Pre-Correction Newsflash - The USA Today website has a story saying that the Saudis have finally frozen terrorist-connected financial assets. Or that they've agreed to. Or that the Gulf Cooperation Council has agreed to do so, and Saudi Arabia is a member. Or something. The story lacks even a single quote from an official Saudi source on the subject.

Asked whether the Saudi government had actually blocked assets, Gurule replied, "I think what's most important is cooperation." In some cases, it may be more desirable to keep bank accounts open and monitor them as part of an investigation, he said.

Prediction: It will turn out, over the next days and weeks, that the Saudis haven't done a thing.

The Vodalus Approach - In which we offer a real conspiracy theory.

So Prince Abdullah wrote President Bush in August suggesting that "a time comes when peoples and nations part." This site and others have kicked the Saudis around for quite awhile now, and folks ranging from the peacenik right to prowar types across the spectrum have suggested that the US should dump the ungrateful bastards. The irony is supposed to be that if bin Laden hates anyone more than the US, it's the Saudi royal family, and he'd make short work of them in our absence.

It hit me this afternoon: In Gene Wolfe's fine novel sequence, The Book of the New Sun, the Autarch (absolute ruler) of the Commonwealth faces an internal enemy, the rebel armiger Vodalus, aka "the liege of leaves." But as the Autarch makes clear to Severian, New Sun's protagonist, he knows pretty much everything there is to know about Vodalus' organization and leaves him and it in place. Because Vodalus exists, all opposition gravitates toward him, which makes threats of sedition that much more manageable for the Autarch. When Vodalus dies and Severian ascends to the Autarchy, his enemy and former lover Agia takes over Vodalus' organization. Vodalus' "rebellion" functions, tacitly, as an auxiliary of the Commonwealth government.

Are we starting to make a connection? Consider this: bin Laden tells his followers not to attack Saudi Arabia's oil production facilities because they represent "the wealth of the people" that he'll see gets redistributed when a just regime takes power in Riyadh. That's an awfully convenient sworn foe to have if you own that wealth, eh? And I realize Americans don't get comprehensive international news, but - you hear about bin Laden blowing up Khobar Towers; you hear about bin Laden blowing up the USS Cole. But has his organization struck any serious blow against the government in Riyadh? Killed any Saudi ambassadors, kidnapped any princes, bombed any ministries? al-Qaeda has proven its ability to commit violence on the penninsula generally and in Saudi Arabia specifically. You'd think someone sworn to bring down the regime would get to it.

On the other hand, you'd think an "official opposition" might do exactly as bin Laden has done.

Justin Raimondo Writes Mad, which means that his columns not infrequently contain cheap shots and even, on occasion, spittle-flecked incoherence. But he frequently picks deserving targets. Today's demolition job is on John McCain, who remains one of the scariest people in public life. I have long thought that, if you lacked the time to follow current events closely, you could do pretty well just finding out where John McCain stands on an issue and taking the opposite position. From campaign finance reform to the war on drugs to the regulation of "ultimate" fighting, McCain has a flawless instinct for finding the most authoritarian and least workable view. Raimondo specifically takes out after McCain's wrongly praised op-ed of last weekend. His focus on one particular part is deadly accurate:

A peculiar sub-theme of McCain's appeal to bloodlust is the idea that war and diplomacy must conflict. "We cannot fight this war from the air alone," he avers. "We cannot fight it without casualties. And we cannot fight it without risking unintended damage to humanitarian and political interests." Say, what? War, as the saying goes, is the continuation of politics by other means. So a war that damages the political and diplomatic interests of the US in the region is, by definition, self-defeating.

When peaceniks have to remind warmongers about Clauswitz, warmongers need to take a deep breath. Note that Raimondo is no pacifist and is all for retribution against bin Laden and the Taliban. (As is Unqualified Offerings.) But he's fierce against calls to promiscuously widen the war. UO will be giving him the Bloomwatch treatment at some point. But not today.

The Three Men I Admire Most, They Caught the Last Train for the Coast - Instapundit approvingly quotes Michael Barone approvingly quoting Orwell as follows, writing during World War II: "When you look a bit closer, the first question that strikes you is: Why is it worse to kill civilians than soldiers?" I have greatly admired Instapundit, Barone and Orwell. That makes the entire citation sequence too depressing for words.

No! A European peacenik on a music-related mailing list I subscribe to nevertheless writes: "I agree that the atrocious Taliban regime has to be taken down, on account of all the things you stated (and then some). I also agree that the Taliban don´t give a shit about civilians being killed...NATO´s goal is to take down the Taliban regime, "rebuild" the country, have open elections and a democratically elected government. Let´s all hope they reach this goal without the senseless killing of innocents lives."

I sure hope that those are not NATO's goals, except for taking down the Taliban regime. In fact, not only must they not try those other things, it's vital that the US and Britain foreswear any interest whatsoever in rebuilding Afghanistan and reforming what passes for its political system. One of the problems with imperialism, neo or classic, is that it gets you coming and going. First, you piss people off when you mess with them. Then they get used to expecting you to solve all their problems for you and get pissed when you don't. If we let the idea get around that we somehow accept responsibility for the political shape of Afghanistan's future, then South Asians and others will get all huffy when any aspect of the "solution" turns out not to their liking. (As it must.)

Not just our mission but our declared mission should be, "We are going to destroy the Taliban because they turned their country into a platform for violence against us. That done, Afghans can do as they like with the mess the Taliban's actions left them. Our own interest is at an end. But if the next Afghan government makes itself an enemy of the United States, we'll be back."

The Enemy of My Enemy Is In Trouble! - Mickey Kaus links to the Washington Post's account of the last days of Afghan rebel Abdul Haq. Stuff That Should Not Be News to Anyone: Haq's pre-capture reports make it clear that, as other sources have claimed, the bombing is galvanizing support for the Taliban and anger at the US among the Pashtuns in the south and east. This is what bombing always does and always has. Any planner or decision maker who tells you that a bombing campaign will demoralize an enemy government and inspire the locals to overthrow it needs to be shuffled off to a sinecure at the Weekly Standard. There may be good reason to bomb someone, but inspiring the bombed to support you is not one.

Haq's relationship with the CIA was ambiguous and his relationship with Pakistan's ISI, an organization that practically qualifies as a "root cause" of terrorism, problematic. But there's a certain whiz bang factor in Haq's end:

Besides, Ritchie said, the witnesses reported that Abdul Haq had already been captured by the time the bomb was dropped. He said more than four hours elapsed from the time Abdul Haq's companion called Peshawar and the moment the bomb was dropped.

"Ritchie," a Chicago millionaire is described as a "one of Abdul Haq's close associates." Here is what happened in "four hours."

1. Haq gets thrown from his horse when ambushed in a canyon.
2. A member of his entourage calls Peshawar on a satellite phone. Ritchie is "summoned." (The article doesn't make it completely clear whether he was in Peshawar or Chicago.)
3. Ritchie calls Robert McFarlane of Iran-Contra fame.
4. McFarlane "contact[s] the military."
5. A suddenly appearing surveillance aircraft pinpoints Haq's location.
6. "Two U.S. jets bombed a vehicle convoy spotted on a road several miles away." (And the "ineffective bombing" theme recurs.)

Since Ritchie asked McFarlane and the military repeatedly for helicopters and none appeared, one must conclude that the military didn't feel like sending helicopters. For whatever reason, they thought it better that Haq die than that they rescue him. But in a geeky, Tom Clancy way, it's really something that you can order up a bombing raid in only four hours like that, with calls bouncing from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Illinois to Washington and back.

Well, I don't mean you can. But some people can.

Badgers of Honor - Cynthia McKinney says she'll wear the scorn of her critics like a badge of honor. Last time I remember a politician using that phrase was Dan Quayle in the 1988 vice presidential debates. I didn't like it then, either. Now, I was a partisan Democrat in 1988 and I'm a libertarian now, so maybe they each caught me at a bad time. But using the "badge of honor" thing non-ironically constitutes awarding yourself a medal. Even figuratively speaking, that's hard to take.

The Age of Reason - Instapundit made the reasonable and scientifically sound suggestion this morning that perhaps some of the anthrax traces they are finding in post offices and public buildings was there all the time. Anthrax is naturally occurring, in small enough quantities it doesn't do anything, and we haven't thought to look for it until recently. This is a reasonable theory, and even testable. (Look for anthrax in a bunch of public buildings where you are pretty darn sure the mail vectors wouldn't reach.) What I found on more than one occasion today is that it's a tough sell: "Are people dying?" a coworker retorted this morning. "Why does everything have to come down to a ridiculous conspiracy theory?" someone else asked.

The illogic of the responses is depressing. The reaction, abreaction really, is that if you say any anthrax just happened to be there when people went looking, you must be saying all anthrax just happened to be there.

This Just In! The sorts of people who call Pacifica radio stations are more skeptical of the war than most Americans. No, really! So says Jonetta Rose Barras in a column in today's Washington Post. Actually, what Barras says she's writing about is the greater skepticism of African Americans than white ones, but her examples come mostly from callers to her WPFW radio show and people she has run into at "receptions, dinner parties and public meetings" - presumably the sorts of receptions, dinner parties and public meetings at which a left wing radio talk show host finds herself. The article is worth reading, but mostly for reasons Barras can't have intended:

o The anecdotal evidence is drawn largely from callers to her show.
o Contrary to what she imagines, it doesn't establish a specifically black critique of the war at all. You've heard the same stuff from white leftists:

"The historical discussion is critical to what is going on," said one caller, named Anthony. "The Bush administration wants to set aside the Kyoto, the ABM treaties; his people walked out of the race conference [in Durban, South Africa] . . . . You can't ignore this stuff."

Kyoto and the ABM treaties?
o Then there's the very beginning of the article:

On Oct. 16, more than 200 people packed the moot court at Howard University's School of Law for a "black community national dialogue" on war, terrorism and peace. The participants had plenty to say about the military campaign in Afghanistan -- its antecedents and posthumous ramifications -- and much of it was critical.

Howard University's website tells us that Howard has 9000 undergraduate and 1200 graduate students and a faculty of 1700. I'm supposed to be impressed that 200 "pack" a teach-in? I suspect that when it comes to this kind of thing that a historically white university like Amherst can hold its own.

And at bottom, there's the non-anecdotal evidence Barras notes in passing: "More blacks than whites question or object to the so-called war on terrorism. According to a poll conducted earlier this month by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, 20 percent of African Americans surveyed -- compared with 6 percent of whites -- do not support the president's military assault; another 17 percent of blacks -- but only 11 percent of whites -- are undecided." Add it up and 63% of blacks support a war effort led by George W. Bush, a man who got about every seventeenth black vote just last year. 20 looks a lot bigger than 6, but 94-to-80 - the "not opposed outright" percentage comparison, just isn't as impressive. The actual "support" ratio becomes 83-63. 20% is a significant disparity. But the very context Barras adduces, blacks' differential experience of America and American power - as University of Maryland professor Ron Walters says in Barras' article, "White patriotism is a patriotism of ownership of the state. Black patriotism is one of ambivalence; it is patriotism that has suffered." - and the very different levels of support for the administration that blacks and whites took into September 2001, isn't what's striking is how small the gap is?

If you are geeky enough, you can crunch the Pew data Barras provides, looking for both "support" metrics and "agreement" metrics. Here are some of the outcomes that fall out:

o Put a random African-American and random a Euro-American together. 55% percent of the time, you have two people whose opinions agree. The most likely "support" result is two people who support the war (52%). Those are outright majority outcomes. (2% of the time you have paired white and black undecideds, and once every hundred pairings you have two people united in opposition, most likely on a Pacifica call-in show.)
o In 12% of cases, the "black" opinion will be more hawkish than the "white" opinion. e.g. black support-white neutrality or opposition; black neutrality-white opposition. In 33% of cases, the reverse obtains - the white person "outhawks" the black person.
o It's this last outcome that is Barras' whole thesis and it crops up in only a third of all one-on-one black-white encounters. Interested parties are welcome to calculate a comparable "comity index" for other racial issues - affirmative action, welfare reform, mandatory minimum laws. I'm not going to bother, but I'll bet the CI would be much worse in each case.

Close Call - There was a second yesterday, the length of time to read a headline, when I was afraid I was going to agree with Ellen Goodman about something, thus blowing an unbroken streak stretching back to the seventies. Goodman's column, "Evil and Blowback," addresses the contending theories, or, if you want to get all postmodern, the competing narratives, about 9/11. It didn't take long for the danger to pass, though. Ginger Stampley complains about the idea that "somehow US foreign policy caused this, as opposed the idea that evil people could conceive of the idea on their own and enact it?" Ellen Goodman, it develops, hates both the evil people and the blowback explanations:

The truth is that I find myself homeless, a foreigner in the neighborhood of people who talk about evildoers and in the neighborhood of people who talk about blowback.

There's more. Way way too much more, but after all, Goodman has inches to fill. What it all adds up to is, first, one more attempt by a liberal to split unsplittable differences; second, the familiar preening faux oppositionalism of the coastal left taken to a higher power - Goodman is at pains to show us that not only are her sensibilities more refined than those of the hoi polloi, they are even more refined than those of her fellow lefties:

Standing like many Americans at the heart of this debate, while a cacophony of voices swirl around and inside me, I long for a simple argument, a simple solution. But I resist and resent the simplified arguments and the simplistic solutions.

Well that's good to know! In these dark times, America must ask itself, "Does Ellen Goodman resist and resent simplified arguments and simplistic solutions or not?" Because if we lose our first line of defense, not just Ellen Goodman's refinement but her exhibition of same, what hope for us?

Now here was the close call: I believe both the evil people and the blowback explanations. Each are necessary but not sufficient causes of what has happened. If the likes of WIlliam Kristol and Robert Kagan can use the word "imperialism" favorably when discussing US foreign policy, I can use it unfavorably. If the Ellen Goodmans of the world can call abortion bombers and even tax-cutters evil, I won't foreswear the term when talking about Mohamed Atta or "UBL," as the national security bureaucracy refers to bin Laden.

The danger lies, and I think this is what bothers Ginger, in the idea that to explain is to excuse - that if we identify Iraqi sanctions or US support for Pakistan's ISI as contributing factors in what was done to us, that that somehow means the hijackers were not evil after all. This danger is more than theoretical - we've read and heard entirely too much from people for whom US policies really do excuse the murders of 9/11. We are not talking about "moral equivalence" either. Neocons abhor what they call moral equivalence, but, properly considered, true moral equivalence is the only acceptable eithical standard for judging foreign policy and state violence. What we get from the anti-American left, at home and abroad, has nothing of equivalence in it; rather, any perceived US transgression from the Arbenz coup to the Kyoto abrogation utterly vitiates any American right to respond to the attacks of September or even to complain about them. It's ethical prestidigitation with "moral equivalance" used for misdirection only.

But to explain is not to excuse. The delusion that it does is an outgrowth of a historically recent movement, the therapeutic managerialism that goes, alas, by the trade name "liberalism" these days. The best argument for both the necessary separation and the necessary inquiry into explanations (including US policy) is by Gene Callahan, here. (Note that Gene Callahan writes for a fire-breathing website that will curdle the blood of many mainstream liberals and conservatives. If Unqualified Offerings can find any meaningful niche for itself, it is to bring you the best writing from organs you wouldn't be caught dead reading.)

Bad Blogger. No Biscuit. - Worked much of the day at work (such are the pressures of employment in a dying industry), then a belated birthday dinner, and afterward, Mrs. Offering and I built a fire and watched (finally) The Matrix. (Strangely, I do not feel a compulsion to shoot up my high school.) Tomorrow, I hope to fish, then work. So it might be a quiet posting day too. Meanwhile, the talk more and more is that the anthrax attacks are homegrown. Maybe Andrew Sullivan will agree to forego nuclear retaliation on North Jersey. This time.

The Media Really Does Suck Department - CNN.com has what it alleges to be a news story about the resignation of Bernadine Healy from the Red Cross:

"I think there were some differences of opinion," Healy said, adding: "I think the board felt I was out ahead of them in some ways."

And those ways are? You won't find out from CNN's article.

Healy said there were policy issues over how to distribute money from "The Liberty Fund," which collected some $500 million to help victims of the September 11 World Trade Center terrorist attack.

She also acknowledged friction over how the American Red Cross handled a decision by the International Red Cross to exclude the Israeli version of the agency -- the Magen David Adom Society -- from membership in the global agency.

Call me obsessive about details, but who was on which side of these disagreements? CNN.com isn't going to tell you.

Hm, He Hm'd - Did we win when we weren't looking? Rumor and speculation, but damned intriguing rumor and speculation on National Review Online. As I am not the sort of right-winger who has much use for National Review, I wouldn't have found it but for Instapundit linking to Rand Simberg's blog. The NRO article has a link to a source of the rumor, Chinanews.com, a site that will not load right in my browser.

Is this why Donald Rumsfeld changed his story all of a sudden about whether the US will ever get bin Laden?

Must-Read - From a politician and a Democrat, Russ Feingold's statement on the dreadful antiterrorism bill, from his Senate site. Feingold was the only Senator to vote against the final bill.

Another Reason the New York Press Website Is Indispensible - Crispin Sartwell's "Farm Report," its country music review column. Sartwell is an idiosyncratically right-wing academic. Farm Report doesn't appear often enough but he does have his own website. He doesn't update it at a pace that would class it as a blog, but the "New" page lists fifteen items from this month. And Sartwell beat the rush when it comes to writing about the Taliban (for the Wash Post).

Wake Me When Something Happens - The following is the least gripping headline in today's Post: Britain Prepares to Announce Plans for Ground Forces in Afghanistan. Unqualified Offerings comes to this story late, having missed the "Britain Gets Ready to Prepare to Announce Plans" story, whenever it ran.

When I Tell You That I Love You Don't Test My Love - Dan Bern is a pretty good neo-folkie singer/songwriter. At least one of his songs, "Jerusalem," from his eponymous CD on Work, is breathtaking. In fact, he said, trying to be more like those, "Finally brushed my teeth, but still haven't cleaned the bedroom" blogs, I am going to load it into the drive and listen to it right now. His current record company has a free download of what they say is one of two songs he has written about the terrorist attacks in September, and you can get it for free.

It's no good.

I feel a little guilty saying that. It's obvious from the recording that the song is deeply felt. But it does almost nothing art is supposed to do. Most of the song is a recounting of events that never rises above the journalistic, and not terrific journalism either. When it strays into the realm of ideas it sticks to the shallows. I hang with poets, so I understand the impulse to write out of an immediate grief. But my poet friends have had hit or miss results with our 9/11 material too - no tranquility to recollect the emotion in, yet. If you don't like that theory, pick one you like better. And in the interests of fairness (and conscience-salving), note that Dan Bern has written stuff like this:

All the ancient kings came to my door and said do you want to be an ancient king too and I said Yes very much but I think my timing's wrong

Money Matters - Another bit from the NYT article on the folks Virginia Postrel refers to, with irony, as "Our Friends the Saudis:"

Riyadh has not yet fully joined the international effort to block bank accounts thought to be financing terrorist operations, American officials say. But the Bush administration, fearful of offending the Saudis, has not yet raised a public complaint.

Here's my question, which a real newspaper should consider addressing: Isn't money pretty fungible? If Saudi banks are doing nothing to block al Quaedi-connected financial maneuvers, does that provide enough of an escape hatch to vitiate the entire financial effort against bin Laden. My answer: Do I look like some kind of banking expert? But it would be nice if the Times didn't leave the question not only unanswered but unasked.

Don't You Know There's a Moron? From yesterday's New York Times, an article on Donald Rumsfeld's recent trip to Saudi Arabia:

That minimalist approach was evident during Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's recent visit to Saudi Arabia, in which he purposely raised nothing sensitive.

Aides said Mr. Rumsfeld did not inquire about the Saudi citizens on the administration's list of suspected terrorists or the Saudis' unwillingness to allow American warplanes to fly missions from bases in Saudi Arabia. Nor did he complain about the lack of transparency about what Riyadh was doing to stop aid to the Taliban, senior administration officials said.

I note that when neocons complain that Colin Powell isn't pushing our war efforts zealously enough, they contrast his conduct and opinions unfavorably with those no-nonsense warriors at the Pentagon. "Decide what you want to do," they intone, "then form a coalition of the willing." Now, I believe I read somewhere that one of the things we want to do is destroy al Quaeda and the Taliban, and the Saudis would appear to be giving us nothing toward that end. But the Pentagon seems to be too busy pushing the White House to attack Iraq to notice.

...And You're No Ginger Stampley - Ginger Stampley is indeed a friend of mine, and a smart, educated and even wise one. She's also a fellow gaming geek, and one of those still-firing neurons in the liberal brain. I've added a link to her blog, because it's worth reading. Hers is much less obsessively focused on the War than this one is so far.

Department of Corrections - Unqualified Offerings does not wish, in its infancy, to get a reputation for unreliability. Its grandpa always said that it's easier to get a reputation for dishonesty than to live one down. But there really was a link, darn it, to three new Butthole Surfer songs from the Onion even yesterday. Now it's gone. However, you can get an interview with comics writer Alan Moore on the AV Club.

Analyze This Statement: I Am Lying - Bothered by androids? If they refuse to compute pi to the last digit for you, or fall for the famous bold-face trick that provides our header for this item, try this paradoxical utterance from Paul Begala on the American Prospect's website:

But there have been cracks in the patriotic veneer, ugly moments in which vicious partisanship has supplanted patriotism. And every one of them has come from the right.

Whoah! He says - ! But he - ! His own - ! Whoah!

Music Notes - From the Onion site you can find a link to a Butthole Surfers preview with three complete streaming songs. From the new record, and they sound great.

Modest Proposal - Alan Bock's column yesterday on antiwar.com takes a needless detour through some sophistry about Germany "harboring" terrorists before propounding the best idea of the war:

I have a modest proposal, however. The United States could issue something of an ultimatum to the Saudis: Either cooperate fully in the ongoing investigations of terrorists and allow US bases in Saudi Arabia to be used in the military aspects of the conflict or we’ll pull those bases right out of there.

It could well be that the Saudis – who undoubtedly fear a resurgent Saddam Hussein less than some spokespeople might claim to do, so – would be privately pleased with such a demand. The bases might have some military and symbolic value to the regime, but they are also a source of friction and resentment, and not just from Osama clones.

We've pretty well established by now that Saudi conduct during and, very possibly, before the current unpleasantness sucks ass, as they say in the State Department. Our military should have been out of Arabia long since. But a right-wing peacenik knows that there's something to the problem of "rewarding terrorism" by pulling out after, and visibly in response to, attacks. We want peace, but we don't want to encourage people to kill us every time they want something. But as Bock continues:

Pulling the US bases, of course, would also eliminate one of Osama bin Laden’s ostensible grievances. That’s why it would have to be spun as a demand from a righteously indignant and testosterone-driven United States rather than as a concession to the evil one. Osama (or his successors or aides if he’s not around personally) would spin it as a victory for them, of course.

But the United States would have at least a counterspin and possibly (if its diplomats blustered credibly enough) a preemptive spin. It might even be a prelude to taking the propaganda aspect of the war seriously, something the United States, for all its history of wanting to see its wars as righteous crusades, almost never does.

There’s my modest contribution to neutralizing terrorism. I’m sure it would be more effective than creating more Afghan rubble.

I've been trying to sell my wife on this idea since last weekend, in the hope that she would use her vast influence in the upper reaches of the government to make it happen. (Vast influence = Works on the same street the White House sits on.) Unfortunately, very little else about the government runs the way Alan Bock (or I) would like it to run. So this one's probably doomed.

The Left may be corporatively brain dead but there are still some individual neurons that fire. Check out Andrey Slivka, house pinko for the generally right-leaning New York Press, on the cops and firemen at the NYC benefit concert last Saturday - you know, the ones who booed Hillary Clinton and got as much in Osama bin Laden's face as they could under the circumstances. Slivka drives me nuts when he gets going on the suburbs, which he abominates. He seems to despise libertarians too. But he writes so well about so much that I can't return the favor.

BLOOMWATCH - Tonight in Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, there is much fretting about our "bluff that the terrorists have just successfully called." That is, our longstanding doctrine that we would retaliate for a biological attack with nuclear weapons. "Because the casualties are as yet minuscule," Sullivan writes, "and the horror diffuse, the terrorists have managed to both break a previously unthinkable barrier in warfare and yet also avoid anything like a commensurate response." And this bothers Sullivan a great deal. He continues:

As of now, the government has said nothing coherent about this epochal event, except to continue a war that was launched in response to a separate, conventional attack. The terrorists have therefore won something big, and the Bush administration doesn't even seem to know how to respond. I can see why. If the White House were to say explicitly that it believes this weapon has been used by a named enemy, there would be enormous pressure for an appropriate response. So the administration has been confused in its public utterances, barely able to grasp what has been achieved by the enemy, seemingly unable to articulate a credible response. It seems to me that this passivity must end soon. After all, the White House itself has now been targeted with a biological weapon! We need the president to tell us what exactly the government believes about this anthrax attack, who is behind it, what it means, and what we are going to do in response. If we continue the current, passive strategy, we are not only sowing fear across this country. By our lassitude, we are almost inviting a far larger attack. Perhaps the administration is waiting for some truly huge horror before taking further action. I can see the public relations reasons for this. But isn't it their duty to prevent just such an outrage by retaliating distinctly now?

But isn't it possible that the president hasn't told us what the government believes about this anthrax attack because the government doesn't know what it believes? Perhaps those stodgy Republicans want actual evidence before they retaliate against... someone, dammit! Striking back against someone who launched a biological attack on your country is retaliation. Striking out at someone who didn't necessarily launch such an attack is a tantrum.

The Proof in the Pudding - I pledged a historically jewish frat in college, which means I spent many youthful evenings throwing matzohs across the commons area like frisbees. But we did occasionally eat the darn dry things. Here's my question: Shouldn't a cracker made with (goyish) blood be...saltier?

FANTASIA - Dick "Undisclosed Location" Cheney reappears, and joins President Bush at the opening session of the United Nations. As the ceremony is about to get underway, the two converse in front of a "dead" microphone.

Cheney: That's Syrian Defense Minister Tlass. The guy who revived the blood libel.

Bush: He's a major league asshole.

Cheney, nodding: Oh yeah. Big time.

And Take Long Views - It's been pointed out that the current wave of anthrax attacks is, in terms of actual death and destruction, pretty lame. More generally, experts have correctly pointed out the enormous and largely unsolved difficulties of weaponizing germs and chemicals. Aum Supreme Truth had sarin in Tokyo, and managed only 19 kills.

It's a pretty cheering picture, short term. I can't help but worry, though, that what we're seeing so far is the germ warfare equivalent of the Red Baron and Eddie Rickenbacher, with the London Blitz and Dresden about 30 years off.

BLOOMWATCH - Literary critic Harold Bloom averred, famously, that new poets feel the need to react against their strongest influences. And if it's true for poets, it must be true for Bloggers, eh? So I'm going to start at the top. On today's Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds writes:

JUST A THOUGHT: The assassination of Israeli Minister Rehavam Zeevi has caused a lot of problems for the U.S., derailing Israeli/PLO negotiations at a crucial time, when Arafat looked to be trying to make nice. Is it possible that this isn't a coincidence, but that it was designed to do just that? Could the PFLP be coordinating with bin Laden? That, of course, would make them targets of U.S. action, and would make those who support them targets as well.

Gosh, I guess it would. And if Irving Kristol and George Will are behind it, that would make them targets of US action too. I guess. They are neither of them keen on Israeli/PLO negotiations. If we want to play qui bono without worrying about, oh, evidence, let's find out whether Edward Said has an alibi for that morning!

Coming soon: Jim gratuitously insults more of his betters! To hit for the cycle, Bloomwise, I need to be beastly to Postrel, Sullivan and Kaus within the first week.

The assassination of Rehavam Ze'evi, the former Istaeli Minister of Tourism and apostle of "voluntary" transfer of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza can inspire certain idle fantasies. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine declared that the murder was their vengeance on the Israeli government for the assassination of PFLP leader Mustafa Zibri.

In a bloody-minded way, this particular "cycle of violence" is the Peacenik's Dream. A major complaint against war has always been that it is a few old men sending a lot of young men off to die for them, and maybe take out a pizza joint or a commuter train in the process. I have no idea how old Zibri was, but Ze'evi was definitely an old man. He was a lot more responsible for what irks the Palestinians than Sbarro's is, and Zibri was an individual with plenty of Israeli blood on his hands.

Jacob Sullum recently made the case for assassination on the Reason Magazine website:

It may be unsettling to know that American intelligence operatives are plotting the deaths of foreigners perceived as threats to U.S. security (especially if they do the job incompetently or without adequate oversight). But surely targeted killings are preferable to the use of massive force, which is likely to kill the innocent along with the guilty.

Right now we are bombing Afghanistan and we know that by doing so we are killing a certain number of innocents. We tell the world and ourselves that it can't be helped and that we are doing everything we can to "minimize" civilian casualties, and so far as we we can tell, that's true. But we still feel bad about it. (I hope.) Contrariwise, what American wouldn't cheerfully shoot Osama bin Laden in the stomach and settle down on a rock to watch him bleed away his last? When Hamas blows up a bus, I feel rage. I can't summon rage over the assassinations of Zibri or even Ze'evi - regret, sure. But the difference is between war and war crime.

Sullum continues:

It’s hard to understand this solicitude for thugs who are so thuggish that they’ve managed to dominate an entire country. If Osama bin Laden somehow took control of Afghanistan, would he suddenly be off-limits?

Mr. Sullum, meet Mr. Johnson: President Johnson, who famously averred that, "Kennedy was trying to kill Castro, but Castro got him first." The point is not that Castro did kill Kennedy, but that Johnson thought he did, and what Johnson thought was the motive. (In Charles McCarry's fine novel, The Tears of Autumn, the assassins are the Vietnamese, in revenge for the Diem coup. You get the idea. If one government sets up in the assassination business, other countries might decide to give it the business. Inveigh against "moral equivalence" all you want - Saddam and Castro and the like are unlikely to be swayed.

An assassination ban is a golden rule for national leaders. It's tit for tat, a famously effective survival strategy. Heck, you can think of a functioning democracy as a kind of assassination ban operating on the same principle. People already have. Early in a novel that many of us read in our nerdly youths, The Third World War, by General Sir John Hackett, the author makes much of the fact that only a handful of heads of government in the entire world could go to sleep secure in the knowledge that no one would try to kill them overnight.

Alas, the rest of us don't get to decide whether to play global tit for tat. We might get to like it if we could. In a column Meg Greenfield wrote after James Baker's sneaky post-Tienanmen trip to Beijing first came to light, she pointed out that even politicians from mutually hostile countries share certain affinities and fellow-feeling born of class interest. They'll be preparing joint communiques and coordinating the limos, is how I recall her putting it. If you're a libertarian, as I am, there's a certain appeal to the Peacenik's Dream. Let the politicians have the wars without us. (You leftists, don't kid yourselves: bin Laden and Arafat and Commander Zero are politicians too; which means their first concern is their own power and status, and how they can maximize same through the use of other people.) Even this war, begun for the least assailable of reasons (the bastards killed thousands of us in our own country), has led to an awful "antiterrorism" bill, a stupid new government agency, budgetary profligacy and at least a temporary increase in the prestige of the very folks who failed to protect 6,000 people from deadly force. As an alternative, literalizing the famous Matrix takeoff looks good.

And yet. I have a sinking suspicion. We see how stupid and venal many politicians can be when they are only a little scared. If we get Congressional staffers cutting in the Anthrax test line and Senators passing stupid "security" laws now, imagine what they might do if they were sensibly afraid for their lives. (Look what they do in those parts of the world where they are afraid for their lives. Drat. It looks like the safest, freest thing to do is to go on being their first line of defense.

Breaking the Cycle of Templates - We are going to have to seriously cut out these tedious technical bulletins. FTP is off and on. Now looking at my second template and I liked it better as a sample.

This Thing Is On Department - Solved shakeout cruise problems with blogger's FTP module. We are underway! Now I hate my template...

Is This Thing On Department - Blogger seems to generate posts okay. Doesn't seem to be putting them on my website.

Begin for the Sake of Beginning - I've been enjoying me-zines for quite awhile, particularly in the wake of 9/11. Virginia Postrel's site and Glen Reynolds's Instapundit were as crucial to my psychic equilibrium in those early days as U2's "Stuck in a Moment" and the boys of United Flight 93. And I thought, hey, it might be cool to have a me-zine of my own, and Blogger makes it too easy to resist the temptation. Annoyingly, a lot of your more reputable bloggers have actual qualifications. But I've decided to skip the qualifiers and move straight to running off at the mouth about the issues of the day. (And carp.) I've published some poems and have a job (for the moment). That will have to do.