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jid/jidpromo011005.shtml

"If America could take down Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan at once"

It didn't.

"If America could take down Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan at once"

And it most certainly didn't do it alone, nor while cutting taxes, nor while failing to mobilize its entire population to the war effort.

Because George Bush decided, against all evidence, that Iraq was the best next target in the war against terrorism, the US military is now incapable of fighting a conventional war anywhere in the world other than Iraq. We may, indeed we must, hope that no such war will be required.

The fact is, we have a very few highly capable service people who plan and fight the sort of unconventional battles needed to combat Al Queda. They are neither easily replacable nor easily increased in number. They were diverted in large part from their uncompleted work in Afganistan to Iraq. This was dumb, it hurt us, and George Bush did it. It's a firing offense, punishible in November.

Lots of good posts. But I'm still not clear, did Bush and Cheney blew up those trains in Madrid, or was it work of Enron with the help of advise from Krugman
and Taliban?

Ask Aznar.

Mick asks:

"...I'm still not clear, did Bush and Cheney blew up those trains in Madrid...?"

Don't believe I ever suggested they did, Mick.

But just in case you're trying to figure who I think probably did do that AND why, ask yourself THIS question:

Are "Bush and Cheney" responsible for blowing up those mosques in Iraq recently?

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CIA: Iraq security to get worse: Bremer meets with White House advisers to discuss situation

Wednesday, November 12, 2003 Posted: 4:57 AM EST (0957 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A recent CIA assessment of Iraq warns the security situation will worsen across the country, not just in Baghdad but in the north and south as well, a senior administration source told CNN Tuesday.

The report is a much more dire and ominous assessment of the situation than has previously been forwarded through official channels, this source said. It was sent to Washington Monday by the CIA station chief in Iraq.

It was not immediately clear if the assessment was what prompted the hastily arranged trip to Washington by Iraq civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer, who met Tuesday at the White House with President Bush and senior national security officials.

The report was discussed during the high-level meetings, sources said.

The senior administration source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Bremer agreed with the CIA assessment and added his personal comments to the station chief's memo...."

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/11/11/sprj.irq.cia/

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Friday, February 20, 2004

Iraq Notebook: CIA chief in Baghdad removed

WASHINGTON — The CIA recently removed its top officer in Baghdad, Iraq, because of questions about his ability to lead the massive station there.
A senior U.S. official acknowledged that the CIA station chief in Baghdad was removed in December after weeks of increasingly deadly and sophisticated attacks against U.S.-led coalition forces and civilian targets.

"There was just a belief that it was a huge operation and we needed a very senior, very experienced person to run it," the official said...

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001861627_iraqdig20.html

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Chalabi, Garner Provide New Clues to War

By Jim Lobe, InterPress 21/02/04

Feb 23, 2004, 11:29

WASHINGTON - For those still puzzling over the whys and wherefores of Washington's invasion of Iraq 11 months ago, major new, but curiously unnoticed, clues were offered this week by two central players in the events leading up to the war...

...In a remarkably frank interview with the London 'Daily Telegraph', Chalabi said he was willing to take full responsibility for the INC's role in providing misleading intelligence and defectors to President George W. Bush, Congress and the U.S. public to persuade them that Hussein posed a serious threat to the United States that had to be dealt with urgently.

The Telegraph reported that Chalabi merely shrugged off accusations his group had deliberately misled the administration. "We are heroes in error", he said.

"As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful", he told the newspaper. "That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important...

...Within the administration, Chalabi worked most closely with those who had championed his cause for a decade, particularly neo-conservatives around Cheney and Rumsfeld -- Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defence Douglas Feith and Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby.

Feith's office was home to the office of special plans (OSP) whose two staff members and dozens of consultants were tasked with reviewing raw intelligence to develop the strongest possible case that Hussein represented a compelling threat to the United States.

OSP also worked with the defence policy board (DPB), a hand-picked group of mostly neo-conservative hawks chaired until just before the war by Richard Perle, a long-time Chalabi friend.

DPB members, particularly Perle, former CIA director James Woolsey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, played prominent roles in publicising through the media reports by INC defectors and other alleged evidence developed by OSP that made Hussein appear as scary as possible.

Chalabi even participated in a secret DPB meeting just a few days after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon in which the main topic of discussion, according to the 'Wall Street Journal', was how 9/11 could be used as a pretext for attacking Iraq...

...one of the reasons for going to war was suggested quite directly by Garner -- who also worked closely with Chalabi and the same cohort of U.S. hawks in the run-up to the war and during the first few weeks of occupation -- in an interview with 'The National Journal'.

Asked how long U.S. troops might remain in Iraq, Garner replied, "I hope they're there a long time..."

http://www.ocnus.net/artman/publish/article_10587.shtml

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Posted 3/2/2004 3:06 AM Updated 3/2/2004 3:01 PM

Blasts rock shrines during Shiite fest; four bombers nabbed in Basra

From staff and wire reports

BAGHDAD — Coordinated attacks in Baghdad and Karbala, aimed at Shiite Muslim pilgrims celebrating one of the holiest days of the year, left more than 143 dead and another 100 wounded and raised new concerns about civil war in Iraq...

...Last month, U.S. officials released what they said was a letter by a Jordanian militant outlining a strategy of spectacular attacks on Shiites, aimed at sparking a Sunni-Shiite civil war.

The fear of civil war in Iraq remains large, U.S. officials said. Similar secretarian bomb attacks between Muslim religion groups lead to the civil war that engulfed Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-03-02-explosions_x.htm?csp=1

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March 10, 2004

On Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: The Uses of al-Qaeda "Links"

By GARY LEUPP

...That Amazingly Useful "Zarqawi Letter"

According to the New York Times (which has a long distinguished history breaking these kinds of stories), on January 23 U.S. forces raided an "al-Qaeda safe house" in Baghdad, netting a CD-Rom with a letter addressed to the inner circle of al-Qaeda. The author is not indicated, but reportedly someone captured in the house said it was written by Zarqawi to al-Qaeda....

...The text, translated from Arabic by the Coalition Provisional Authority, immediately appeared in abbreviated form on the National Review and Project for a New American Century and other such websites, just as you'd expect. They leave out much of the preamble, which comprises half the text of the 17-page missive, which recounts Iraq's religious and ethnic history in detail that you'd think wouldn't be at all necessary in a communication between a longtime al-Qaeda intimate and bin Laden's inner circle. The writer denounces Shiites as snakes and vermin, does not recognize them as Muslims, and accuses them of working with the infidels. It notes that (1) the Americans have been "befriended" by the majority Shiites, (2) the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty by June 1 will effectively end Iraqi resistance, and so (3) the al-Qaeda-linked resistance forces should do their best to provoke a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis so that the Coalition forces will have to remain and thus remain targets of the jihad..."

http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp03102004.html

And I thought conservative trolls were annoying...

You thought?! Coulda' fooled me...Just kidding, non econ.

(No, REALLY--I MEAN it. Snarkery becomes you. And, in a pinch, it'll occasionally even pass for 'thought'--in certain small, VERY tight, 'circles' ;-)

please go back to the Snoozenet, Mike.

Mick writes "Lots of good posts."

Where, where?

Causing some of us ( I mean me) to wonder if Mike, not Mick, is the straight guy.

Just a thought, Mike: Most of us just have a regular monitor that shows only ~30 lines of text. (Not one of those 90 line beauties that maybe you have.) And we only have the 1 Page Down button unlike the newer machines, I'm sure.
I liked your response to non economist because it was concise and ...seemed to recognize that other folks use this space too.

Yeah? Imagine if Gore was at ground zero, walking around like an Irish cop from the forties:

"Keep movin'. Shows over nuttin' to see here!"

AL:
>
"There is an unstated, and I believe, illegitimate assumption at work here, which is that there are only so many resources available to combat external threats, *and* America is already close to its limits on that score. This strikes me as manifestly untrue. If it *were* true, why is there still supposedly an unemployment problem as we speak?"
>

I'll ignore the broader picture and focus on something specific: America most certainly does have a finite, and too small, number of Arab language speakers with security clearance. The few we had were diverted from Al Queda fighting efforts for the Iraqi adventure.

It has quite likely hindered our efforts to attack AQ.

How was the US attack on Afghanistan an attack on Al Qaeda? It's bullshit, just like most of what Brad says.

The Spanish electorate with its cowardly behavior has handed Al Qaeda a huge victory. It is the biggest moral defeat for European civilization since the 1940's.

A once great people has disgraced itself.

See my March 16 comments on the Spanish attack a short distance below on the "Matt Yglesias-Colin Powell thread -- but I'll add one more point.

It is high time that the US stoppped deluding itself that the European nations have anything close to the same interests regarding the Moslem world that we do. They do not. In particular, they don't give a damn what happens to Israel; their domestic politics, unlike those of the US, do not revolve around a need to preserve Israel's existence (even in Britain); and if Israel was destroyed tomorrow by the Arabs they would continue to get along quite unruffled. That factor -- that very important divergence of interests -- has to be taken into account in any attempt this country makes to gain European cooperation against the Moslem world. (And there's no point in pretending that this divergence is entirely because Americans are Good and Europeans are Evil, either -- the US feels a continuing obligation to defend Israel largely because it was only our recognition of it in 1948 that allowed it to come into existence at all, and abandoning it now would damage our prestige. (By the way, despite all the endless talk about how visionary Truman was in recognizing it, Peter Drucker says that the precise reason Truman gave an aide for doing so was that "There aren't any Arab votes in the Bronx.")

wcw & Calmo:

Besides specious, irrelevant and/or ad hominem 'arguments', would one or both of you please tell me what "other people"--people like you two, I mean--"use this space" for?

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Joe:

"...A once great people has disgraced itself."

The funny thing about your 'take' on the Spanish is:

That's almost exactly the same thing the guys who won THEIR elections were saying about US...

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Bruce:

Click here...

http://www.americans-world.org/digest/regional_issues/IsraelPalestinians/viewConflict.cfm

...you MIGHT learn something:

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"[The} PIPA [Program on International Policy Attitudes] is a joint program of the Center on Policy Attitudes (COPA) and the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland."

>>Regional Issues>>Israel and the Palestinians

View of Israel-Palestinian Conflict

A plurality to solid majority [of Americans] takes an even-handed view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, blaming both sides equally and expressing equal levels of sympathy, though a larger minority takes a more favorable view of Israel than of the Palestinians. A substantial majority feels neither side has made enough effort to seek peace, and a majority questions each side's fundamental commitment to peace. Americans see the conflict more as a struggle over land than as part of the war on terrorism. An overwhelming majority rejects the idea that Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians are a legitimate means of resisting Israeli occupation...

Misperceptions

Only one quarter of Americans know that a majority of countries are more sympathetic to the Palestinian position, while only four in ten know that a majority of countries disapprove of US Middle East policy. Only one in three are aware that more Palestinians than Israelis have died in the recent conflict.

Many Americans appear to have a number of key misperceptions about the situation in the Middle East. When asked for their impressions on whether "more countries in the world are more sympathetic to the Israeli or the Palestinian position, or is it roughly balanced?" only 27% knew that more countries are more sympathetic to the Palestinian position. Sixty-one percent mistakenly thought that a majority of countries were either more sympathetic to the Israeli position (22%), or that sympathies were "roughly balanced" (39%). Twelve percent did not give an answer.[1]

Only 43% knew that more countries disapprove than approve of "how the US has generally dealt with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Forty-seven percent mistakenly believed that more countries approve than disapprove (18%), or that the numbers of countries approving and disapproving were "roughly balanced" (29%). Another 9% did not answer. [2]

Asked whether "so far this year, more Israelis or more Palestinians have died in the conflict, or is the number roughly equal?" only 32% of respondents were aware that more deaths have occurred on the Palestinian side than on the Israeli side. Half believed that either more Israelis had died (15%), or that the deaths suffered by Israelis and Palestinians had been roughly equal (35%). Another 18% did not answer.[3]

"The Spanish electorate with its cowardly behavior has handed Al Qaeda a huge victory. It is the biggest moral defeat for European civilization since the 1940's."

Nah, that happened when the US attacked Iraq to overturn a secular regime OBL hated passionately. Chances are today that tomorrow's Iraq will over time look much closer to OBL's dream vision than our official secular roadmap. Well done! Of course, I assume you also think OBL was dreading that the US would loose the peace in Afghanistan. "The Afghan people are going to know the full extent of the American people's generosity" said the President back then. This is so sad: it's actually an insult to the American people (as I know them.)

"If America could take down Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan at once"

May I remind you that Imperial Japan attacked the US first whereas prior to invasion Saddam's regime had allowed weapons inspectors in and was torward the end destroying even non-WMD's. It had destroyed all its (limited) bio-chemical capabilities during the first inspection regime. There has never been any nuclear weapons in Iraq and there was no such program before this invasion (in spite of Cheney's and Rumsfeld, yes, lies.)

How about you just post links to these things, and then abstract a few choice IMPORTANT POINTS.

Jeez.

" Matthew Yglesias' argument has a glib plausibility to it"

Yes, the same glib plausibility that Krugman's column today has. Both sound an awful lot like James Carville.

" It is high time that the US stoppped deluding itself that the European nations have anything close to the same interests regarding the Moslem world that we do. They do not. In particular, they don't give a damn what happens to Israel "

Who are you, and what have you done with Bruce Moomaw" The above could be dubbed the Bush Doctrine.

" the US attacked Iraq to overturn a secular regime OBL hated passionately."

So, Jean Phillippe, why did Al Qaeda then attack Spain for HELPING us attack Iraq?

Mike: As I said yesterday, fuck off and die. You really hate us, don't you? The feeling is mutual.

Abiola: In the actual world we live in, resources were taken away from the fight against al Qaeda and sent to Iraq. At the actual level of mobilization we have, the American forces are now stretched to the limit. Bush has never shown any signs of making demands on the American people -- taz cuts is his thing. Given these realities, Matt is completely right.

For Spanish or American voters to vote based on what they think Osama wants is stupidity. We don't know what he wants. Even the loathsome Mickey Kaus has acknowledged that Osama might want Bush to stay in office for another term to "sharpen the contradictions".

If replacing Aznar, Bush, and Blair ends up leading to a better-targetted anti-terrorism policy, Osama will end up the loser. That seems quite possible and I hope it happens.

Incidentally -- yes, the immediate perception om the famously-volatile "Arab Street" (which hawks normally tell us to ignore) probably is that "al Qaeda won". But that perception can be changed. To make that the be-all of western-world politics is raving hysteria.

I don't think that anyone has even tried to answer Matt's main point: If Bush succeeds, we must follow him, and if he fails, even more so we must follow him. This is the lemming argument which has been used time and again during security crises. The Republicans have been egregious about using 9/11 as a red herring to force consent on pet unrelated issues -- tax cuts, anti-civil-service rules, Alaskan oil drilling, etc.

>
"So, Jean Phillippe, why did Al Qaeda then attack Spain for HELPING us attack Iraq?"
>

Ah, this is mistaken on so many levels. First: you are begging the question. Did AQ attack Spain? That is the point the start

Second, Assuming AQ did attack Iraq, it is no simple matter to discern what their intention was. Indeed, it may even be a fool's errand to try and divine, with regards to our policies, or Spain's policy.

Third, it would be simple to argue that AQ would love a failed state, or open civil war, in Iraq. It would be a great recruiting ground for them, it would be a nice place to operate, and it would be big black eye for the US. So, assuming that AQ did have some role in the attack, it in no way shows that AQ liked Saddam or his regime, or that the war on Iraq was somehow linked to AQ.

"Second, Assuming AQ did attack Iraq" Er, Spain, I meant.

"Did AQ attack Spain? That is the point the start"

Well, Al Qaeda has taken credit for the bombing. The new Spanish PM thinks they did. And:

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/03/15/spain.invest/index.html

-----------quote-----------
MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- A document published months before national elections reveals al Qaeda planned to separate Spain from its allies by carrying out terror attacks.

A December posting on an Internet message board used by al Qaeda and its sympathizers and obtained by CNN, spells out a plan to topple the pro-U.S. government.

"We think the Spanish government will not stand more than two blows, or three at the most, before it will be forced to withdraw because of the public pressure on it," the al Qaeda document says.

[snip]

Meanwhile, one of the five men arrested in connection with the bombings has links to the plotters of an al Qaeda-linked bombing in Casablanca last year, CNN has learned.

[snip]

One of the men, Jamal Zougam, 30, has ties to two brothers who have been charged in connection with the Casablanca bomb plot, according to a Moroccan government official.

Zougam is also believed to be a follower of Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, the alleged ringleader of al Qaeda in Spain, according to a Spanish court document.
----------endquote----------

The Republican Slime Machine is oozing forward:

http://tinyurl.com/2bn33

I haven't "done anything with Bruce Moomaw", Patrick. I'm still me. It's always been glaringly clear that the US is tremendously more anxious to preserve the existence of Israel than Europe is (for reasons not having all that much to do with the fact that We Are Better Than They, as I carefully pointed out -- although doubtless anti-Semitism is still stronger in Europe than in the US). It is high time that American administrations stopped pretending otherwise, and faced the fact that our actions against the Moslem world will be supported by the Europeans ONLY to the extent that they are NOT connected with any strong attempts to preserve the existence of Israel. To put it in the ugliest but clearest way: we may very soon have to choose between abandoning our support for Israel or being abandoned ourselves by Europe. And, whatever we decide to do in response, we had better base our decision on facing that brutally unavoidable strategic fact.

The Europeans are not one bit more "cowardly" than we are. If Israel ceased to exist and the European nations continued to be attacked by Moslem terrorists anyway, they would lash back furiously at the Moslems -- because, in that case, they really WOULD see this as a matter of self-preservation. But they are not willing to die for Israel -- let alone for an Iraq war whose strategic rationale is cockamamie even if you DO want strongly to preserve Israel (as I do).

Patrick scripts:
"-----------quote-----------
MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- A document published months before national elections reveals al Qaeda planned to separate Spain from its allies by carrying out terror attacks."
And buys it I guess. Are we really expected to follow suit? Is the 'CNN' in there as some sort of credential?
Please...

So, Bruce, you're voting for Bush?

Probably not, Patrick -- although I would probably have held my nose very tightly indeed and voted for him against Dean. I see even less evidence that Bush has taken the lack of European enthusiasm for preserving Israel into account in his strategic calculations than that Kerry has done so. Kerry at least recognizes that we are going to have to make some concessions to the European nations to keep them on our side, and that keeping them at least partially on our side is necessary. Bush shows absolutely no sign of recognizing this, and keeps stubbornly (or stupidly) insisting to them, "My way or the highway." Not surprisingly, most of them are taking the highway -- there are signs today that Poland may soon follow suit, since its president announced publicly today that "the US deceived us" about the existence of Iraqi WMDs. (Of course, this is only what one expects from a US president who regards analytical thought not only as unnecessary but as an actual evil.)