Duncan Black is shriller than ever--a constant pole star of shrillness in a changeable universe:

Eschaton: Incoherent: So, the wise old men of David Broder's beloved Iraq Study Group testified to the Senate today. From what I gathered from CNN coverage just now, they support sending more troops to Iraq (James "Give it a chance!" Baker more than Hamilton), but they warn that nothing will improve unless there's also diplomacy with Iran and Syria.

Personally, I don't really understand their obsession with diplomacy with Iran and Syria. It's probably a good idea on its own merits, though what it has to do with Iraq I'm not sure.

Still, they say they support sending more troops to Iraq. Then they say it needs to be accompanied by things which won't happen.

I just don't understand this game anymore.... [D]iplomacy is going to be necessary... [but it isn't] particularly useful until the people in charge acknowledge a few elements of reality that they are unwilling to acknowledge....

But he is not shrill enough. Diplomacy is necessary. But diplomacy is useless unless the current U.S. administration is removed from office.

Alicublog is shrill!

alicublog: DRUNKS WITH GUNS. The Ole Perfesser done wrote hisself (well, collaborated on) a paper, all about why Communitarians should hook up with the People of the Gun to make everyone, will-he nill-he, join a militia -- and not a statist militia-in-name-only like the National Guard, but something more like Boy's Night Out with shootin' ahrns. It is strange that the Perfesser puts so much effort into reaching out to Amitai Etzioni and the Bowling Alone crowd.... There are all sorts of highlights in the document, but I especially liked the quote from an Andrew Lytle novel which the authors say "captures the spirit of community present in militias": "It wasn't long until riders from every section of the county came in.... Kin would meet that hadn't seen one another for a year or more.... Such jollification you never saw. There were dinners on the ground, and red-mouth barbecue pits. The groceries knocked out the tops of their liquor barrels, and red whisky ran down gullets like rain after a dry spell."... [I]f a combination of loaded semi-automatic rifles and whiskey running "down gullets like rain after a dry spell" is what the Perfesser is after, I say... I am content to watch the fireworks from a distance.

Spencer Ackerman is shriller:

The Washington Monthly: CENTCOM FOLLIES.... Spencer Ackerman reports from Capitol Hill: "I just got back from Admiral Bill Fallon's hearing to head Central Command, and I've never heard a military officer testify for nearly four hours and fail to exhibit an understanding of even one issue he's about to grapple with. Here is Fallon's excuse: 'As you know, I've got a full-time job in Pacific Command, and I've tried to stay away from the detail of Central Command until such time as I might be confirmed,' he said. 'Then I intend to dive into it.' 'I'm surprised that you don't have that understanding going in, frankly,' said Senator Levin.

Spencer Ackerman gets shriller:

toohotfortnr: yeah that's the other side of this life: Lally Weymouth jawbones with Adel Abdul Mehdi: "All Americans see on TV screens are Sunnis slaughtering Shiites and ethnic cleansing in the streets." "Unfortunately this is true. But this is only one part of the picture. Only 12 months ago, we had elections and 12 million people voted, Sunnis and Shiites."

Yes, and as a result, all Americans see on TV screens are Sunnis slaughtering Shiites and ethnic cleansing in the streets. Also, if I'm Adel Abdul Mehdi, and a reporter mentions to me at the World Economic Forum that I'm Bush's favorite to replace the of-course-sovereign PM Maliki, I'd walk into the Swiss foreign ministry and seek asylum.

Joseph Galloway is shrill:

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 01/17/2007 | Postponed sacrifices will come due with a vengeance: President Bush was asked in an interview this week why our military and their families are bearing all the sacrifices of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His response was telling. The American people are sacrificing, too, Bush said. Their peace of mind is disturbed by the images of carnage they see on their televisions. His response was lame, but it also was infuriating, and his attempt to switch the focus to how well he thinks our economy is doing was no less galling....

He was proud that, unlike every wartime president in our history, he hasn't increased taxes to pay for a war. In fact, he, George W. Bush, not only hasn't raised taxes; he's cut them, leaving his war to be financed by going deeper into debt to China and Japan. There's no need, he said, to revive some form of mandatory national service so the children and grandchildren of all those Americans living their comfortable lives might make both sacrifices and contributions to the defense and well-being of our country. Our volunteer military is working just fine, Bush said. It can continue to shoulder the entire weight of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the wars that have ground the Army and the Marine Corps beyond the breaking point....

Rumsfeld, with the backing of Vice President Dick Cheney, was the architect of the idea that 21st-century wars could be won and soldiers replaced by high-tech weaponry. That you can do much more with much less. Anyone in uniform who suggested otherwise was throwing his career away, as was made amply clear in late February 2003, when then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, under questioning from Sen. Carl Levin, opined that it would take "several hundred thousand" American troops to pacify and occupy Iraq. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz promptly dismissed Shinseki's analysis, which was based on the general's experience as the commander of U.S. forces in Bosnia, as "outlandish." Iraq, Wolfowitz said, would be a lot easier than Afghanistan was because there were no ethnic divisions in Iraq.

A veteran of Vietnam who lost a foot in combat there, Shinseki knew whereof he spoke, which is a lot more than one could say of Wolfowitz, who's never worn a uniform or heard a shot fired in combat. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and their bosses in the White House made Shinseki's last few months in office a living hell. At his retirement ceremony, which none of those gentlemen had the common courtesy to attend, the soft-spoken general sounded a warning that they should have heard: Beware of giving a 12-division mission to a 10-division Army. That, of course, is precisely what Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld did, and the results, four years later, were entirely predictable. In fact, I predicted them right here in a 2003 column headlined: "How to Break a Great Army"...

Mitch McConnell and Trent Lott are shrill:

President dismisses critics - A Concord Monitor Article - Your News Source - Concord NH 03301: Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican, said the administration would like GOP leaders to block any vote, but that at this point even some of the most ardent Republican conservatives need some way to voice their skepticism on the record. The best the White House can hope for is what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, called "a smorgasbord" of resolutions that splits both parties and pulls Senate sentiments in multiple directions.

Like other GOP lawmakers, McConnell said time is running out for the president.

"I think everybody knows what the consequences are. The president doesn't have a stronger supporter in the Senate than the person you're looking at, but I repeat, this is the last chance for the Iraqis to step up and demonstrate this government can function," he said. "The message to the Iraqi government could not be more clear."

The shrill Dean Baker asks a question:

Beat the Press: Global Warming is Serious: Why Can't the Post Treat It Seriously?

In a front page article on President Bush's changing statements on climate change, the Post tells readers that he will spend $29 billion on "climate science, aid, and incentives." Is there even a single reader of this sentence, apart from those actually working on climate policy, who has any idea what this commitment means?

For beginners, how about telling readers the time frame for this spending? My understanding is that the $29 billion will be spent over ten years (approximately 0.1 percent of projected spending), but I don't have any clear idea of what this money refers to, so I can't say that for certain. It would also be helpful to know to what extent this money involves an additional commitment of resources -- the government has spent money for decades on climate science and various programs that encourage conservation.

In short, reporting this $29 billion in projected spending provides no information whatsover. Couldn't the two experienced reporters who wrote this piece recognize that they were not providing any information to readers? Couldn't their editors?

--Dean Baker

The Washington Post isn't in the business of providing information, Dean. That would be "unbalanced."

Sisyphus shrugged is shrill, and awards Dana Milbank the Claude Rains Memorial Gambling Awareness Award.

Dana Milbank is not shrill. He pulls his punches as he writes:

Dana Milbank - In Ex-Aide's Testimony, A Spin Through VP's PR - washingtonpost.com: Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you.

This delicious morsel about the "Meet the Press" host and the vice president... Cathie Martin... on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Option 1: "MTP-VP," she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under "pro," she wrote: "control message."

"I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used," Martin testified. "It's our best format."

It is unclear whether the first week of the trial will help or hurt Libby or the administration. But the trial has already pulled back the curtain on the White House's PR techniques and confirmed some of the darkest suspicions of the reporters upon whom they are used.

Dana gets two things wrong in these four paragraphs. First, Cheney doesn't "think" he controls Russert: Cheney does control Russert. Cheney's press aide Cathie Martin is correct when she says that Russert will not push Cheney or attempt to closely question him.

Second, the trial does not confirm "some of the darkest suspicions of the reporters." The reporters have no suspicions about how they are used by the Republican leadership. They have been active coconspirators here. The trial confirms some of the darkest suspicions about the reporters.

These two weasel-words by Milbank--"thinks" instead of "does" and "of" instead of "about"--are markers of the extent to which the Washington press corps is still, after everything, in the tank for and shading its reporting in favor of the Bush administration.

Milbank goes on, calling things "[newly] confirmed... suspicions" that he has known--and I have known--to be facts since at least mid-2001:

Relatively junior White House aides run roughshod over members of the president's Cabinet. Bush aides charged with speaking to the public and the media are kept out of the loop on some of the most important issues. And bad news is dumped before the weekend for the sole purpose of burying it.... She walked the jurors through how the White House coddles friendly writers and freezes out others....

[Martin] proposed "leak to Sanger-Pincus-newsmags. Sit down and give to him." This meant that the "no-leak" White House would give the story to the New York Times' David Sanger, The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, or Time or Newsweek...

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

The Economist's Lexington correspondent is finally shrill! It writes a good article about Condi Rice.

It's at least four years too late for such an article to be useful and informative, however:

Economist.com | Articles by Subject | Lexington: [Condi Rice's] fingerprints are on some of the worst mistakes of the first Bush term. She claimed the White House was unaware of the CIA's doubts about whether Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger, for example, despite the fact that her office had received two memos on the subject and a call from the CIA director. But her culpability is deeper than that. When Ms Rice ran the National Security Council (NSC), it was hopelessly dysfunctional....

Ms Rice has also proved a disappointing manager of the State Department....

Ms Rice made her career by impressing powerful establishment figures.... But what happens when your patrons disagree?... [Rice] chose to flatter her current patron.... [She]... started her career... sceptical about nation-building and democratisation. She might have chosen to restrain her boss's Manichaean instincts with a dose of that realism. Instead she went along with him. Being a perfect protégée can get one a long way up the greasy pole...

I pay for the *Economist* in the hope that it can tell me true things about the world that I don't already know, rather than confirm things that I learned from other sources four years ago.

Matthew Yglesias is really shrill:

Matthew Yglesias / proudly eponymous since 2002: Plus Ça Change:

David Brooks, April 10 2004:

Come on people, let's get a grip. This week, Chicken Littles like Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd were ranting that Iraq is another Vietnam. Pundits and sages were spinning a whole series of mutually exclusive disaster scenarios: Civil war! A nationwide rebellion!

January 25, 2007:

Iraq is at the beginning of a civil war fought using the tactics of genocide, and it has all the conditions to get much worse. As a Newsweek correspondent, Christian Caryl, wrote recently from Baghdad, “What’s clear is that we’re far closer to the beginning of this cycle of violence than to its end.” As John Burns of The Times said on “Charlie Rose” last night, “Friends of mine who are Iraqis — Shiite, Sunni, Kurd — all foresee a civil war on a scale with bloodshed that would absolutely dwarf what we’re seeing now.”

September 18, 2004:

As we saw in El Salvador and as Iraqi insurgents understand, elections suck the oxygen from a rebel army. They refute the claim that violence is the best way to change things. Moreover, they produce democratic leaders who are much better equipped to win an insurgency war.

January 25, 2007:

The weakness of the Bush surge plan is that it relies on the Maliki government to somehow be above this vortex. But there are no impartial institutions in Iraq, ready to foster reconciliation. As ABC’s Jonathan Karl notes in The Weekly Standard, the Shiite finance ministries now close banks that may finance Sunni investments. The Saadrist health ministries dismiss Sunni doctors. The sectarian vortex is not fomented by extremists who are appendages to society. The vortex is through and through.

So having heaped scorn a few years ago on doves who were later proven right -- not necessarily shown to be all-wise, all-knowing sages on all subjects, but who certainly demonstrated a greater degree of understanding of the nation of Iraq and the dynamics of the war there -- does Brooks have a less scornful view of those same people and their ideas today? Of course not: "The Democratic approach, as articulated by Senator Jim Webb — simply get out of Iraq 'in short order' — is a howl of pain that takes no note of the long-term political and humanitarian consequences."

Each day that the New York Times publishes David Brooks takes, I think, a week off the lifespan of the organization.

A correspondent makes the mistake of reading Maureen Dowd. His head explodes:

Now, part of maintaining one’s mental health is not reading op-ed columnists. We all know that they just make one stupider. I wonder if it was ever thus or if a columnist like Mencken or Lippmann could have made one smarter? Probably not.

Anyway, through no fault of my own, I glanced at a Maureen Dowd column that referred to HBO’s “Rome” as “that other gory saga of a declining empire”.

I learned in 7th grade, while studying the Bard’s “Julius Caesar”, that the events surrounding the assassination about Caesar were about the rise of an empire. In fact, as Gibbon wrote in some relatively well-known passages, the apogee of the empire was yet to come.

It is interesting that this is unknown by the editorial board of the NYT. I mean, the information is available on Wikipedia. In fact, the basic historical outline has been posted on the HBO website under “ROME”. But no one cares to look it up. After all, it is only ancient history, and only nerds know about this sort of thing. Cool people who party with the right people shouldn’t actually know the specifics of Roman history; people who do are boring.

But when I was young, this sort of thing was considered important in polite, upper-middle class liberal society. I remember _______ telling me about Gibbon and how every well-educated young person should read him. Clearly, it is not important any more [to anybody at the New York Times]. And that is very interesting...

You could try to rescue Maureen Dowd by saying that she is following the line of Suetonius and is referring to the moral decline of Rome, not its material decline, and that she knows damned well that Julius Caesar was proconsul of Gaul two centuries before the apogee of Rome as an empire, five centuries before the collapse of the empire in the west, and fifteen centuries before the fall of Constantinople.

But who would want to?

Matthew Yglesias wonders how the Gang of 500 can bear to look themselves in the mirror in the morning:

Matthew Yglesias / proudly eponymous since 2002: The Pundit Mobius Strip: I wonder if really elite pundits like Joe Klein ever feel weird about writing that something might look bad even though it makes sense on the merits.

After all, Klein has a substantial ability to affect how things are perceived. He notes that "Just because [liberals are] right about Iraq, and about this escalation, it doesn't mean they won't be blamed by the public if the result of an American withdrawal is lethal chaos in the region and $200 per barrel oil" which is true.

On the other hand, if American withdraws and Joe Klein and other similarly situated people all focus their energy on placing the blame where it belongs -- on the war's architects -- then the odds are pretty good that liberals won't be blamed.

The Note's "Gang of 500" business is a joke, but only sort of. A rather small number of writers, producers, and editors for ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, and the Associated Press substantially determine how things will be play in the press.

If those people decide that doing something will "look weak" and then cover it as if it does "look weak" it then will, in fact, look weak. If they determine the reverse, the reverse will probably happen.

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps? Over at the Washington Post, even Deborah "What Does an Ombudsman Do, Again? Nobody Told Me" Howell is shrill:

mediabistro.com: FishbowlDC: Howell Critiques Post's Edwards Story: From her internal Omblog:

THE EDWARDS STORY

More than a dozen readers, both inside the newsroom and outside, were troubled by the John Edwards story on Page today. So was I. Most complainers thought that the story either wasn't worth a story or wasn't worth fronting or both. It was interesting enough to make an item in In the Loop, but not Page 1. I kept looking for the graf that would tell me that the buyers had some history with Edwards, that they were big campaign contributors, that there was some quid pro quo. Nada.

Bill Hamilton, the editor on the story, obviously disagreed. "If the mixture of Georgetown, real estate, a presidential candidate and a secret buyer who turns out to be under investigation for screwing a major union that that candidate is courting is not front page news in a Washington newspaper, then we just have different news judgment.

"I think writing about the finances of presidential candidates is an important service that this newspaper needs to do more of. In this case, we went beyond what was clearly an attempt to shield the important details of a transaction that earned a presidential candidate more than $5 million. And that presidential candidate just happens to be a millionaire who is basing his campaign on a populist appeal to the common man.

"Nowhere in the story did we say that Edwards did anything wrong. But it is a fact of life that a guy who is running for president has to be careful of major financial transactions in a way that normal people do not. In this case he did not take the time to even Google who was buying his house."

Bill Hamilton and John Solomon are not claiming that the buyers bought Edwards's house for more than its fair market value in order to get him to be less supportive of the union. Bill Hamilton and John Solomon are not claiming that Edwards sold the house for less than its fair market value in order to get the buyers to be less hostile to the union. All Bill Hamilton and John Solomon are doing, they say, is... what? Their explanation is that it is a "fact of life that a guy who is running for president has to be careful of major financial transactions in a way that normal people do not."

Yes. Candidates have to be careful not to sell things for less or buy things for more than their fair market value in order to avoid coming under suspicion of making a payoff.Candidates have to be careful not to sell things for more or buy things for less than their fair market value in order to avoid coming under suspicion of receiving a payoff.

But not even Solomon and Hamilton want to be thought of as such idiots as to be the ones making any such allegations, do they?

Each day that either Solomon or Hamilton keeps working at the Post is another nail in its institutional credibility. Each day Len Downie--who put the story on page A1--keeps working for the Post is another nail in its institutional credibility.

Spencer Ackerman is shrill:

toohotfortnr: i was playin with guns while your mama had your punk ass playin tennis: [I]t's hard to tell what exactly Richard [Just] is arguing, since he drifts in and out of agnosticism about the prospect of Iran attacking Israel. At one point, however, he addresses the case of the much-quoted, oft-truncated Rafsanjani quote, and concludes:

So, even if Yglesias is right that "such an eventuality" refers only to the loss of Israel's nuclear superiority, Rafsanjani is celebrating that loss of superiority because it will allow Iran to pursue Israel's destruction by conventional means.

To people who know something about military affairs, this is ... not the greatest interpretation. The prospect of Israel losing to Iran in a conventional military conflict is absurd. The IDF is much, much more powerful than the Iranian military. If I were the Ramatkal, the best war I could ever imagine with Iran would be one in which Iran decides to launch a conventional attack. If Iran decides to send its pilots on a bombing mission, look what they'd be flying in.... Seven F-14s!

One wishes not to be cavalier about the threats allies face, but the IAF has this one well in hand. Let's not bother talking about ground forces. Or training. Or weaponry. Or command structure. Or battle experience. Let's say that Richard is correct that Rafsanjani was talking about blunting Israel's nuclear arsenal in order to even the playing field for a conventional war. If so, Tel Aviv should be popping f------ champagne bottles to celebrate the national suicide of Iran.

More likely, Rafsanjani wasn't making this point, but rather making a point about deterrence while sounding bellicose notes on a national holiday filled with ugly -- but rather typical -- patriotic gore.

Mark Kleiman is shrill:

The Reality-Based Community: Five sweet rollcalls: not a bad start: I'm really grateful to all the pundits and bloggers who have explained to me so carefully what a turkey of a Speaker Nancy Pelosi is, being a gurrrrrrrlll and a San Franciscan to boot. Otherwise, I might have thought that picking five signature issues and getting them all through the House before the SOTU was pretty slick work.

Even more so, I might have been impressed by the actual votes: how Pelosi split the Republicans while holding her own caucus together beautifully. In each case, at least 24 Republicans voted for the Democratic bill, but except for college loans a majority of GOP members were on the unpopular side each time, making four clear partisan issues: protecting the country from terrorists, protecting seniors and the Treasury from Big Pharma, raising the pay of the working poor, and curing disease.

Party discipline among the famously fractious Democrats: near perfect. Other than stem cells, where 16 Democrats voted "no," Democrats lined up just about perfectly; in the four other rollcalls, there were a total of four Democratic "nays," all on the energy bill.

As I say, I might have been fooled into thinking to myself, "Mr. Sam would have been pretty happy with those rollcalls."

Silly me.

Matthew Yglesias is shrill:

Matthew Yglesias / proudly eponymous since 2002: Why Oh Why Can't We Have Better Classicists: Victor Davis Hanson espies signs of progress all the world 'round and notes that "If the administration could get their proverbial rock of Sisyphus finally over the top, they would be surprised at how many Middle Eastern governments might profess newfound and opportunistic support, and, at home, how many pundits will readjust and now profess sorta, kinda, maybe not to have been so critical all along."

Um . . . I think Hanson may want to reacquaint himself with the Sisyphus character. If I could only square the circle, I'd be recognized as a major mathematician. Seems like as good a time as any to relink to Julian Sanchez's old Prospect satire imagining Bush pondering Camus.

Matthew Yglesias tries to be reasonable and confused, but can't maintain it. In the update, he falls into shrillness once again:

Matthew Yglesias / proudly eponymous since 2002: I Don't Understand: Richard Just remains convinced that Iran is, in fact, likely to launch an unprovoked nuclear first strike on Israel, and at the same time disclaims possession of any knowledge about Iran or Iranian affairs and denies having a view as to the appropriate policy remedy for this threat. Frankly, I'm confused and don't really know what kind of argument one can mount under those circumstances.

UPDATE: I mean, really, anyone who doesn't think Iran is going to launch an unprovoked nuclear first strike on Israel isn't taking this issue seriously? Kenneth Pollack? Ray Takeyh? Really? Are there any real experts on Iran who agree with the Halevi/Oren/Just position on this? In my experience, stoking paranoia about an Iranian nuclear first strike has been an idiosyncratic project of The New Republic that not even The Weekly Standard has gone in for.

And Richard Just makes his play for the Stupidest Man in the Universe prize:

The Plank: MORE ON IRAN: I'm hesitant to get into a full-blown debate about Iran and Israel.... Unlike me, Yossi and Michael actually know what they're talking about.... But I do want to make a few narrow points. Brad, you note that Khamenei has issued a fatwa against developing nuclear weapons.... Khamenei is, in addition to a hateful man, a liar as well. I suspect you would counter that, since he is a liar, maybe he is also lying about his desire to see Israel destroyed. Maybe he is. Maybe he isn't. I have no way of knowing, and neither do you....

Matt Yglesias (whom I personally like and respect) accuses me of misrepresenting... Rafsanjani. Since Yglesias has previously made this same accusation against TNR author Matthias Kuntzel, and since his reading of Rafsanjani's speech--then as now--is bizarrely naive, it's worth settling this once and for all. Here is the quote in its original context:

The colonialists will keep this base [Israel] as long as they need it.... [T]hey have arranged it in a way that the balance of power favors Israel.... They have supplied vast quantities of weapons of mass destruction and unconventional weapons to Israel.... They have nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and long-range missiles and suchlike....

If one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists' strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.

My dispute with Yglesias is over what Rafsanjani meant by the last sentence.... To me, the first reading is the obvious (and more likely) one.... [I]t's impossible to tell: It's an ambiguous phrase, and you can read it either way....

Yglesias will probably label me a warmonger for explaining what Rafsanjani actually said, I'll reiterate what I wrote last week: I don't know what to do about Iran, and I am skeptical of arguments for bombing the country's nuclear facilities...

The Excellent Brad Plumer Strikes Again! And boy is he shrill! He causes Minipundit to ask:

Minipundit: Brad Strikes Again: I really don't understand how Brad Plumer has kept his job at TNR after pwning pro-war-with-Iran forces so thoroughly on The Plank...

It's a good question. Minipundit goes on:

[T]he pwnage is a beautiful thing to witness.

Agreed:

The Plank: WHO'S BEING CAVALIER?: Richard [Just], you're absolutely right: Khamenei and Rafsanjani have said some inflammatory things in their day. (Although, as Matt Yglesias notes, you're cherry-picking with that Rafsanjani quote; in context he may have been talking about nuclear deterrence.) Of course, you could fish around and find Khamenei saying non-crazy things too: He's expressly ruled out a first strike against Israel, for instance, and issued a fatwa against using nuclear weapons. Yet those statements are always disregarded, while others are seen as revealing the "true face" of Iran.

So maybe the better option is to look at Iran's actual past behavior rather than mining for quotes. Ray Takeyh's new book, Hidden Iran--which earned a favorable review from Vali Nasr in this magazine--makes a strong case that, historically, Iran has acted quite pragmatically in its foreign affairs. That's why Khamenei and Rafsanjani have the reputation they do, even though everyone agrees that they're loathsome people. Of course, The New Republic tried to get around this point by running a cover story on how Ahmadinejad was totally different and an honest-to-Allah psychopath. But as Juan Cole pointed out, this would be far more troubling if Ahmadinejad actually ran the show.

That's hardly a "cavalier" attitude. Justin Logan of the Cato Institute recently wrote what strikes me as the canonical case against attacking Iran, and it's perfectly hard-headed. No one wants Iran to get nukes--seeing as how India and Pakistan have come close to incinerating each other on occasion, it's scary even when secular regimes get the bomb. But attacking Iran will, at best, merely set their nuclear program back a few years and further entrench the ruling regime in Tehran (and that's if a strike manages to disable all of Iran's nuclear facilities--no small feat). At worst, it will lead to a horrific regional war and make future Iranian nuclear attacks even more likely.

On the other hand, Iran's past behavior--behavior, not various quotes culled from MEMRI--strongly suggests that it can be deterred and even reasoned with. (Indeed, the BBC just reported that Iran offered to cut off all funding for Hezbollah in 2003 in exchange for closer ties with the United States, but Dick Cheney nixed the offer.) So if diplomacy can't convince Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions--something the Bush administration has never seriously tried--then deterrence is the least-bad option left. Disagree if you want, but don't call it "cavalier". Also note that Iran seems years away from a bomb, giving the United States ample time to at least try diplomacy.

You've also mentioned that Israel can't afford to be as sanguine about Iran's nukes as the United States. Well, true, U.S. interests on this score may not line up perfectly with Israeli interests--for starters, the United States has more to lose from any potential blowback in Iraq, in the event of a military strike. That's worth hashing out, but again, I don't think it's cavalier (or dismissive of Israeli concerns) to do so.

Senator Patrick Leahy is shrill. Attorney General Gonzales should already have been impeached, removed from office, and forbidden to hold any other office of trust or profit under the United States Constitution. In addition, he should have already been sent to the Hague for investigation:

TheStar.com - Unassigned - Transcript of Gonzales-Leahy exchange on Arar: This is an edited transcript of the exchange yesterday between U.S. Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales and Senate judiciary committee chairman Patrick Leahy.

LEAHY: You know, I live about an hour's drive from Canada and go up there often. And in Vermont, we tend to get a lot of Canadian news, just radio and so on.

But something that made the news here in the United States was the question of Maher Arar. -- M-A-H-E-R A-R-A-R, in case I mispronounce it.

He's a Canadian citizen. He was returning home from a vacation. Plane stops at JFK in New York and continues on to Canada.

He was detained by federal agents at JFK airport, 2002, on suspicion of ties to terrorism.

He was deported to Syria; was not sent on the couple of hundred miles to Canada and turned over to the Canadian authorities, but he was sent thousands of miles away to Syria. He was held for 10 months.

He was held in abhorrent conditions there and those sending him back must have known he was going to be tortured.

The Canadian government has apologized for its part in this debacle. In fact, the head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police actually resigned over it. The country is prepared to compensate him for it.

This country has not said anything at all that we made any mistake or had any apology.

Press accounts indicate the Justice Department approved his deportation to Syria.

And I understand he remained on the United States terrorist watch list so he couldn't come 50 miles or 75 miles, whatever, south into the United States without fear of being picked up again, sent back to Syria.

Why is he on a government watch list if he's been found completely innocent by this Canadian commission, which actually had the information from us?

GONZALES: Senator, I've got some very definite views about this particular case, as you know...

LEAHY: Well, go ahead.

GONZALES: ... beyond litigation. What I want to do is, hopefully, in the next few days – I'm happy to sit down with you and Senator (Arlen) Specter and give you more information.

In fact, we may be able to publicly say more about this shortly. I'm just not at liberty, at this time, to...

LEAHY: Let me ask you this: Why aren't you at liberty?

I don't understand that. It's not a matter of executive privilege.

GONZALES: No, sir, again, and I'm not ...

LEAHY: It's only the president that can ...

GONZALES: No, I'm not suggesting that I will not be able to answer your questions. I'm just suggesting I can't do it today.

LEAHY: Why?

GONZALES: I just – sir, I'm not – there is not a position – I can't represent the position of the executive branch on this particular issue.

But I think, in a relatively short period of time, there's more information that I should be able to share with you, and hopefully, that we can share publicly.

LEAHY: But why was he sent to Syria instead of Canada?

GONZALES: Well, again, Senator, I'd be happy to answer these questions I think we can say a lot more about it, if you just simply give me some additional time.

LEAHY: Can you tell me why (then attorney-general John Ashcroft) took steps to ensure that he wouldn't be tortured?

Of course, he was.

GONZALES: I believe that piece of information is public. There were steps. I think General Ashcroft confirmed this publicly, is that there were assurances sought that he would not be tortured from Syria.

LEAHY: Attorney-General ...

(laughter)

... I'm sorry. I don't mean to treat this lightly. We knew damn well, if he went to Canada, he wouldn't be tortured. He'd be held. He'd be investigated.

We also knew damn well, if he went to Syria, he'd be tortured.

And it's beneath the dignity of this country, a country that has always been a beacon of human rights, to send somebody to another country to be tortured.

You know, and I know, that has happened a number of times, in the past five years, by this country. It is a black mark on us. It has brought about the condemnation of some of our closest and best allies.

And it is easy for us to sit here comfortably in this room knowing that we're not going to be sent off to another country to be tortured, to treat it as though, well, Attorney-General Ashcroft says we've got assurances.

Assurances from a country that we also say, now, we can't talk to them because we can't take their word for anything?

GONZALES: Well, Senator, I ...

LEAHY: I'm somewhat upset.

GONZALES: Yes, sir, I can tell. But before you get more upset, perhaps you should wait to receive the briefing ...

LEAHY: How long?

GONZALES: I'm hoping that we can get you the information next week.

LEAHY: Well, Attorney-General, I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll meet you halfway on this.

I'll wait next week for that briefing. If we don't get it, I guarantee you there will be another hearing on this issue.

Canadians have been our closest allies – longest unguarded frontier in the world. They're justifiably upset. They're wondering what's happened to us. They're wondering what's happened to us.

Now you know and I know, we're a country with a great, great tradition of protecting people's individual liberties and rights. You take an oath of office to do that; I take an oath of office to do that. I believe, in my basic core nature, in that. My grandparents, when they immigrated to this country, believed that.

Let us not, let us not create more terrorism around the world by telling the world that we cannot keep up to our basic standards and beliefs...