Free Republic

The architect Frank Lloyd Wright warned of the floo floo bird, "the peculiar and especial bird who always flew backward … because it didn't give a darn where it was going, but just had to see where it had been." That's us. With our eyes fixed on our rearview mirror, we obsessively review catastrophes past when we should be looking through our windshield at dangers ahead. Today we are engaged in the wrong debate. The brouhaha about whether the new Bush administration treated the threat of Al Qaeda as "important" versus "urgent" is history almost as ancient as whether F.D.R....

WASHINGTON — As a very little boy, I thought the opening words to the recitation required at school every morning were "I led the pigeons to the flag." Seemed odd, but I figured the teacher knew best. In my 20's, I noticed how the rhythm of the assertion of national unity at the conclusion of the Pledge of Allegiance — "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" — was broken into by the insertion by Congress in 1954 of the phrase "under God" between "one nation" and "indivisible." As a geezer today, I sometimes trip over the inserted...

WASHINGTON The cover-up in the office of the United Nations secretary general of a multibillion-dollar financial fraud known as the Iraqi oil-for-food program is beginning to come apart. The scandal has been brewing for years. The first I learned of it was in a New York Times Op-Ed article last April by the journalist Claudia Rosett charging that the secretive UN oversight of more than $100 billion in Iraqi oil exports and supposed humanitarian imports was "an invitation to kickbacks, political back-scratching and smuggling done under cover of relief operations." After checking with Kurdish sources in Iraq, I reported that...

The cover-up in the office of the U.N. secretary general of a multibillion-dollar financial fraud known as the Iraqi oil-for-food program is beginning to come apart. The scandal has been brewing for years. The first I learned of it was in a New York Times Op-Ed article last April by the journalist Claudia Rosett charging that the U.N.'s secretive oversight of more than $100 billion in Iraqi oil exports and supposed humanitarian imports was "an invitation to kickbacks, political back-scratching and smuggling done under cover of relief operations." After checking with Kurdish sources in Iraq, I reported that half the...

William Safire, The New York Times' in-house "conservative" -- who endorsed Bill Clinton (news - web sites) in 1992, like so many conservatives -- was sure Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ" would incite anti-Semitic violence. Thus far, the pogroms have failed to materialize. With all the subtlety of a Mack truck, Safire called Gibson's movie a version of "the medieval 'passion play,' preserved in pre-Hitler Germany at Oberammergau, a source of the hatred of all Jews as 'Christ killers.'" (Certainly every Aryan Nation skinhead murderer I've ever met was also a devoted theater buff and "passion play"...

WASHINGTON — The other night, a woman came up to me and said: "Mr. Candidate — I have a 12-year-old son growing up fast. He said to me, `Momma, I need new shoes because these old ones with the holes hurt my feet and the other kids in school are laughing at me.' But I couldn't afford no $50 on new shoes made in America." So I said — what did you do, Momma? "I took him to a factory outlet center. In the back of the Rockport store they were having a clearance of shoes made in China or...

In the town of Kalar, about a hundred miles northeast of Baghdad, Kurdish villagers recently reported suspicious activity to the pesh merga. That Kurdish militia has for years been waging a bloody battle with Ansar al-Islam, the terrorist group affiliated with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and supported by Saddam Hussein in Iraq. It captured a courier carrying a message that demolishes the repeated claim of Bush critics that there was never a "clear link" between Saddam and Osama bin Laden. The terrorist courier with a CD-ROM containing a 17-page document and other messages was Hassan Ghul, who confessed he was...

Were we are in Thumbsucker Central in Boston's Fleet Center, overlooking the Democratic convention as the unthinkable — an unpredictable roll call of the states — is about to begin. A brief recap for those of you who tuned out after the front-loaded Democratic primaries turned into a long, hard slog. After the New Hampshire results were in, John "Bring It On!" Kerry maintained his (professedly unwanted) front-runnership, but Howard "Yee-haw!" Dean recovered strongly from his Iowa waker-upper. John "Two Americas, Count 'Em!" Edwards and Wesley "Call Me General" Clark were nicely positioned for their South Carolina comebacks, and those...

WASHINGTON Unpenitent pollsters are now confident that John Kerry and John Edwards (sure we voted for the war, but who knew?) will repeat their one-two performance in New Hampshire. And that Howard Dean (I knew, that's who knew, and they didn't) will run ahead of Clinton stand-in Wesley Clark, thereby staying in contention. And that Joe Lieberman may do well with independents, though they are mostly November Republicans.These assumptions, to be tested soon enough, have Democratic soothsayers predicting a Kerry-Edwards ticket at the Boston convention. What delicious diversity: North and South, with Kerry's fatal Massachusettsism ameliorated by Edwards's Carolina charm;...

WASHINGTON Iowa, despite record hype, won't be dispositive; the major campaign event this week is the president's State of the Union address. A dozen points to watch:1. Salutation: For two centuries, "My Countrymen" was traditional; now it's sexist. "Fellow Americans" works best.2. Defining adjective: The State of the Union is — what? "Strong" is popular; J.F.K. used "good"; Jerry Ford, in his first S.O.U., dared to judge it "not good." If Bush chooses an unfamiliar adjective, that word will reverberate.3. Interruptions by applause: Congress in joint session will clap on cue any time a president looks around. But watch how...

On Monday, Kofi Annan will have a chance to play "a vital role" in Iraq that the U.S. has promised. Iraqi, U.S. and British representatives will troop into his New York office with a request: inform the Shiite leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, that the world body supports a reasonable timetable for Iraqi elections, not a premature election that would amount to a coup by Iraq's Shiite majority. As the U.N thus demonstrates its nation-building usefulness, the U.S. will face its own delicate task: to persuade the Kurds in the north not to demand so much autonomy that it may endanger...

On Monday, Kofi Annan will have a chance to play "a vital role" in Iraq that the U.S. has promised. Iraqi, U.S. and British representatives will troop into his New York office with a request: inform the Shiite leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, that the world body supports a reasonable timetable for Iraqi elections, not a premature election that would amount to a coup by Iraq's Shiite majority. As the U.N thus demonstrates its nation-building usefulness, the U.S. will face its own delicate task: to persuade the Kurds in the north not to demand so much autonomy that it may endanger...

The strategic reason for crushing Saddam was to reverse the tide of global terror that incubated in the Middle East. Is our pre-emptive policy working? Was the message sent by ousting the Baathists as well as the Taliban worth the cost? Set aside the tens of thousands of lives saved each year by ending Saddam's sustained murder of Iraqi Shia and Kurds, which is of little concern to human rights inactivists. Consider only self-defense: the practical impact of U.S. action on the spread of dangerous weaponry in anti-democratic hands. 1. In Libya, Col. Gadhafi took one look at our army...

The strategic reason for crushing Saddam was to reverse the tide of global terror that incubated in the Middle East. Is our pre-emptive policy working? Was the message sent by ousting the Baathists as well as the Taliban worth the cost? Set aside the tens of thousands of lives saved each year by ending Saddam's sustained murder of Iraqi Shia and Kurds, which is of little concern to human rights inactivists. Consider only self-defense: the practical impact of American action on the spread of dangerous weaponry in antidemocratic hands.

The strategic reason for crushing Saddam was to reverse the tide of global terror that incubated in the Middle East. Is our pre-emptive policy working? Was the message sent by ousting the Baathists as well as the Taliban worth the cost?Set aside the tens of thousands of lives saved each year by ending Saddam's sustained murder of Iraqi Shia and Kurds, which is of little concern to human rights inactivists. Consider only self-defense: the practical impact of American action on the spread of dangerous weaponry in antidemocratic hands. 1. In Libya, Colonel Qaddafi took one look at our army massing...

WASHINGTON — "Who is this that darkeneth knowledge by words without counsel?" So thundered God in the Hebrew Bible to his servant Job. That upright and blameless man had dared to challenge the Lord's unfairness in stripping him of his wealth and killing his children. Last week, some five or six millennia later, "words without counsel" by Howard Dean were heard about the most controversial book in all theology. As he heads into what H. L. Mencken called the "Bible Belt," the candidate moved to plug an apparent hole in his résumé about an interest in religion. After hearing Dean's...

WASHINGTON In last year's office pool, for the second year running, I accurately predicted the best-picture Oscar winner. Forget all of the other predictions, which were varying degrees of mistaken; I shoulda been a film critic. The multiple choices include one, all or none. My picks are down below. Do not save this page. 1. Next tyranny to feel the force of U.S. liberation: (a) North Korea; (b) Iran; (c) Syria; (d) Venezuela.2. Iraq will (a) split up, like all Gaul, into three parts; (b) defeat the insurgents and emerge a rudimentary democracy; (c) succumb to a Sunni coup.3. First...

WASHINGTON — A psychopolitical challenge voters will face in the coming year is how to deal with cognitive dissonance. A cognition is a bit of knowledge or belief. When it disagrees with another cognition in our head, theorized Prof. Leon Festinger of Stanford a half century ago, a nasty jangling occurs. To end this cognitive dissonance, or C.D., we change the weak cognition to conform to the stronger one. Take Aesop's fox, who could not reach a lofty bunch of grapes no matter how high he jumped. One foxy cognition was that grapes were delicious; the other was that he...

WASHINGTON -- I am beginning to worry that Howard Dean may not get the Democratic nomination. Follow the convoluted reasoning: There are now three de facto political parties in the United States. In order of present strength, these are: 1. The Republican Party, in control of all three branches of government and most of the statehouses, fat and sassy because the economy is rising and the war is being won. 2. The Dean-Internet Party, its Bush-despising base so energized as to be frenetic, its leader happy to be the apostle of anger, its bandwidth bandwagon gaining momentum with each pulse...

WASHINGTON — As American tanks began to roll through Iraq to overthrow Saddam, Libya's longtime terrorist, Muammar Qaddafi, came up with a strategy to avoid being next on the regime-change list: pre-emptive surrender. Nobody calls it that, of course. Diplomats and doves want to treat the dictator's epiphany as the result of patient negotiation stretching back for decades. Some Republicans claim he was softened up by a bomb dropped his way in the Reagan years. But three years after that, his terrorists murdered 259 people aboard Pan Am 103. Subsequent sanctions led to severe economic pain and the threat of...