The Untouchable Menace - The Los Angeles Times reports that many Congressmen are asking, if this Ansar al-Islam camp is so dangerous, and we have a doctrine of preempting terrorist threats, and we're in the neighborhood (Iraqi Kurdistan) anyway, why the hell haven't we taken it out? They and the LAT get various responses:

Powell declined to answer, saying he could not discuss the matter in open session.

. . .

"This is it, this is their compelling evidence for use of force," said one intelligence official, who asked not to be identified. "If you take it out, you can't use it as justification for war."

. . .

A White House spokesman said Thursday he had no comment on the matter.

. . .

U.S. officials said the Pentagon and the CIA considered plans last summer for a covert raid on the compound, but that administration officials decided against pursuing the plan.

Officials would not say why the plan was scrapped but rejected reports at the time that activity at the camp was not seen as significant enough to warrant the risks.

SUN of a Bitch - Your Talking Dog, on the infamous New York Sun editorial:

I had no plans to attend said protest, until now. As Patrick Henry said, "If this be treason, make the most of it."

There are some updates to the Honor Roll of pro-war writers who have denounced the Bloomberg Administration and/or The Sun.

Counting to Three - From the LA Times: "U.S. Tells N. Korea It Can Wage 2 Wars."

From the Washington Post, Friday:

SARAVENA, Colombia -- The arrival of U.S. Special Forces trainers in this battered town last month signaled the beginning of a change that gives the United States more direct military involvement in Colombia's long civil war and could lead the country's two leftist guerrilla armies to broaden attacks against U.S. targets . . .

Over the course of this year, Arauca province is scheduled to become the center of gravity for a $470 million-a-year U.S. effort to help President Alvaro Uribe cripple the enduring leftist insurgency by strengthening Colombia's military. The training program will emphasize counterinsurgency rather than the anti-drug techniques that had been the focus of U.S. aid to date.

In expanding the training beyond counter-drugs, the United States has abandoned an ambiguity that was once carefully cultivated by U.S. officials, promising to make the United States a higher-profile player in Colombia's 39-year-old war.

This month, U.S. officials will begin shifting military resources previously used in anti-drug operations in southern Colombia to this province, which lies on the Venezuelan border and is 220 miles east of Bogota, the capital. Helicopters will be used directly against the two guerrilla armies, which the State Department considers terrorist organizations. Under the program, the Colombian military is scheduled to buy additional helicopters and other military equipment.

The effort has been presented as a way to help Colombian troops protect an economically important government oil pipeline from guerrilla attack. But it is clear from the training taking place on an army base here that defending the pipeline will mostly entail offensive operations against the seasoned guerrillas who have prospered on this swampy stretch of oil and coca fields. The first military unit selected for training, for instance, is a counter-guerrilla battalion, not a unit whose principal task is to protect the pipeline.

"I look at this [program] more as one that is trying to establish security in an area where there just happens to be a pipeline," a U.S. official said.

From the Washington Post, May 6, 1996:

But U.S. troops did come under fire in El Salvador, and fired back, as U.S. authorities now acknowledge. Dozens of soldiers who were there, many of them still in uniform, watched yesterday as Salvadoran children, escorted by U.S. commandos, placed tiny American flags beside the names of 21 killed in action.

Later at an Arlington hotel, about 50 of the more than 5,000 U.S. veterans of El Salvador's civil war also were honored for service in sometimes hazardous operations for which they have never received the kinds of badges and patches normally issued to U.S. service members after combat . . .

Officially, there were only 55 American advisors in El Salvador at any one time, and their rules of engagement prohibited them from participating in combat operations. But none doubted he was in a combat zone. They carried weapons, received combat pay, accompanied government troops in the field and were targeted by guerrillas who had decided U.S. troops were fair game.

Call it yesterday's news, tomorrow, if you get my meaning.

We Do the National Greatness St - Well, You Know - Striking comments from Jesse Walker's Hit and Run item:

"It's times like this that legislative immunity really pisses me off. All we should need is two witnesses standing in Congress watching the vote..." (Brian Trosko)

"Every once in a while I have to do a little test to see if I've gotten too cynical. Here's today's test: Is it not possible that the leaking of this proposal has some connection to today's elevation of the terror-warning status to deer-hunter orange?

Ok. Just the right level of cynical." (d'Herblay)

"Here's another comforting thought. Bush designated U.S. Attorney-General John Ashcroft to stay away from his State of the Union speech, making Ashcroft the successor to head the government should catastrophe strike at the Capitol." (Lefty)

"Sorry to everyone else who finds Lefty as shrill and irritating as I do, but I have to agree with him on this point. George W. Bush has never had any kind of genuine libertarian tendencies, even if some of his economic policies are consistent with libertarian viewpoints." (Unnamed)

One thing jumps out at me from the parts I didn't quote: several commenters averred that Ashcroft is a "menace" and Bush needs to "fire him."

During the Zhdanovshchina and other Stalin-era crackdowns, Party members would ask each other, "Does Stalin know?" Stalin knew. It occasionally suited him, after the fact, to pretend he did not, and to feed his previously chosen instrument to the machine said instrument had until then been running.

John Ashcroft serves at the pleasure of George W. Bush. Keep that word in mind: pleasure.

More on That British Report - From the notorious antiwar rag, the Daily Telegraph:

It was the refusal of Britain's spies to disclose what they knew about their Iraqi counterparts that led to the fiasco surrounding the latest British dossier.

The dossier was drawn up in January, not by intelligence officials but by four government information officers, two from the Downing Street press office and two from the Coalition Information Centre (CIC).

Which, in some cases, is no biggie:

Part 1 of the document dealt with Iraqi intelligence service's operations to disrupt the weapons inspectors' work and conceal weapons of mass destruction. Part 3 dealt with the effect of the Iraqi security apparatus on the local population.

Although not compiled by intelligence officials those two parts included information from secret intelligence, and government officials insisted yesterday that they were "entirely accurate".

And in some cases is very big indeed:

It was Part 2, which claimed to give "up-to-date details of Iraq's network of intelligence and security", that caused the problems.

Britain's intelligence services have pushed what they were prepared to release to the limits, despite very serious concern that sources would be identified and lost just at the moment they were most needed.

They have also been irritated by the use of some of their material to prove points that are simply not true, such as the alleged firm links between al-Qa'eda and the Iraqi regime.

To repeat, this is the Daily Telegraph talking.

Tabloid Terror News - Britain's Sun reports

COPS have been issued with a chilling manual telling how to trap and kill suicide bombers in Britain.

Snipers will be deployed as soon as a suspect is spotted.

But if marksmen cannot get to the scene, an officer with an automatic pistol will kill the terrorist with a bullet in the brain at close range.

Ebony and Ivory - NME reports that

Hip-hop star DR DRE is to team up with easy listening legend BURT BACHARACH for a series of collaborations.

The 74-year-old star says he's working on samples sent to him by the controversial rapper.

I'm one of a handful of people around the world who found Bacharach's collaboration with Elvis Costello, Painted from Memory, to be moving and effective. So as to Dr. Dre and Burt, why the hell not?

A Fanboy's Notes - A few years ago, a friend gave me his manuscript to read. A few days later, I told him, "I just started your novel. It begins on page 73." He had, as many of us do in early drafts, frontloaded the thing with way too much preamble.

I can now say that Vertigo's Bast miniseries (I complained about the first issue last month) begins on the next-to-last page of the second issue. The hell of it is, I think the miniseries proper (Issue #3, essentially) may be pretty good. Just short.

Patriot II Revisited - Reactions . . .

You know, if people spent half as much time paying attention to stuff like this as they did to who was sponsoring this week's peace rally..

.. nah, what am I thinking? It still wouldn't change a damn thing.

Under a Blackened Sky

Section 517: "Police to Wear Invisibility Cloaks." An officer will be able to walk right up to a likely terrorist and, as long as he breathes very quietly and doesn't sneeze or cough, to observe and listen at close range.

Scrappleface

Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings hypothesizes that "the Justice Department leaked the maximalist version on purpose. That way, after all the outrage and compromise, they'll get a 'moderate' version that will still be plenty bad." If that sounds too cynical to you, consider the alternative: that the administration wants to pass the entire bill. Which is worse?

Jesse Walker, Hit and Run

There's a lot wrong with this draft, but what strikes me is the proviso for stripping someone of US citizenship at government discretion. I'm no foe of two-tiered justice (which is why indefinite, warrantless detentions of Pakistanis and Saudis in Guantanamo don't bother me much), but once you're an American, you get to stay an American until you choose not to. Taking that away is a power the government simply should not have.

Tacitus

The White House has insisted, ever since news of DSEA leaked, that the bill is just a "draft" and that the White House hasn't even seen it yet. That is a lie. An Office of Legislative Affairs control sheet (PDF) shows without doubt that Vice President Richard Cheney received a draft of DSEA on January 10, 2003. "Attached for your review and comment is a draft legislative proposal entitled the ‘Domestice Security Enhancement Act of 2003," said the memo from the Office of Legal Policy.

George Paine

I don't see anything so bad about it.

Saddam Hussein

Most of the links have good additional material, especially George Paine and Under a Blackened Sky.

Honor Roll - The New York City government is obstructing permits for the February 15th march against the war sponsored by United for Peace and Justice. The New York Sun, in an odious editorial, praises the obstruction. Here is a list of pro-war writers that have troubled to stand up for thr the freedom we're supposed to be defending. My hat's off to these people:

Eugene Volokh
Mindles H. Dreck
Jane Galt
Glenn Reynolds
Tacitus
Arthur Silber
Gary Farber
Lynxx Pherrett
Diana Moon

There may be more, and I'll add names as I get them.

UPDATE: Added Glenn Reynolds Saturday morning.

UPDATE: Added Tacitus Saturday afternoon.

Stray thought: Remember when I said that the virtue of ANSWER was that they were good at applying for permits . . . ?

UPDATE: Added Arthur Sulber Saturday evening. Nominations are still open, people. There's no guarantee I'll find everyone on my own. I'd also be keen to be informed of any non-blog hawks who weigh in.

Split-Screen Republicanism Watch

We do the national greatness stuff abroad, and the leave us alone stuff at home. Sign me up.

Andrew Sullivan

You asked for it! You demanded it! It's -

USA-PATRIOT II!

a secret draft of which was obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.

An Office of Legislative Affairs “control sheet” that was obtained by the PBS program "Now With Bill Moyers" shows that a copy of the bill was sent to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and Vice President Richard Cheney on Jan. 10, 2003. “Attached for your review and comment is a draft legislative proposal entitled the ‘Domestice Security Enhancement Act of 2003,’” the memo, sent from “OLP” or Office of Legal Policy, says.

But really, how bad can it be? Oh.

Dr. David Cole, Georgetown University Law professor and author of Terrorism and the Constitution, reviewed the draft legislation at the request of the Center, and said that the legislation “raises a lot of serious concerns. It’s troubling that they have gotten this far along and they’ve been telling people there is nothing in the works.” This proposed law, he added, “would radically expand law enforcement and intelligence gathering authorities, reduce or eliminate judicial oversight over surveillance, authorize secret arrests, create a DNA database based on unchecked executive ‘suspicion,’ create new death penalties, and even seek to take American citizenship away from persons who belong to or support disfavored political groups.”

Question: Whatever happened to, "If we have the war, we won't have to give up any more of our civil liberties?" We're obviously going to have the war . . .

Link via an e-mail from Hesiod, who asks:

How can any self-respecting libertarian support this administration?

Beats the fuck out of me, dude.

Hypothesis: The Justice Department leaked the maximalist version on purpose. That way, after all the outrage and compromise, they'll get a "moderate" version that will still be plenty bad.

Where's Mary Rosh When You Need Her? - British Intelligence ought to make up one of those personae to defend itself on the internet, because John Smith of LincolnPlawg has more about this week's fishy British intelligence document on Iraq (the one that Colin Powell called "the fine paper that United Kingdom distributed yesterday.") Turns out that the report's borrowing from often-stale open sources goes beyond the paper of California student Ibrahim al-Marashi (see item immediately below).

The Guardian suggests that the problem is that "What Whitehall may not grasp is the horror with which unacknowledged borrowing of material - the crime of plagiarism - is regarded in American academic and media circles, even though successive US governments have a poor record of misleading their own citizens on foreign policy issues at least since the Vietnam war." But I think the real problem is that we're finding that so many of the report's sources are past their sell-by date. al-Marashi (who offers a qualified defense of Whitehall in the Guardian article) based his report largely on documents captured in 1991. The more recent sources noted in his footnotes run to books and articles that are at least a couple of years old, which will themselves have been through a lengthy publication process and may be drawing on similar sources.

There's a remaining what it all means question to deal with: why did this happen? Why did the British functionaries charged with putting this document together hand Tony Blair a time bomb waiting to go off? They think we're too stupid to notice is a possibility that can't be discounted. But there's another one: maybe Whitehall has had enough of Blair on this issue. Fed up with the pressure, the report authors (and possibly their bosses) may have constructed the time bomb knowingly, waiting for it to go off in the PM's face.

I'd Feel Better If They Tried Harder - This is a hell of a note:

On Monday, the Government released a 19-page intelligence document designed to help win over sceptics by detailing Iraq's alleged efforts to hide its weapons of mass destruction.

However, Channel 4 News has claimed the document - hailed by Colin Powell at the UN yesterday - was mostly copied from three different articles - one of them allegedly written by a postgraduate student.

The article's original author is Ibrahim al-Marashi, from Monterey, California, the programme said. He was researching documents relating to the build-up to the 1991 Gulf War and not to the current situation, it was alleged.

Channel 4 News reported that Glen Rangwala, an academic at Cambridge University, spotted that large chunks of the student's paper had been copied to form parts of the No 10 dossier called Iraq - Its Infrastructure of Concealment Deception and Intimidation.

That's from Britain's ITV. More:

Channel 4 News' website detailed the alleged plagiarism: "No 10 says the Mukhabarat - the main intelligence agency - is `spying on foreign embassies in Iraq'. The original reads: `monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq.'

"And the provocative role of `supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes' has a weaker, political context in the original: `aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes.'

"Even typographic mistakes in the original articles are repeated."

But repeating mistakes is par for the course.

Back from the Blogarama - Tons of fun. Julian took pictures, which he'll undoubtedly post once he a) finishes dancing at the after-party, and b) sobers up. Hung with the CATO boys. Max Sawicky braved the largely right-wing crowd, so he got to meet many Stand Down colleagues. Colby Cosh sent Kelly Jane Torrance as his official representative, which is nice because she's a lot better looking. Speaking of better-looking, I got to meet the legendary Missy and Marie Gryphon. Plus, I got to meet Jesse Walker. This was a real treat because I've been reading Jesse Walker for years - before there were blogs, let alone this one. Jesse's writing went a long way toward assuring me that libertarianism could be, you know, cool. Turns out Jesse's cool too. Sat around with Matt Hogan, Gene Healy and James Landrith. A couple of people assured me that they skip right over the fitness blog posts, which is too bad, since other readers know that I frequently slip into them the keys to lasting wealth and ultimate sexual fulfillment.

Not just Eve Tushnet but her posse were missing, as was Dave Tepper. I'd hate to think that some people were intimidated by a little snow. Speaking of which, the drive home was quite the adventure. To paraphrase Alan Bock, I've always been better advocating Capitalism than practicing it. Plus, cars just don't do much for me. So the trip home was in La Familia Offering's '91 Escort with no heater/defrost and bad wipers. Matt Hogan rode shotgun and had the official task of regularly handing me the snow brush. I would reach around from the driver's side window and clear what the wipers were missing. Hey, it worked!

More on Zarqawi - Hesiod has not been taking it easy this week, and he's found some interesting things that Colin Powell never mentioned:

It turns out that Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, was actually helped quite a bit more by a member of the Qatari royal family, than by Saddam Hussein. Or at least, that's what the EVIDENCE shows . . .

And there's a lot more. I have two letters in my in-box that I've been meaning to get to. Both say, in similar words, "But we have to do something. What's your alternative?" But "we have to do something" is precisely what I'm not convinced of.

Because they lie. Routinely and often and deliberately. They said there were 100,000 people in mass graves in Kosovo. That was a lie. They said Iraqi soldiers were tossing babies out of incubators. That was a lie. They said Iraqi troops in 1991 were massing on the Saudi border. That was a lie. They said Saddam's attack on Kuwait was a total surprise. That was a lie. They said US troops had no combat role in Central America in the 1980s. That was a lie.

Right through the Gulf War, I believed that shit. By the time of Kosovo, I knew better. I'm 42 years old, I knew the Middle East existed before September 11, 2001, and if today's bunch sounds a lot like previous bunches that turned out to be full of crap, my conclusion is that this bunch is full of crap too.

REASONing On Powell's Speech - Tim Cavanaugh on Tuesday at the UN:

How you viewed Powell's address depends on whether you always wanted to attack Iraq anyway. For those who believe there remain many methods available short of war, or that none of this is worth involving American forces in yet another foreign entanglement, or that this is the wrong war at the wrong time, Colin Powell's address seemed like a formality for a deal that was sealed some time ago.

AWOLPundit - So I'm on vacation this week. I haven't gone anywhere, but it turns out to mean reduced posting anyway. Stuff around the house to do for one thing, and I'm writing a roleplaying game in my spare time. Tonight I'll attend the Blogarama at Kalorama. (There's one in NYC tomorrow too, which I'll have to miss.)

Meanwhile Colin Powell has argued at the UN that Al-Qaeda and Iraq have been cooperating for the last eight months or so, while Britain's Defense Intelligence Staff Agency has told Tony Blair that that's not true.

Whom to believe? It's worth noting a number of things:

Much of Powell's brief relies on the movements of one Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has spent much of his post-Afghan time among the Kurdish Ansar al-Islam in Northeastern Iraq. "Northeastern Iraq" may ring some bells. That's the Kurdish "safe area," sheltered by the US/British no-fly zones to keep Saddam's bloody paws off the Kurds. It is, in other words, already our part of Iraq. Apparently it's worth using our power over the no-fly zones to bomb Iraqi air defense installations every few days for the last twelve years, but not to attack the outposts of al Qaeda affiliates.

Trying not to herniate himself by pushing the evidence too obviously far

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw also sought to back up Mr Blair's line by insisting that intelligence had shown the Iraqi regime appeared to be allowing a "permissive environment" "in which al-Qaeda is able to operate".

which is to say that Saddam hasn't strained himself picking up al Qaeda types who have ended up in Iraq. This may be true, I don't know. It's also consistent with the concerns of those of us who have argued that US policy since the "axis of evil" speech has created incentives to drive our real and potential adversaries together rather than split them.

We missed a chance back there. It may or may not have worked, but it would have been the smart thing to do. Remember Bush's famous "You're with us or you're against us" speech? It's worth recalling what he actually said:

Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

(My emphasis.) That original speech was clear and smart. There was, if you will, a new deal. The Administration knew that the Taliban were a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pakistan's ISI, and that Pakistan's support for al Qaeda was extensive. It knew, even if it would never, ever admit, the depth of Saudi involvement with al Qaeda, and the winks and nods of a dozen other states. That was then, was what the President actually said, and this is now.

What the Administration never did was offer Iraq the chance to get in on the game. It might not have worked but it would have been smart to try. Instead, a snap decision, made before the flesh of the victims of the Pentagon attack had ceased to bubble, to use the massacres of September 11 as an excuse for the conquest of Iraq no matter what.

Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld.

"Go massive," the notes quote him as saying. "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

It's amazing, given the perverse incentives the Administration has set up, that, on the evidence, Iraqi-al Qaeda "cooperation" amounts pretty much to "live and let live." (The most detailed reports they've been able to offer point to nothing more than what has been described as a "non-aggression pact.") That's got a lot more to do with our luck than the Administration's skill.

Big Enough to Admit When I'm Wrong - The evidence for war is now irrefutable.

A Guilty Thing Surprised - This pretty much says it all.

(Link via Stand Down.)

TardyPundit - I know I'm the last antiwar blogger to link to this Iraq War II Shockwave game. But if by chance you haven't checked it out yet, now's your chance.

Neolibertarianism Again - A sharp and sympathetic analysis of interventionist and anti-interventionist impulses in libertarianism by - and this will surprise some people who see him as a pure bomb-thrower - Hesiod. I feel a bit abashed about recommending a piece that is so complimentary to me, personally, but it really is worth reading.

Music Notes - You can hear a song from the upcoming Richard Thompson album here. Sounds pretty good, is my official one-listen evaluation.

Department of Short and Sweet - From Pandagon.net:

CalPundit links us (through a Volokh post) to a story about a professor's refusal to give a student a recommendation in biology because they're a Creationist.

Well, duh.

I mean, if I'm applying to graduate school in economics, and I don't believe supply and demand exist, chances are I'm not going to get a good recommendation - my unwillingness to accept the basic tenets of a discipline would make me unfit to practice that discipline at an even more skilled level.

Another Online Quiz - I would have hoped for blank verse, I think, but this makes a certain sense:

I'm terza rima, and I talk and smile. Where others lock their rhymes and thoughts away I let mine out, and chatter all the while. I'm rarely on my own - a wasted day Is any day that's spent without a friend, With nothing much to do or hear or say. I like to be with people, and depend On company for being entertained; Which seems a good solution, in the end. What Poetry Form Are You?

Link via Making Light.

Over There - There was more "Gulf War Syndrome" stuff in the news recently and it got me thinking. Now as to Gulf War Syndrome, I think a couple of things: 1. GWS probably is a phenomenon of social psychology rather than biochemistry, as Michael Fumento has argued. You can call it "psychosomatic" or "group hysteria" if you want - I prefer "shell shock." 2. Shell shock casualties are casualties. Their suffering is real and a certain proportion of "psychic wounded" are an expected and reliable outcome of any war. GWS sufferers must thus be reckoned when calculating the cost of Gulf War Phase I.

But that's something I've believed for awhile now. What it finally occurred to me to wonder was if they have something akin to Gulf War Syndrome in Iraq. I searched long and hard for a source inside that country, since, you may have seen on TV, it's a totalitarian hellhole and you can't just read the bad news in the free and lively press. I finally came in contact with an Iraqi we'll call "Aloha Paz" just to be cute about things, because he said I could use his "real" name if I wanted. He writes:

you realize that this is not a country in which any sort of disease/epidemic/whatever is disscused openly. the government still says that Iraq is %100 AIDS free which is stupid for any country to say. so instead of information about the disease we get to call it the curse on the west.

the same goes for what has been called the gulf war syndrome, but in this case we have something much nastier to throw at the "west" than saying this is allah's revenge, we blame it on depleted uranium.

We have been having the strangest diseases and ailments showing up, the number of abnormal births is definitely higher than it was before, and if any starnge symptoms crop up they will be blamed on the depleted uranium. how much of this is true I can never tell. I am sorry I can not give you a clear answer on this. because if the syndrome has depression, fatigue and feeling of pain in various bodyparts as symptoms, then you might have just described %70 of the Iraqi people :) we should get prozac on the food for oil program.

All FWIW. For the record, I don't know what I think about Depleted Uranium either.

How's That Again? - Reader Gary I. Selinger copied several bloggers on an e-mail to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ombudsman. He writes:

Dear Sir: As you surely know, a reporter for CBC Newsworld asked -- of all people -- a science fiction writer whether the Columbia disaster could be attributed to "American arrogance." The reporter also appears to have linked such "American arrogance" to current tensions and conflict in the Middle East.

I might expect to have this tendentious claptrap disseminated on Pacifica Radio, or some other far-left/lunatic fringe organization. I am sickened to learn that it was, in fact, a product of the CBC.

Implicit in his argument is the notion that the CBC is not a "far-left/lunatic fringe organization." Strange.

Glenn Reynolds has more on the famous "American arrogance" interview, including an attempt by the innocent party to the conversation to defend the interviewer. I don't find the defense especially convincing.

Department of Unintended Consequences - Reader Grant Gould sends an interesting letter:

Ever since I heard the idea reified and the term invented, I've had a bad opinion of "neolibertarianism." But with your synopsis of it yesterday ("governs best which governs elsewhere"), I find myself re-evaluating.

The governing classes seem inescapably to exist: Perhaps it is a matter of personality type or a structural property of human civilisation or some stange genetic perversion, but any group larger than 30 or so people has someone who wants to start making rules, and beyond about 150 people someone's talking about saving people from their own ideas and desires.

Moreover, no constitution seems to be adequate to prevent them from wheedling themselves more power; no amount of popular education seems to prevent their ideas from suckering the public; no threat seems to dissuade them unless it is the threat to replace them with a new and even more rapacious governing class like clerics or soldiers.

That being the case -- that there will be government, and that it will govern -- perhaps the best that we can hope for is that it governs elsewhere. Perhaps empire provides a way to distract and occupy those energies of the governing class whose exercise at home infallibly stifle liberty.

It's possible that empire will merely whet their appetites; the main course will still be domestic liberties, and they will approach them with even greater hunger. The British bureaucracy grew as its empire grew, and grew faster as its empire shrank. Still, it might be worth a try. If imperial projects can distract government-types from the home front then I say more power to them.

What can I say but, heh. Still, there are problems. Empire and "neo-empire" are expensive, for one thing. And TIPS and Total Information Awareness (and USA-Patriot, and the Padilla case, and . . . ) suggest that "Our Enemy, the State" won't keep its aggrandizement abroad. It still looks to me like statism abroad leads to more statism at home. For instance, suppose we not only can "rebuild Afghanistan" (which I doubt), but do. Liberals will then demand "How about some 'nation-building' in our [inner city/distressed agricultural regions/declining industrial areas]?" Conservatives will want to know why we shouldn't insist on the same respect for authority at home as we do in the provinces.

It's a shame too, because Grant sure looks to be right that "no constitution seems to be adequate to prevent them from wheedling themselves more power." I'm not sure what the answer to the problem is, or if there even is one, but I'm pretty sure neo-imperialism isn't one either. I suspect that the best characterization of empire's relation to the domestic state might be: practice.

Imitation Fitness Blog Post II - Reader/snowbird Mary LaCroix responded to my concerns last week about the expense - in money and/or space - of weight training by suggesting the website of Krista Rustukles of Toronto. Krista has pages of no-weight and dumbbell-only programs - the no-weight page covers strength training using "things you may already have around the house" - and a page of advice on outfitting a home gym. Krista says get a "power cage," which looks like a box frame designed to let you lift free weights without dropping them on yourself. Power cages seem to cost in the low hundreds of dollars and take up about 18-20 square feet. Add to that the cost of bench, barbell and weight plates and you're still well below the cost of a Bowflex or home Nautilus machine or - heaven forfend - a treadmill.

Krista's program is pitched toward encouraging women to train seriously, but Mary writes "lots of guys swear by her methods, too."

Again, I'm not knocking weight training and I expect to do more of it (see item below), but a quick review of the cost of Heavyhands shows:

Book, used $10-30
Shoes $80-150
Dumbbells $5 on eBay for a set of the official AMF weights with handguards, one and two-pound caps, plus up to a dollar a pound for fancy dumbbells in larger sizes, total well under $100
Trainer - Once you have the book, the very notion of paying a trainer is absurd
Club membership - Needless expense
Metronome or pacer, $40

Keep in mind you need athletic shoes no matter what. You can probably skip the metronome too. (These days I just work to my target pulse range and keep pushing myself to improve range of motion and weight size from week to week.) You can get everything you need for less than $200.

Which may have something to do with the program's virtual disappearance from the fitness media since the 1980s.

Of course, cheaper yet is to use "things you may already have around your bones," per this workout page from Bryce Lane.

Imitation Fitness Blog Post - 195 pounds, 38" waist as of this morning. As I had concluded from previous benchmarks, on my frame every 10 pounds is a pants size. This does not mean that I get to go out and buy new pants, because 38" is what I was imagining (pretending? hallucinating?) my waist size to be even before I started dieting. Sure I had to - cHuooooooh! - inhale a little to get them on, but dammit they were my 38" pants, and to actually buy a size 40" (or, ahem, 42") would have been an admission that Something Was Wrong.

And speaking of wrong, this notion that only women agonize over their body shapes - where the hell did that come from? I'll venture a guess: women think only women agonize over their body shapes because they talk about it all the time, while men don't. Ladies! Think about this for a minute! We're the gender that doesn't talk about our feelings, remember?? This is just one more feeling we ain't talking about.

So, this handy BMI calculator tells me I'm down to a BMI of 27.2. While I've been exercising, I'm nowhere close to the level of muscularity that would invalidate BMI as a measure. I'm still officially overweight, and about 4% over the median for men my age, but screw those slackers. I'm thinking much bigger. Er, smaller.

Exercise. This week I did a lot more reading up on weight training, including as much as I could find about the SuperSlow method that Diana Moon has been so enthusiastic about. Stated briefly, Super Slow holds that you should

o Do one set of reps per muscle group
o Use equal, ~10-second movements in both directions - frex, for a bicep curl, take ten seconds to raise the weight and ten seconds to lower it. No jerking, involving other muscles etc.
o Push the muscle to complete failure within about 100 seconds
o Do this at most every five days or so.

There's more detail on the protocols here. Hutchins and his school famously consider aerobics to be not just unnecessary but counterproductive and therefore evil.

What I've discovered while researching various fitness claims are, first, you're dealing with a lot of people who hate each other, partly because money is at stake, but more because theories are at stake, and there are a lot of people who care more for their theories (i.e. being right) than they could ever care for money; second, that there's an awful lot of lousy reporting about fitness claims. The situation seems to be this: the layman can't trust that anything he reads will be accurate or pointful, and the expert is so invested (in the several senses) in a viewpoint that he can't trust himself either.

A for instance: In this long, friendly interview with Super Slow founder Ken Hutchins, he mentions, "Wayne Westcott has obtained a lot of press for his favorable reports on SuperSlow, but I do not like to reference exercise physiologists that I do not respect, even when they say good things about SuperSlow."

Well that's a pretty harsh thing to say, but continued Googling determined that in 1993 and then 1998, Westcott conducted studies that determined that slow-lifting athletes enjoyed "50% greater increase in strength compared to regular speed training" over the course of the study. I saw this claim repeated around the web several times, including stories in major media, such as this Men's Health magazine story on ABCNews.com. Only Clarence Bass of RIPPED points out the essential problem with Westcott's findings:

One important detail is that the slow lifters were tested using the slow 14-second cadence, and the regular-speed group was tested using the regular 7-second cadence. There was no comparison using a common cadence. For example, the two groups could have been tested using an intermediate 4 or 5 second lifting phase, but that was not done. Each group was tested using only the reps and rep speed they used in training.

The authors of the report acknowledge that the absence of a common testing protocol was a possible flaw; it may cast doubt on the validity of their findings. In effect, they compared apples and oranges. One can’t help but wonder what the result would have been had they tested for 8-rep maximum, allowing the participants to use whenever rep speed they chose. In other words, what would the result have been in a real-world strength comparison.

Or if the study had measured before-and-after muscle mass, which I believe can be done, or some other neutral set of fitness measures (resting pulse, blood pressure at rest, body fat composition etc.)

Bass's critique doesn't invalidate Super Slow itself, just the test - and most health reporting. And he offers an explanation for Hutchins' dissing of Westcott that would go beyond mere arrogance.

The curious consumer has to sort among the claims and counterclaims of numerous true believers, most of whom argue that the "conventional wisdom" is wrong and the establishment blind. In this last, they may not be wrong. Kenneth "Aerobics" Cooper himself now says that the older you get, the more emphasis you should place on strength training relative to "cardio" exercise. That's a significant revision to the conventional "Aerobis uber alles" wisdom that Cooper did so much to erect in the first place. Meanwhile, Newsweek's newest new diet article of the other week notes the following:

How did the government get it so wrong? Basically by trying too hard to simplify its message. Scientists have known since the 1960s that the saturated fat in red meat and dairy products can raise cholesterol levels and promote coronary heart disease. Though the USDA had long downplayed those risks to appease the cattle and dairy industries, it had also acknowledged them. When the USDA staff started building the Food Guide Pyramid in the late 1980s, its main objective was to get that message out. Earlier food charts had shown four basic groups—meat, dairy, produce and cereal grains—and encouraged people to eat everything in moderation. The pyramid introduced the notion that some foods (fats) required more moderation than others (carbohydrates).
Scientists were well aware that fats could be healthful and that carbs could cause harm. Studies had shown that unlike butter and lard, the oils found in fish, nuts and vegetables helped protect against heart disease—and that cereal grains had all the nutritional value of table sugar when milled into flour.

Your federal government at work, loyal reader. But this is why you can't just turn to the USDA or NIH or CDC for the "real" answer. Their answers too will be a compound of commercial pressure, paternalism, bureaucratic intertia and ass-covering.

The problem is that just because the conventional wisdom is suspect doesn't make the radicals right. I still have no idea whether Super Slow or Heavyhands or "explosive lifting" or Pilates is right for everyone. I do think pure strength training is more important than I gave it credit for in earlier years. I think Super Slow might help my mother a lot. (It was originally developed as a geriatrics program, according to the Hutchins interview.) I think Leonard "Heavyhands" Schwartz and Ken Hutchins would agree on some important things - the importance of training the upper body and the virtue of building muscle mass. They take two radically different approaches to the issue - Schwartz developing a whole-body aerobics system and Hutchins championing pure weight training. (Schwartz is not flabby in this picture.)

I'm not sure there's a pure "isolation-based" lifting approach for training those rib and lower trunk muscles that protest if you fold laundry for a couple of hours. I doubt any more that aerobic, Heavyhands-style small weight training will give you all the muscle power you need to move the couch when it comes time to redecorate. I know, as I discovered this afternoon, that real-world fitness means being able to carry the Littlest Offering a half mile after she gets tired of walking but refuses to go back in the stroller. Then there are all the things we don't want that comprise what we think of as fitness:

o stroke
o essential hypertension
o diabetes
o heart attack
o bad back
o bad knees
o obesity

Is all that so hard? Maybe so.