foreign-policy : Duthie On...

So the Pentagon released a report that says, among other things:

One question remains regarding Iraq’s terrorism capability: Is there anything in the captured archives to indicate that Saddam had the will to use his terrorist capabilities directly against United States? Judging from examples of Saddam’s statements (Extract 34) before the 1991 Gulf War with the United tates, the answer is yes.

In the years between the two Gulf Wars, UN sanctions reduced Saddam’s ability to shape regional and world events, steadily draining his military, economic, and military powers. The rise of Islamist fundamentalism in the region gave Saddam the opportunity to make terrorism, one of the few tools remaining in Saddam’s “coercion” toolbox, not only cost effective but a formal instrument of state power. Saddam nurtured this capability with an infrastructure supporting (1) his own particular brand of state terrorism against internal and external threats, (2) the state sponsorship of suicide operations, and (3) organizational relationships and “outreach programs” for terrorist groups. Evidence that was uncovered and analyzed attests to the existence of a terrorist capability and a willingness to use it until the day Saddam was forced to flee Baghdad by Coalition forces.

The New York Times headline, meanwhile, says of the report:

Study Finds No Qaeda-Hussein Tie

Of course, the first line of the article qualifies the headline significantly:

There was no direct operational connection between Saddam Hussein’s government and Al Qaeda before the war in Iraq, says a Pentagon-sponsored study.

The study, meanwhile, found clear connections between Saddam Hussein's IIS security organization and, among others, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was run by none other than al Qaeda #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Seems appropriate somehow for the media to be in such denial about the truth of Saddam's support for terrorists, given that denial's not just a river in Egypt.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Saddam supported at least two al-Qaeda groups: Pentagon Update: What it means

OK, so could someone please tell me exactly when Castro actually stood for re-election? Perhaps the Miami Herald could use a little reminder of what the term "dictator" actually means:

Saying he is no longer healthy enough to hold office, Cuban leader Fidel Castro has announced he will not seek reelection after 49 years in power and nearly 19 months sidelined by illness, marking the first official step in a long-awaited succession in the island's leadership.

The report returns to the same theme later:

And now he has made clear that he will not seek reelection, making way for a new leadership for his communist government.

But two paragraphs later observes:

Now it remains to be seen whether his 76-year-old brother Raũl … the world's longest serving defense minister and designated successor, will be named to officially take the reins of power, although Fidel Castro is widely expected to retain a strong voice in the country's strategic decisions for the time being.

While the article does eventually use the term "dictatorship" to describe the Castro regime (though it's via a quote from the leader of a Cuban exile group), the constant invocation of "reelection" is simply wrong, misleading, and disgusting when applied to a man who has ruled Cuba with an iron fist for nearly 50 years, and run the country and its people into the ground.

Good riddance to Castro, and here's hoping that his brother fails to hold onto power for another 50 years. And in the meantime, how about a little honesty about this family of Latin American tyrants?

Fidel Castro stepping down after nearly 50 years - 02/19/2008 - MiamiHerald.com

OK, it was bad enough when the threat was lead paint in kids' toys...now this: 

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Beijing factory recycled used chopsticks and sold up to 100,000 pairs a day without any form of disinfection, a newspaper said on Wednesday, the latest is a string of food and product safety scares.

Counterfeit, shoddy and dangerous products are widespread in China, whose exports have been rocked in recent months by a spate of safety scandals, ranging from pet food to medicine, tires, toothpaste and toys.

Officials raided the factory and seized about half a million pairs of recycled disposable bamboo chopsticks and a packaging machine, the Beijing News said.

As I've said before...it's not that this comes as a shock to me, though you can be sure I'll stick with my own utensils from now on...it's that I'm surprised that it's taking us so long to realize just how problematic Chinese goods are.

And it's worse than just potentially contaminated chopsticks, lead-coated toys, or poisoned toothpaste. Part of every dollar spent on Chinese goods ends up in the hands of the Communist government, which is busy building up its military to confront...well, it's not as though they have any major adversaries in Asia, so I wonder who they are preparing to confront.

Since geopolitical reasons haven't been enough to convince most Americans to avoid Chinese goods, I wonder if a wave of product recalls will be. My guess is that these will soon be forgotten, in the pursuit of cheaper goods.

Now dirty chopsticks picked up in China scare - washingtonpost.com

Apparently Barak Obama has figured out how to win the war on terrorism:

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would possibly send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists, an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.

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The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

OK, so we'll invade Pakistan, which has been comparatively cooperative in the war against terrorism, but Iran, which is one of the major sponsors of terrorism worldwide, gets face-to-face talks? Sure, I guess that makes sense in Democrat fantasyland.

Good luck with that, Obama.

Obama might send troops into Pakistan - Yahoo! News

Saudis attempting to silence critics who claim they're funding terrorism in the name of charity? Sounds like it:

Here’s a story with huge implications for freedom of speech (all negative), and it’s apparently gone almost entirely unreported in the mainstream press. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required), under threat of a law suit, Cambridge University Press has just agreed to pulp all unsold copies of the 2006 book, Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World. According to the Chronicle, this is the fourth such book on terrorism funding to be pursued by a libel action. The Chronicle quotes Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center for Democracy, whose own book, Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed–and How to Stop It is one of the four books.

In an interview on Monday, Ms. Ehrenfeld characterized as "despicable" Cambridge's decision to settle this week, a move the press has defended as necessary and just. Ms. Ehrenfeld, who is a friend of Mr. Burr's [one of the authors of Alms for Jihad], said that, as she understands it, press officials "caved immediately."

"They didn't even consider the evidence that the authors had given them," she said. "They received a threatening letter, and they immediately caved in and said, Do whatever it takes. Pay them whatever they want. Ban the book, destroy the book, we don't want this lawsuit."

Very disturbing to see publishing houses just rolling over in the face of these suits.

Read the whole thing.

More here.

The Corner on National Review Online

Apparently, the U.N.'s idea of punishment for sex abuse by its peacekeepers is to send them home:

ABIDJAN, Cote d'Ivoire (Reuters) -- The United Nations said on Saturday it had suspended a Moroccan military contingent from its peacekeeping mission in Cote d'Ivoire while it investigated allegations of widespread sexual abuse.

"It means they don't participate in our operations," said Hamadoun Toure, spokesman for the U.N. mission in Cote d'Ivoire (ONUCI). "Those who are found guilty will be sent back home."

I suppose that beats allowing them to continue to sexually abuse those they are supposed to be protecting, but it's pretty typical of the U.N. to be too busy attacking the U.S. or Israel to be able to do anything serious about fraud and abuse in its ranks.

U.N. suspends peacekeepers amid sex abuse charges - CNN.com

Andy McCarthy on the Iraq war and the surge:

That's why I get so disheartened when I hear the president talk this nonsense about the universality of freedom.  If the surge is just about Iraqi freedom, we shouldn't be doing it.  The American people don't care what form of government Iraq has — not enough to fight a war over it.  They care about defeating enemies who threaten the United States, and the president has never made the case — nor do I think he could — that American national security is materially affected by whether Iraq remains Iraq as we know it, whether it is democratic, or whether the Shiites and Sunnis — despite knowing they are being played by al Qaeda — decide they nonetheless need to slaughter each other in order to somehow vindicate Allah the Merciful and the Compassionate.

and

Until we finally decide to do what obviously needs doing, the overall war can't be won.  But if we have no intention of doing what needs doing, then it pointless to go on.  That is why regular Americans — not the media and the Left, but regular Americans — have not gotten four-square behind the surge.  If we are not committed to REAL victory, meaning defeating this enemy—which is far from limited to the Iraqi insurgency and includes Iran and al Qaeda's new safe-haven on the Pakistani/Afghan border — then that's slow-motion defeat.  If we're for slow-motion defeat, we should stop belittling the people who are ready to sign off on defeat now.  I don't think we are for slow-motion defeat.  But that means we've got to start demanding a plan to win the whole thing, not just to avoid losing in the Iraq theater.

I think he's mostly on-target here. Bush has chosen, over and over again, to make the case for the Iraq war in a Wilsonian, "save the Iraqis" fashion, perhaps in an attempt (albeit a hopeless one, IMO) to win over the left. In the meantime, by not making the conservative argument (kill our enemies), and by fighting with half-measures, and largely ignoring the provocations and outright acts of war against us being committed by Iran, the President has signaled to the right that he is not serious about winning, which has lost him support on the right.

I hope that as a country we will commit ourselves to winning the war against radical Islamic terrorists, and preferably before another major attack on our homeland. But like McCarthy, I'm not entirely confident that's what will happen.

The Corner on National Review Online

Bob Novak:

I never spoke to Armitage again about Wilson. But he acknowledged to me nearly three months later through his political adviser, lobbyist Ken Duberstein, that he was indeed the primary source for my information about Wilson's wife. Shortly thereafter, he secretly revealed his role to federal authorities investigating the leak of Mrs. Wilson's name but did not inform White House officials, apparently including the president.

After Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago named as a special prosecutor in the case, indicated to me he knew Armitage was my source, I cooperated fully with him. At the special prosecutor's request and on my lawyers' advice, I kept silent about this -- a silence that subjected me to much abuse. I was urged by several friends, including some journalists, to give up my source's name. But I felt bound by the journalist's code to protect his identity.

So now that the columnist whose column began the whole sordid affair that has resulted in the perjury conviction of Scooter Libby has publicly acknowledged what we've all known to be the truth for months, namely that Richard Armitage, not Scooter Libby, leaked Plame's name, and did so in a meeting that was scheduled before Joe Wilson's Times op-ed criticizing the administration appeared, can we expect the Left to drop the baseless assertion that Plame was outed by the Bush administration to punish Wilson?

Of course not...because this was never about the truth. It was about attempting to destroy the Bush administration at any cost. Never mind that the cost increasingly appears to be defeat in Iraq (a defeat that was not inevitable), if the democrats have their way, and possibly defeat in the war on terror. If that's the way it truly shakes out, the price Libby is paying for the left's obsessive Bush Derangement Syndrome is nothing compared to the price the country will likely pay in the future, in lives lost to Islamist terrorism.

CIA leak: Now it can be told :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State

 Iain Murray observes, regarding the foiled London car bomb:

James Forsyth of The Spectator has an important comment:

One of the great delusions of our time is that once Blair, in the UK case, and Bush, in the American one, stepped down from office the terrorist threat would disappear. The news that a car bomb attack was foiled in London last night illustrates just how wrong this belief was. Although, the fact that the vast bulk of planning for the 9/11 attacks was done during the Clinton presidency should have shown people how wrong-headed this idea was in the first place.

Even George Galloway might have difficulty pointing to this attempted outrage as down to Brown's close relationship with the USA. Probably won't stop them trying, though.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the recent knighting of Salman Rushdie as a possible motivation. Granted, the planning for this attack may have started before that, but what the Islamist reaction to the Rushdie case highlights is the fact that it's not about US/UK relations, nor about our policies in the Middle East. The only way to satisfy the Islamists' demands would be to surrender entirely to what they want. Because even if we pulled out of the Middle East entirely, and abandoned Israel completely, there would still be things that we do that would cause outrage among the Islamists, and they would still use that as an excuse for their desire to conquer us all.

Source: The Corner on National Review Online

UPDATE: Looks like I was right. According to ThisIsLondon (H/T Stanley Kurtz), a posting on a jihadist website that preceded the attacks used the knighting of Rushdie as one of the justifications for the attacks. No surprise, as any excuse is a good excuse for these murderers.

OK, so perhaps that isn't an exact quote, but he certainly seems to be a fan, and views them as having won a "democratic mandate" to lead. This should come as no surprise for Carter, who's never met an anti-American thug he didn't like, but what's remarkable is Carter being so open about supporting a terrorist organization supported by Iran:

The United States, Israel and the European Union must end their policy of favoring Fatah over Hamas, or they will doom the Palestinian people to deepening conflict between the rival movements, former US President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday.

Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was addressing a conference of Irish human rights officials, said the Bush administration's refusal to accept the 2006 election victory of Hamas was "criminal."

Carter is an embarrassment to the U.S. and to himself. The sooner he fades into obscurity, the better for the world.

Source: Carter: Stop favoring Fatah over Hamas | Jerusalem Post

This one, with the Hoover Institution's Peter Robinson, is a little more substantive than his appearance on Leno:

The more I hear, the more I like.

As an aside, I should mention that in last week's GOP debate, Rudy Giuliani impressed the heck out of me with his answer on health insurance, namely, that a major part of the problem is the disconnect between the individual and the costs of their health care, thanks to government and employers being intermediaries in how most of us pay for health insurance. He also made the critical point that unlike homeowner's insurance or car insurance, which don't cover routine expenses like oil changes, most health "insurance" policies are required to cover such expenses (mostly due to government mandates), and this drives up the cost of health care for everyone. Although I've been critical of Giuliani, and still don't think he'll win the nomination, I look forward to seeing Rudy and Fred battle it out in the debates, as I think that will be great for substantive discussion of the issues.

More disturbing news about the wanna-be superpower in the east: 

China arming terrorists
    New intelligence reveals China is covertly supplying large quantities of small arms and weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, through Iran.
    U.S. government appeals to China to check some of the arms shipments in advance were met with stonewalling by Beijing, which insisted it knew nothing about the shipments and asked for additional intelligence on the transfers. The ploy has been used in the past by China to hide its arms-proliferation activities from the United States, according to U.S. officials with access to the intelligence reports.
    Some arms were sent by aircraft directly from Chinese factories to Afghanistan and included large-caliber sniper rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and components for roadside bombs, as well as other small arms.

How long are we going to pretend that China is not an enemy? Well, I suppose if we're not willing to confront Iran, despite the fact that they're arming and training insurgents to kill Americans in Iraq, we're hardly going to do so for a nation with a much larger army, that already has nukes.

But could we not at least be open about the fact that they are not our allies? And I'm not talking about either the Chinese or Iranian people...I'm talking about the governments whose policies are explicitly and tacitly anti-American.

Source: Inside the Ring - Nation/Politics - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

This is an amazing story about a brilliant maneuver pulled off by one of the amazing folks serving in Iraq to avert a bloodbath in Anbar:

The Final Option

Read the whole thing, because it's surely a story that won't be told in the mainstream media.

Source: Michael Yon : Online Magazine » Blog Archive » The Final Option

While celebrating this weekend, don't forget to take time out to remember the reason we celebrate Memorial Day...all the men and women who have sacrificed to make the United States what it is, and who continue to sacrifice to protect our lives and our freedoms.

Day By Day cartoon has some observations on the subject, too:

This is just plain idiotic.

Besides, we already have a Department of Peace. It's just better known by its proper name, the Department of Defense. Perhaps just to annoy these people, we should go back to the original name, the Department of War.

In this Corner post, Andy McCarthy points out, based on things we either know to be true, or cannot rule out, the absurdity of the immediate dismissal of any connection between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and 9/11.

The gist is that there is abundant evidence of significant, ongoing, and operational ties between al Qaeda and Iraq, going back at least to the 1990s, and there's plenty of reason to believe that part of the animus for bin Laden's fatwa against Americans involved sympathy for Iraq (see this post for bin Laden in his own words). And there were at least two meetings (both of which are discussed in the first linked post) between Iraqi intelligence and key 9/11 figures that have not, to date, been either disproven or explained.

So while it's fair to say that we don't have enough evidence of Iraqi involvement in 9/11 to prove a case in a U.S. court of law, I think McCarthy is spot on in say there's more than enough for us to make decisions regarding foreign policy and defending the U.S.

I also think McCarthy is absolutely right to be frustrated by the bizarre reluctance of the Bush administration to put forth a robust defense of the intelligence and the decision making process leading up to the war. While key parts of the case for war turned out to be at least partially incorrect (while no WMDs turned up in Iraq, it's simply not true to conclude from that, as some on the left are attempting, that Iraq never had them), others, such as Saddam's status as a threat to the U.S. and to neighboring countries in the middle East, were spot on. Iraq's ties to, and support for, terrorists and terrorism are plain to anyone with eyes to see. In a post-9/11 world, even absent any direct ties to 9/11, that's more than enough justification for removing Saddam. Too bad the administration won't make that case.

When next someone tells you that we're losing in Iraq, and things are worse than when Saddam was in power, you might suggest they read this.

...and you're a Democrat, you can be pretty sure that you've put your foot in it, big time.

If you're Nancy Pelosi, and you've made a damn fool out of yourself by going to terrorist-sponsoring Syria and proclaiming yourself a broker of peace between Syria and Israel, only to have one side you're claiming to represent (Israeli PM Olmert) immediately repudiate what you've claimed, and even the Washington Post feels it necessary to criticize you (link requires registration), well you can feel certain that you've completely botched things. Not that Grandma Nan will care...she's too busy trying to posture and undermine the Bush administration to bother with actual results.

But kudos to the Post (not my favorite paper) for putting reality and results ahead of partisanship this time. And they don't mince words, either:

We have found much to criticize in Mr. Bush's military strategy and regional diplomacy. But Ms. Pelosi's attempt to establish a shadow presidency is not only counterproductive, it is foolish.

Too true, particulary the last part.

Although I wasn't able to make it, my mother and brother attended the Gathering of Eagles counter-protest to the usual moonbattery organized by International ANSWER and funded in part by George Soros.

Although many of the MSM stories would lead one to believe that there were either only a few hundred counter-protestors, or that the anti-war folks outnumbered those who rallied in support of our troops, the folks who were actually there say differently...and their story is bolstered by unofficial park service estimates of 30,000 participants. Not bad for an effort that was organized in a matter of a few weeks.

Michelle Malkin has the best coverage of the event.

That's what it looks like, according to this story. Of course, the DHS has issued a non-denial denial (effectively, yes, we're doing it, but we're required to by international conventions). But no matter how you slice it, this is outrageous. Our own government is colluding with the government of Mexico to effectively make it easier to illegals to slip across the border, and simultaneously endangering volunteer groups like the Minutemen. Whether or not you agree with what the Minutemen are doing (I do...someone has to enforce border security, and if the government won't...), I think nearly everyone should be able to agree that our government shouldn't be in the business of endangering them by tipping off corrupt Mexican officials as to their patrol locations.

Just disgusting.

Very important column by Cliff May. He's right that we haven't begun to fight back in some critical ways. The question is...will we?

Question...why is it that it was imperative that we find out who in the White House "leaked" the identity of Valerie Plame to the media (I use the quotes because left unresolved has been the question of whether Plame actually had covert status at the time, and because of the fact that no crime has been alleged in the case relating to illegally leaking classified information), and yet attempting to discover who at the CIA leaked uncontestably classified information regarding the NSA wiretapping program is labeled a "witch hunt" in an ABC news story?

Anyone with a trace of honesty should be able to grasp that the latter leak has caused actual damage to our national security, while no one has managed to demonstrate any damage from the former, despite the assertions of Patrick Fitzgerald during a news conference...assertions which, notably, are not backed up in any way by the indictments he brought against Scooter Libby.

So what gives? Well, the obvious answer is that in both cases, the media treats the story in the way that will cause the most harm to the Bush administration. When it comes to protecting national security interests, it's apparently only important to the media if that also serves to embarrass our president. Meanwhile, when leaking a story clearly provides aid to our enemies by informing them of our intelligence-gathering methods, the folks at the New York Times, et. al. argue that it's critical to protect the "whistleblowers" who provide them the information that they subsequently use to undermine our ability to find out the terrorists are up to.

Hockey Stick? What Hockey Stick?

In a remarkable, if not surprising, revelation of the arrogance of the management of the New York Times, Times public editor (i.e. - the guy who's job it is to keep the NYT honest in the wake of things like the Jayson Blair scandal) Byron Calame writes that he has been completely stonewalled by management in his attempts to get more information on the questionable timing of their story on the NSA domestic eavesdropping story.

The timing is important for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that the author of the story in the Times also has a book coming out relating to the Bush administration and the war on terrorism, something the Times neglected to note in the story. Calame deals with this briefly towards the end of his article. It's also important because the Times claims to have withheld the story at the request of the government, but published once having satisfied themselves that by omitting certain details, they could publish without damaging national security. Calame suggests that perhaps the publishing of James Risen's book, which apparently includes some discussion of the NSA program in question, might have motivated the Times to go ahead with the story in order to avoid being scooped by their own reporter. If so, this would be yet another indication of how eager the media is to get the story first, no matter the consequences.

What's bizarre to me is that while criticizing his management for their stonewalling, Calame applauds their apparent dogged protection of confidential sources. Have they learned nothing at all from the Plame affair? Why is it that it's important to protect confidential sources in this case, but equally (if not more important) to hang them out to try in the case of the Plame leak?

I've written before that I think that anonymous sourcing is completely out of control. This story, and the Plame affair, are both further evidence of it. The media would have us believe that anonymous sourcing is critical because it protects whistle-blowers. The problem is that it also protects partisan hacks who are willing to endanger national security if it damages the Bush administration. Is that a good thing? Perhaps if you're a liberal. But when the country's newspaper of record treats a president exercising his powers to conduct intelligence gathering against foreign enemies as if it's something new and dangerous, and displays it's willingness to damage our ability to conduct such surveillance, that strikes me as a pretty big deal.

Buried deep within a Times UK story on the grossly corrupt Iraq 'oil-for-food' program, amid revelations that yet more 'oil-for-food' money has been traced to the estranged wife of British anti-war zealot George Galloway, is the following interesting tidbit:

The report found that Marc Rich & Co financed oil purchases from Iraq and the associated kickbacks for the son of a French MP shortly after the company’s founder received a controversial pardon from President Clinton.

One assumes that this would be the self-same Marc Rich that Clinton pardoned on his way out the door of the White House, despite the fact that Rich was, at the time, a fugitive from the law.

I don't expect to see the US mainstream media touting this connection, particularly when they've got today's announced indictment of Scooter Libby to drool over, but it's yet another demonstration of just how corrupt the Clinton administration was, and how that corruption was directly related to the Iraqi problem.

Why, oh why are we continuing to fund this joke of an organization, the corrupt author of the largest scam in human history, the Iraq 'oil-for-food' program, whose latest absurdity is a speech by none other than Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, who had the collosal stones to call Tony Blair and George W. Bush "unholy men" and "international terrorists". This, from the man whose policies have taken productive land from its rightful owners because of the color of their skin, and plunged his country into famine. And the best part is that Mr. Engineered Famine himself was speaking at none other than the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization.

You can't make this stuff up! Other than his opinions on Bush and Blair, one has to wonder whether he was giving lessons on how to starve your own people.

I am simply disgusted that my tax dollars are continuing to fund this obscenity.

[via The Corner]

...just traveling for more than a week, then recovering from same.

In the "news of the weird" vein, apparently UNICEF thinks that bombing Smurfs is an excellent fundraising tool. You can't make this stuff up. Apparently reality isn't "real" enough, so the folks responsible thought it would be more disturbing to show Smurfs being bombed to smithereens.

All this in an effort to prevent "let[ing] war affect the lives of children." Which I suppose I'd find less absurdly hypocritical if it wasn't coming from an organization whose peacekeepers have been responsible for raping and otherwise abusing children who are victims of war. Perhaps UNICEF should start working on a cartoon to be shown to their own corrupt staff instead?

Could someone explain to me again why my tax dollars are funding this organization?

Yesterday, in one of the more ugly political hatchet jobs I've seen recently, the L.A. Times asserted in an editorial entitled "Bolton's Mischief" that actions by U.N. Ambassador John Bolton "would be a death sentence for millions."

This remarkable assertion comes because among the hundreds of amendments the U.S. has proposed to a draft reform document, "[h]is most odious change was to delete all references to the Millennium Development Goals, which commit industrialized nations to cutting world poverty in half by 2015. " The editorial goes on to say:

Part of the deal was that rich countries would eventually contribute 0.7% of their gross national product to foreign aid. The goals were a world-changing burst of optimism from international leaders in 2000, a recognition that all people have the right to be free from misery, starvation and preventable disease and that those able to pay have some responsibility to alleviate needless suffering.

According to the Times, merely stating goals changes the world. I guess actual results don't matter, which makes sense, since there's abundant evidence that simply throwing more money at the problems of poverty doesn't help, and can sometimes make things worse. Whether it's cash foreign aid that ends up in the pockets of despots or food aid that drives down the price of grain locally such that it puts local farmers out of business, exascerbating food shortages over the long run and increasing dependency, foreign aid is often a net negative for those being "aided". This is pure socialist nonsense, and whether the Times wants to acknowledge it or not, it's pretty clear today that socialism is not an especially effective means of reducing suffering. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I think Marian l. Tupy describes foreign aid, its purpose, and its effects quite well:

Foreign aid serves an important purpose. It expiates the guilt that we — the rich — feel for living a comfortable life. Such guilt is misplaced because consumption depends on production. To put it differently, the total value of what we consume equals the total value of what we produce or obtain through voluntary exchange with others. But the cleansing feeling, which comes from lavishing money on the poor, should not be confused with the effect that foreign aid has on African countries. A growing body of evidence suggests that far from helping the poor countries, foreign aid slows economic reform and retards growth.

Much like the domestic "war on poverty," which can only be described as an abject failure given the disparity between the intended and actual results of the programs enacted in its name, foreign aid is too much about making guilty liberals feel better using other people's money (thus the requirement that "rich countries would eventually contribute 0.7% of their gross national product to foreign aid," which in practical terms is mostly about soaking the U.S. since we're "those able to pay" in the Times' parlance), and not enough about measuring and responding to actual results.

If the L.A. Times is concerned about consigning millions in the third world to a "death sentence," then perhaps they could get a little more serious about the actual causes of suffering in the world (hint: John Bolton isn't one of them) instead of engaging in petty political attacks.

The money quote:

I think that calling for "more troops" is a way to criticize while not sounding weak, and that it thus has an appeal that overcomes its uncertain factual foundation.

Pretty much what I've been thinking. Read the whole thing, which also includes some on-target quotes from Kevin Drum.

 

UN Peacekeepers sexually abusing young girls in the Congo, some as young as 13.

Between this and the oil-for-food scandal, I'm wondering why no one other than Norm Coleman is calling for Kofi Annan to resign. He's been singularly ineffective in preventing suffering around the world, and has clearly presided over myriad abuses by UN functionaries and peacekeepers. Time to go, Kofi...

Take a look at all of the obnoxious cartoons linked from The Democracy Project, and tell me that there isn't something terribly wrong with the American left today. The President of the United States nominates as Secretary of State an enormously qualified woman, someone who rose up from poverty, who became one of the youngest university provosts ever, at Stanford University, who in addition to her foreign policy expertise is an accomplished classical pianist, and who happens to be both female and black. One would think this would be a good thing. But one would be wrong...at least if one expected the party of so-called civil rights to applaud this move. Instead, what we get is racist, disgusting, vitriolic caricatures implying that Condoleeza is stupid, that she can't (or won't) think for herself, etc. Simply appalling.

My guess? The left is terrified that a role as Secretary of State might put Condi in a position to run against Hillary in 2008, and they know that Condi would probably clean Hillary's clock. So they will spend the next 4 years attacking her in an effort to either damage her reputation, or make her so disgusted that she chooses not to pursue higher office. Seems to me that the latter is more likely, and that the former could easily blow up in their faces if they're not careful.

 

That's the conclusion of a study by Harvard professor of Public Policy Alberto Abadie, of the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Some interesting points in the article:

Before analyzing the data, Abadie believed it was a reasonable assumption that terrorism has its roots in poverty, especially since studies have linked civil war to economic factors. However, once the data was corrected for the influence of other factors studied, Abadie said he found no significant relationship between a nation's wealth and the level of terrorism it experiences.

So what factors did Abadie find having an impact? Political freedom and geography:

Instead, Abadie detected a peculiar relationship between the levels of political freedom a nation affords and the severity of terrorism. Though terrorism declined among nations with high levels of political freedom, it was the intermediate nations that seemed most vulnerable.

Like those with much political freedom, nations at the other extreme - with tightly controlled autocratic governments - also experienced low levels of terrorism.

Though his study didn't explore the reasons behind the trends he researched, Abadie said it could be that autocratic nations' tight control and repressive practices keep terrorist activities in check, while nations making the transition to more open, democratic governments - such as currently taking place in Iraq and Russia - may be politically unstable, which makes them more vulnerable.

and:

In Abadie's opinion, the connection between geography and terrorism is hardly surprising.

"Areas of difficult access offer safe haven to terrorist groups, facilitate training, and provide funding through other illegal activities like the production and trafficking of cocaine and opiates," Abadie wrote in the paper.

So what does this suggest? That there are two ways to keep terrorism in check...either establish a repressive, autocratic government (Saddam Hussein, anyone), or push for greater freedom. The United States has chosen the latter path in the Middle East, starting with Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan has already held their first free elections in their history. Iraq is slated to hold elections in January. Does that mean that the level of political freedom is high enough to substantially decrease terrorism in and exported from these countries? Perhaps not yet...but they're headed in the right direction. And if more of the Middle East follows suit, either by internal or external forces, it may be that the cesspit of terrorism that the Middle East currently represents could shrink significantly.

The conclusion that terrorism isn't connected to poverty, of course, isn't all that surprising. What is surprising is to hear this conclusion coming from a Harvard academic. Wonder if those on the left who insist that we must understand the “root causes” of terrorism will heed this study and give George W. Bush the credit he deserves for attempting to address the true root cause of terrorism...lack of political freedom.

[via Drudge]

That's the title of a CD due in stores today, according to a story in the Washington Post Style section (link may require registration). I'm sure that the timing of the article is coincidental and has nothing to do with the election (yes, that was sarcasm), but what's particularly striking about the article, and indeed the CD itself, is what it illustrates about the worldview of those who oppose President Bush.

The basics of the story are that a Norwegian music producer heard Bush's “Axis of Evil“ speech and became angry. Why? Because he said Bush's statement that Iran, Iraq, and North Korea represented an “Axis of Evil“ was “not the speech of a responsible politician, and it is very dangerous“. So he set out to prove that these countries are not evil by recording native lullabies from each country. The implication being that Bush was calling every citizen of these countries evil. This impression is reinforced in the article by the statements of one of the singers, an Iranian citizen:

If President Bush intended that "axis of evil" be applied to the governments of these countries and not the people, it is a message that is neither understood nor accepted by many of the album's participants. Singers, and sisters, Mahsa and Marjan Vahdat are self-described dissidents in Iran, but they still object to the president's words.

"I am not satisfied in my country with this government," Mahsa Vahdat said in a phone interview from her Tehran home. "We have very complicated social and political problems here. But it is very heavy, very sad, to have the people of my country called this name."

The fact that the article's author uses the word “if“ to describe Bush's intent is certainly telling, since the president has been quite clear that he was referring to the leadership of these countries. He has consistently said that the citizenry of Iran are struggling for freedom against tyrannical leaders, and that we stand with them in spirit. And though Iraq is not yet as stable as we'd like, as evidenced by a quote from an Iraqi woman who fears for the safety of her children, at least she no longer must fear the possibility of her children (and possibly herself) ending up in a mass grave, still clutching their toys. This assertion also ignores the fact that the very first thing we did before the invasion even began was to drop leaflets making clear to the citizens of Iraq that our conflict was with Saddam Hussein and his regime, not with the Iraqi citizens.

Of course, no project like this would be complete without a pop star mouthing off about politics (shades of Sting's clueless anti-nuke song “Russians”, which asserted moral equivalence between the US and the USSR):

In the end, however, artists from nine Western countries, including the United States, would take part. One American who immediately jumped on board was Rickie Lee Jones, popular singer-songwriter and an outspoken critic of the Bush administration.

"George Bush and Dick Cheney and [John] Ashcroft are the axis of evil," Jones said in a phone interview from her home last week. "They are a triad of evil, and so of course they would think in those terms. To go down in history as the president who called the Middle East people evil is a terrible legacy. In political times to try to evoke religion and the ideas of goodness and evil, when you're fighting about oil -- to try to get the American people to think of these people as evil because you want their oil -- this is what he's trying to do."

With so much nonsense wrapped up in one paragraph, it's hard to know where to start. First, as already observed, Bush has been quite clear that he wasn't calling the people of the Middle East (and since when was North Korea in the Middle East anyway, Rickie Lee?). Second, if you can't recognize the face of evil in Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, or the mullahs of Iran, you have no business opining about the subject. Third, and finally, suggesting that Bush is attempting to paint these people as evil so we can steal their oil is just sand-poundingly stupid. In order to believe this, you not only have to believe that Bush is so stupid and short-sighted as to have risked his presidency on name-calling and a strategy that has certainly not helped oil prices any, but you also have to ignore the fact that North Korea HAS NO OIL FOR US TO STEAL! So unless you believe that the same president who is too stupid to see that going to war would endanger his re-election chances is nonetheless smart enough to throw North Korea into that speech as a red herring to throw off smart analysts like Rickie Lee Jones, the war-for-oil theory kinda falls apart.

What this article, and the CD it describes illustrates is the persistence of the pre-9/11 worldview that says “hey, man...we're all just people and we can talk out our differences.” In fact, here's what the producer has to say about his project:

Hillestad says 10 percent of the profits from the disc will go to Worldview Rights, which describes itself as an "organization for promotion of human rights, democracy and conflict resolution using communication strategies and applications."

While I can admire the fact that he's putting (some of) his money where his mouth is, there's a pretty good track record that suggests that “communications strategies” aren't especially effective at promoting human rights in the real world. When the UN body chartered with protecting and furthering human rights worldwide allows as members countries like Cuba, China, and other blatant violators of human rights, and even offers the chair of the Commission on Human Rights to Libya, that suggests to me that that body isn't of much use in the pursuit of human rights. And it's results (or lack thereof) show it.

If I had to put my money down on which is likely to be a more effective tool for promoting human rights, the talk-talk generated by Hillestad's profits doesn't even make the list. Today, millions of Iraqis are free of a dictator of the worst kind, a man who killed, by conservative estimates, hundreds of thousands of people. In Afghanistan, a free people just conducted the first ever free elections, which by all accounts were a resounding success. The U.N. presided over more than a decade of talking about Iraq, while Iraqis suffered and died. In less than 2 years, the U.S. will help the Iraqis accomplish the same feat as the Afghanis...holding free elections. Elections in which a candidate will not get 100% of the vote in a rigged system based on fear and coercion.

It's hard for me to understand how people like Hillestad and Jones can not see the evil represented by a Saddam Hussein, just as it's difficult for me to see their assertions that Bush is labeling the people of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as “evil” as anything other than willful ignorance. The attacks of September 11th, 2001 made clear that we cannot wait for threats to completely materialize before we act. So we've acted. And the record shows pretty clearly, to my eyes, that our action has done more in the service of human rights than years of talk in the hallowed halls of the U.N.

Well, here's the ammo you need: a PDF summary of Dave Kopel's “59 Deceits in Fahrenheit 911”. The longer version is at http://www.davekopel.org/Terror/Fiftysix-Deceits-in-Fahrenheit-911.htm.

If the statement quoted here is accurate, then Jimmy Carter has demonstrated himself to be completely and totally blinkered, out-to-lunch, and a few cups shy of a tea set. Apparently, in an appearance on Hardball with Chris Matthews, Carter made the extraordinary statement that the American Revolution was “unnecessary” and could've been avoided if only the Brits had been more “sensitive” to the demands of the colonials. Well, duh! And as one of the commenters at LGF noted, if the Nazis had been more sensitive, we might have avoided WWII. And if pigs had wings they might be called chickens.

Is there no end to the foolish statements this “statesman” will utter? Will anyone in the MSM notice? Somehow, I doubt it.

...at least more forcefully:

Kerry and Edwards have a demonstrated track record of treating foreign policy as a popularity contest. Cheney hit on this somewhat in his discussion of their Iraq policy in the face of the anti-war views of Howard Dean, but he did not adequately make the connection with Kerry's current statements on Iraq and the “global test” and Edward's insistence on defending this silliness. Despite both Kerry and Edwards' claims that they would not provide another country a veto over U.S. foreign policy, Kerry's statements about a “global test” and “legitimacy” in the eyes of the world belie those claims. You cannot insist that our foreign policy must satisfy those who routinely oppose the U.S. such as France, Germany, and Russia, and yet simultaneously insist that you're not giving them a voice in forming U.S. policy. Add to that the fact that the very countries that Kerry and Edwards are so insistent on satisfying are the ones who were being bribed by Saddam under the UN's “oil for food” scam, and it's astonishing that they keep bringing this up. But until the President and Vice-President connect the dots a little more clearly (they sure can't afford to wait for the media to do it), Kerry and Edwards will continue to try to get away with this.

UPDATE:
Teaching myself not to blog when tired, I missed an important part of my argument last night...the reason that it's absurd to treat our foreign policy as a popularity contest. The reality is that in order to protect U.S. citizens and/or U.S. interests, it will sometimes (and perhaps often) be necessary to take actions that will without a doubt be unpopular in the quarters where countries (such as our “ally” France) stand to lose financially if/when we take action. The notion that if only John Kerry is elected and can explain to them why it's so important, the French will just leap to join our coalition is just silly, particularly, as others observed, when they're being asked to join the “wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time [that I voted for]”. John Kerry and John Edwards cannot be taken seriously on foreign policy, and that's a point that the President and Vice-President need to hammer home every day at every opportunity.

UPDATE II:
And it gets even better...according to Captain's Quarters, even Kerry now admits that it's unlikely that he could get France and Germany to contribute meaningfully (in his view) to our efforts in Iraq by sending troops:

Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry conceded yesterday that he probably will not be able to convince France and Germany to contribute troops to Iraq if he is elected president.

The Massachusetts senator has made broadening the coalition trying to stabilize Iraq a centerpiece of his campaign, but at a town hall meeting yesterday, he said he knows other countries won't trade their soldiers' lives for those of U.S. troops.

"Does that mean allies are going to trade their young for our young in body bags? I know they are not. I know that," he said.

Asked about that statement later, Mr. Kerry said, "When I was referring to that, I was really talking about Germany and France and some of the countries that had been most restrained."

So if even John Kerry and his magic hat can't bring France and Germany into our coalition, what does that say about his criticisms of George W. Bush over the issue? Is Kerry going to make the argument that had he been in office, France and Germany would feel differently today? Or, for that matter, that they'd magically have more combat troops that are available, much less that they are willing to commit? That one wouldn't pass the laugh test...it'll be interesting to see if the Bush/Cheney campaign highlights this latest 180 on Iraq.

UPDATE III:
In the second presidential debate last night, it was heartening to see President Bush explicitly state the position that a President must sometimes make unpopular choices, such as refusing to sign on to the Kyoto treaty (which Kerry said he could “fix”, but failed to elaborate on his plan for doing so) or supporting our sole ally in the Middle East, Israel. Going to war with Iraq is another example of the kind of policy choice that is unpopular, even while it's necessary. While Bush chose not to use these examples, whenever Kerry talks of the lack of a “grand coalition” or of a “global test” we should think about what the world would be like today if leaders like Churchill or Reagan had chosen consensus and popularity over a sound policy of opposition to tyrants...of course, we don't really have to imagine. We can simply look at what kinds of things occurred under Clinton, who possessed the same preference as Kerry for popularity with putative “allies” over policies that would advance the security of the U.S. and its true allies, and promote freedom in the world at large.

...allies don't set you up with faked documents (something that Dan Rather should be thinking about these days). From Ed Morrissey over at Captain's Quarters, a report from the London Telegraph on the source of the fake Niger documents that were initially part of the case for war with Iraq:

The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France. ...

His admission to investigating magistrates in Rome on Friday apparently confirms suggestions that - by commissioning "Giacomo" to procure and circulate documents - France was responsible for some of the information later used by Britain and the United States to promote the case for war with Iraq.

Italian diplomats have claimed that, by disseminating bogus documents stating that Iraq was trying to buy low-grade "yellowcake" uranium from Niger, France was trying to "set up" Britain and America in the hope that when the mistake was revealed it would undermine the case for war, which it wanted to prevent.

So not only does France attempt at nearly every turn to undermine the United States in the UN, and on the world stage, they are also engaging in espionage intended to embarrass us and, presumably, to hasten the defeat of George W. Bush. I think Morrissey says it best:

The American electorate should pay close attention to this incident, especially those who may feel sympathetic to John Kerry's blatherings about deferring to our "friends" on issues of national security. Friends do not engage in disinformation campaigns while we face attacks from Islamofascist terrorists. Allies do not meddle in our elections. Kerry's blindness on this issue underscores how dangerous a Kerry presidency would be for our national security.

I'm practically speechless. Moments ago, I watched former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright claim (with a straight face, no less) that the Bush administration was responsible for North Korea getting nuclear weapons. The claim came in response to a question from Meet the Press host Tim Russert. Albright claimed that the responsiblity lies with the Bush administration because, according to her, they failed to continue the negotiations that the Clinton administration had been conducting with the North Korean Communist regime.

This spin simply beggars belief. Clearly Albright is unable (or, more likely, unwilling) to grasp that regardless of when we discovered the Nork's nuke program, it was well underway long before Bush took office. Beyond that, absent the “agreed framework” that she negotiated, North Korea would likely not have been able to continue their clandestine nuclear program unhindered. The North Koreans, confident that the Clinton administration would do nothing, simply cheated on the agreement before the ink was even dry.

What's worse, Albright made the disingenuous statement that she was puzzled by why we seem to always invade countries without nukes, and never invade those with nukes, which she said leads rogue states to want to develop nukes. Well, she's right about the last part, but she's clearly completely clueless about cause and effect. We don't invade non-nuclear nations like Iraq because they lack nukes...we do so because we cannot take the risk that, left to their own devices, they would develop nukes, which makes invasion a much less practical option. North Korea is the threat that it is because the Clinton administration (and Ms. Albright) chose negotiations over force. Negotiations, I might add, that utterly failed to produce the stated desired outcome. They actually did, IMO, produce the actual desired outcome, which was to punt the problem down the road without having to make any hard decisions. For Albright to now have the gall to point the finger at the Bush administration is enormously disingenuous. But that's what she thinks it'll take to get her man Kerry elected, so there you go. Speaking of Kerry, when is he going to come out of hiding and talk to the press?

PS - I'll post a transcript of the show when it becomes available.

UPDATE:
Albright's misleading statements are all the more important in the wake of what might have been a nuclear explosion in North Korea. U.S. officials are saying for now that they don't think it was, but they're leaving open the possibility, pending further analysis. Whatever it was, the cloud from the explosion was reported to be more than two miles across, so if it wasn't a nuke, it would have to have been one hell of a huge bomb or catastrophic accident. Thanks to Maddy & co., we have to worry about the possibility of NK nuking one of our allies in the area, or if they have enough time to work on their missile technology, even the US west coast. And here people said that with the end of the Soviet Union there was no reason to continue work on SDI. 

UPDATE II:
Here's the link for the transcript. Here's the exchange from Meet the Press that I found so appalling:

MR. RUSSERT:  But didn't North Korea develop a nuclear bomb on Bill Clinton's watch?

MS. ALBRIGHT:  No, what they were doing, as it turns out, they were cheating. And the reason that you have arms control agreements is you don't make them with your friends, you make them with your enemies.  And it's the process that is required to hold countries accountable.  The worst part that has happened under the agreed framework, there was these fuel rods, and the nuclear program was frozen.  Those fuel rods have now been reprocessed, as far as we know, and North Korea has a capability, which at one time might have been two potential nuclear weapons, up to six to eight now, we're not really clear.  But in this period of time when there has not enough action been taken, I think that the threat from North Korea has increased.

MR. RUSSERT:  And it is now an imminent threat?

MS. ALBRIGHT:  Well, I think it's a very dangerous threat, and I also think they get the wrong message out of Iraq.  You know, we invade countries that don't have nuclear weapons and we don't invade those that do.  We didn't invade the Soviet Union and China, so why not build up nuclear weapons as quickly as possible?

For the Clinton administration official who is arguably most directly responsible for North Korea being able to develop nuclear weapons in the first place, that last statement is simply astonishing in its blatant ignorance. We are over a barrel with respect to North Korea precisely because of failed Clinton/Albright diplomacy, not because Bush invaded Iraq. Sheesh!

 

Those are the words reportedly spoken to Italian PM Sylvio Berlusconi by none other than Gaddafi, according to the UK Telegraph:

A spokesman for Mr Berlusconi said the prime minister had been telephoned recently by Col Gaddafi of Libya, who said: "I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid."

Assuming the report is true, that's an even clearer indicator that Bush's policy of pre-emption has paid dividends well beyond eliminating the threats posed by Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. Could it be that the “dunce” the left love to hate isn't so stupid after all?

[link via The Corner]

CNN is carrying a story about a new audio tape said to be from al Qaeda. Nothing new there, we seem to get these on a regular basis. But what is new, and very interesting, is that the voice on the tape is not that of Osama bin Laden. Rather, the voice is said to be that of al Qaeda's #2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Now I can think of a few possible explanations for this off the top of my head:

1. Given the recent capture of Saddam Hussein, OBL is laying low.
2. OBL is dead, captured, or otherwise incapacitated.
3. OBL is sharing the spotlight with al-Zawahiri (unlikely, IMO)

What's most interesting about CNN's story is that while it repeats some of the propaganda on the tape (such as “The American soldier is a coward and does not believe in his own ideology”, yeah, right), the only mention of bin Laden is in the following paragraph:

No mention was made of the capture last week of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, nor of al Qaeda's top leader, Osama bin Laden, who remains at large.

Now surely I'm not the only person out there who wonders whether there's a connection here, or why suddenly al-Zawahiri is the one making the tapes. But CNN doesn't seem to be curious why that might be.

Meanwhile, over on FoxNews.com, a story notes that satellite channel Al-Arabiya broadcast a tape that they claimed to be from Osama bin Laden, but also notes that Al-Jazeera (as well as an unnamed U.S. official) claims that the tape is not new, and was originally broadcast in October. So does this suggest that perhaps al Qaeda is trying to keep up the impression that OBL is still active? Who knows? But one thing is pretty clear...if the Bush administration can follow the capture of Saddam Hussein with proof that OBL is dead or captured, it will be awfully hard on his detractors...and great for the rest of us.

UPDATE - 1/4/04: Apparently al Jazeera is airing another audio tape they claim to be from bin Laden. Reports say the tape mentions the capture of Saddam Hussein, which suggests that it was made recently, but also may contain multiple voices. U.S. intelligence sources have not yet confirmed whether or not the voice is actually that of OBL.

In a front-page editorial...oh, sorry...”analysis”, the Washington Post completely misreads the recent announcement by Libya that they will voluntarily give up their WMD programs. The subhead for the analysis piece reads “Two Decades of Sanctions, Isolation Wore Down Gaddafi”.

While it may be true that sanctions and isolation played some small part in motivating Gaddafi to admit the existence of, and pledge to dismantle, his WMD programs, one would have to be rather short-sighted to miss the fact that the Iraq war and the destruction of Saddam Hussein's thug regime likely proved a stronger motivator. But the authors of the piece, Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler, seem focused elsewhere, beginning the piece as follows:

Libya's stunning decision yesterday to surrender its weapons of mass destruction followed two decades of international isolation and some of the world's most punishing economic sanctions. In the end, Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gaddafi was under so much pressure that he was forced to seek an end to the economic and political isolation threatening his government -- and his own survival, according to U.S. and British officials and outside experts.

They go on to make the absurd claim that the “turning point” in the process may have been the tracking down of evidence that solidly connected Libya to the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the “international effort” that followed. Nonsense. In the absence of a credible threat of force (conveniently provided by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq), Gaddafi would have been considerably less likely to have this change of heart.

In all fairness to Wright and Kessler, the Iraq war does get mentioned (albeit weakly) as a possible motivator, but strangely enough, the mention appears on page A18 in the continuation of the piece, so anyone who merely scans the front page would get the impression that it was sanctions that won the day. I'm sure that's a complete coincidence, just as it's coincidental that the U.S. and Great Britain came to this agreement with Libya less than a week after the capture of Saddam Hussein.

UPDATE: As noted in The Corner, the New York Times also weighed in on this one. While the Times, too, seems to think that it was the magic of sanctions that finally convinced a recalcitrant Libya to change their ways (this despite the fact that the United Nations lifted the international sanctions on Libya in September), what's truly shocking about the NYT take is that they credit Bush for leaving U.S. sanctions on Libya in place:

This page recommended lifting American sanctions as well, but President Bush left them in place pending further steps, most notably Libya's decision to end its unconventional weapons programs. It is now clear that he was right to do so. The added American pressure worked just as intended.

The NYT editors do note the possibility that the ousting of Saddam played some part, but as with the WaPo analysis, they seem determined to minimize the impact:

To an extent that cannot be precisely measured, the fate of Saddam Hussein, who was ousted from power by the American military with British backing after endless prevaricating about Iraqi weapons programs, must have been an important consideration in Li