March Madness - Bruce Rolston of Flit has a morning analysis, current as of General Franks' morning (EST) briefing. Skip CNN and stick with Flit, I say.

Nothing from Salam Pax since just before "A-Day" began. Hang in there, Salam.

More useful looking military charities: books for the troops (via Electrolite) and CDs (via Virginia Postrel). These are likely to be especially useful - remember, the war will probably be short, but the occupation will be forever. Our guys and gals are going to need some way to pass the time.

Note: I will update as soon as the RIAA declares that sending used CDs to service members constitutes theft.

On the War is the Health of the State front, this report on preliminary details of war finance, from Reuters. The article says the Bush administration is proposing a $75 billion war finance package, but the numbers suggest otherwise. The plan, per Reuters calls for $62 billion for the defense department, $13 billion in foreign aid - which is $75b right there - plus, "Billions more will beef up security in New York and other possible terrorist targets in the United States." On top of that

Under pressure from some lawmakers, the administration is also considering including aid to cash-strapped U.S. airlines.

and

Experts say occupation costs could far exceed the direct military costs of the war.

Congress has already trimmed the President's tax cut proposal by $100 billion, just to be ready, I guess. (Surely liberals will learn to love this war.)

Where's the humble foreign policy I was promised, dammit.

Nothing to See Here, Folks, Move Along - From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The United States closed its embassy in Pakistan yesterday for an indefinite period as protests grew countrywide against the US-led attack on Iraq.

Non-essential embassy staff flew out of Pakistan on Thursday, leaving a small number of personnel and marine guards. Private US citizens have been advised to consider leaving the country, as have nationals of allied countries, including Australia.

Pakistan. That's the muslim country that really does have nuclear weapons, right?

The war itself seems to be going well. The rest of the world? Not so well.

A Fanboy's Notes - Finally got around to watching Minority Report tonight with Mrs. Offering. I liked a lot of it - the "we don't cut off your security access once we start hunting you down like a dog" thing gave me pause - but I can now say for sure that the best Philip K. Dick movie is still the one not based on a Philip K. Dick story.

Prepare! - Just in case there's something to the whole six guys in Mexico thing, remember to review these helpful antiterrorism tips.

It's So Easy - The Pentagon tells us that bomb damage assessment is hard and takes time. CNN and its analysts, on the other hand, can instantly tell, based on the coverage I saw at lunchtime today, whether bombs have struck civilian targets or not. Turns out the bombs never do.

The Lunatic Atmosphere of War II - Justin Raimondo on jerk protesters in San Francisco. Not all the lunatics are hawks.

The Lunatic Atmosphere of War I - Now and then I dip into Best [Neocon-Approved Items] of the Web to see if it still stinks, and it always does. Today it reads

It turns out Rangel doesn't think very much of those who actually are making the sacrifice of serving in our volunteer military. This morning Rangel was one of only 11 House members to vote "no" on a nonbinding resolution "expressing the support and appreciation of the nation for the president and the members of the armed forces who are participating in Operation Iraqi Freedom." (The Senate unanimously approved a similar resolution yesterday.)

This was not a pro-war resolution, just a show of support for the troops. Along with Rangel, the following members, all Democrats, voted "no":

A bald-faced lie. Skipping past the Whereases, we come to the Resolveds:

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That
the Congress expresses the unequivocal support and appreciation of the
Nation--

(1) to the President as Commander-in-Chief for his firm leadership and
decisive action in the conduct of military operations in Iraq as part
of the on-going Global War on Terrorism;

(See resolution text.) That's not all the Resolveds - clauses 2 and 3 thank and praise the troops and their families. After praising the President for "his firm leadership and decisive action." But first this Republican-drafted resolution has to praise the President first. AND claim that "operations in Iraq" are "part of the on-going Global War on Terrorism," which, as even James Taranto should know is, as a practical matter, the very heart of the dispute over the wisdom of the war.

Going through the Whereases too will make it even clearer that Taranto speaks the opposite of the truth - this was a thoroughly political resolution and a pro-war resolution. It's the simplest of blue-pencil exercises to turn the actual text into the kind of resolution Taranto only claims it to be. All the reports on the debate make it clear that the political content was the sticking point.

This is no doubt why Taranto links to the roll call itself but not the text of the resolution or any news reports about it. What a sham. And anyone who forces me to sympathize with Charles "Tax cuts are racist" Rangel gets my undying enmity.

On a related topic, Joseph Stromberg suggests that "Not for the first time in US history, the evil and stupid parties have changed places." Me, I just figure that nothing makes the Democrats look quite as good as removing the reins of power from their sweaty little hands. Of course, that goes for the Republicans too. Stromberg also says it's time to impeach Antonin Scalia. And his suggested method of following war news would make a great weblog idea, actually. It involves making four columns.

(Link via Franklin Harris, who has a lot of red meat posts for anti-interventionist types the last day or two.)

UPDATE: I should acknowledge that the early Whereases say nice things about the troops before segueing into policy matters. What you actually have is a sandwich with troops on top, troops at the bottom, and a whole lot of politics in the middle. I wouldn't eat it, myself.

More Support - Nell Lancaster's Lexington, VA based peace group's site points me to Operation Uplink, which takes donations. OU (note: not "UO") provides service members and their families with free phone cards. I can't imagine that this is much use if you're crossing the Iraqi desert, but surely it could benefit rear-echelon troops immediately. For the next few days apparently, you can also get donations of useful items to the American Friends Service Committee. They will air-ship it to Jordan and from there get it to Iraqi refugees.

I have no personal experience with or knowledge of the bona fides of either effort, though you figure the Quakers aren't going to rip you off, right?

Not Exactly - Glenn Reynolds quotes this MSNBC report

In the town of Safwan, Iraqi civilians eagerly greeted the 1st Marine Division.

One little boy, who had chocolate melted all over his face after a soldier gave him some treats from his ration kit, kept pointing at the sky, saying “Ameriki, Ameriki.”

and comments

This is the "peace" movement's worst nightmare, isn't it?

Speaking on behalf of my little corner of the "peace" "movement," I have two that are worse: first, what this kid's parents think about "Ameriki" in one year, what his older brother thinks in five and what he thinks in twenty. That will be the measure of our practical success. Second, that Americans will imagine that the immediate reaction of the locals decides the question.

Warblogging - Find the best by Bruce Rolston of Flit. He's a Canadian military officer and his expertise adds genuine insight to the links. He's got a regularly updated map, too.

Public Notice - If you seriously maintain that "neoconservative" is a code word for "Jewish," you are an ass. The only question is whether you're an ignorant ass, one who somehow missed a thirty-year-plus intellectual tradition and yet feels unaccountably qualified to comment on political matters, or a dishonest ass.

William Kristol can't plead ignorance. Some of the rest of you may have had an excuse. No longer.

Supporting the Troops if not their bosses. Operation Homefront takes donations to help military families in San Diego and El Paso. I'd bring the families' loved ones home tomorrow, but it's not up to me and it's not up to them either If this had been an actual emergency, you'd want these people between you and trouble. You can help their families, who make do with crappy pay and the dislocations attendant on separation from spouses and parents. Fair warning: Operation Homefront is not rated by Charity Navigator and I know nothing about their bona fides. (Link via Virginia Postrel.)

Quote of the Other Day

The correct terminology here is obviously not "code name", for Christ's sake, but "brand".

Colby Cosh on "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

Quote of the Day

gevalt, if either our side or theirs is faking a gay anti-war anti-Saddam weblog, either they are much smarter than I thought or the CIA is no longer screening for current drug use

Eve Tushnet

Modest Proposal - I've argued, along with Robert Wright and others, that the real problems come after the current war. Broadly speaking, they are the likely dangers of the occupation and the temptation to use Iraq as a base for what John Smith calls the Rolling World War. I'd like things to work out for us and the Iraqi people more than I would like to be right about the dangers, and I'm not temperamentally suited to root against an easy victory that would tend to lead us into further temptation. Prudence demands we get the hell out after winning. But what about the reconstruction? There needs to be some sort of transition. The question is, if not a US-run regency, what? I don't trust the UN to do it. (I told you people I was a right winger.) UN officials would have the women of Iraq in Bosnia-style brothels quicker than you can say "padded expense account." Plus the UN largely comprises the sort of thuggish kleptocrats we're supposed to be ushering out of Iraq. That's one of the problems with turning the job over to the Arab League too - another case of "meet the new boss . . . "

So, who fills the bill? To this, a general answer and a specific one.

For my sins I listened to the CNN radio feed today. And Ari Fleischer or whoever began the White House press conference by talking about the ever-growing Coalition of the Willing to do Everything but Say Who They Are. But some of them do say who they are, and Fleischer made much of "countries that have themselves only recently escaped tyranny" who have signed on.

And there's your transitional administration: the best liberal politicians and government officials from Eastern Europe. They understand, in the transition from tyranny to freedom, what has to be tossed out, who has to be held to account and when, instead, mercy must do the work of justice. They've lived it. They understand ethnic strife and where, unmanaged, it can lead. One country has even provided the rare example of constituent parts divorcing peacefully.

Which leads to the specific answer: some one foreigner has to be in charge of all this for a time. It would be a fine thing if it were not an American military officer for political reasons. It should be someone friendly to the United States, fierce in devotion to freedom and individual rights, renowned for conscience and, not incidentally, currently underemployed.

Ladies and gentlemen, the sane, logical and inspired choice:

Vaclav Havel. Pass it on.

What Now - To be perfectly clear, it isn't important what I choose to do with this website in the changed circumstance of a formal shooting war between Iraq and the US. Atrios has had a lot of fun with the grandiloquent pronouncements of some bloggers - well, you ain't catching me, Mr. 15,000 Visits a Day! The world will little note nor long remember what I say here. With a couple of exceptions: it matters to me, by definition, and probably to some subset of the people who are kind enough to read this site on a regular basis. So here's the plan:

As to the war itself, I hope we win and win quickly, with minimal loss of American life and minimal loss of Iraqi life. And I hope that whatever happens in the coming years to underscore the folly of the "Bush Doctrine" and the grand strategy of "benevolent hegemony" first laid out in 1992 is, miraculously, nearly pain free in terms of actual lives lost and ruined. We'll see. What I won't be doing:

o Stopping with the "antiwar" talk, as Radley says he will;

o "Warblogging" in the "following every twist and turn of every available report" sense. Hesiod and Glenn Reynolds, from their separate perspectives, were the most energetic This-Is-Blogistan reporter sorts yesterday, and I suspect that will continue. I enjoy following such blogging, with reservations, but have neither the work schedule nor the inclination to engage in it myself. In a very real sense, I consider it a waste of time. Three factors tend to make most up-to-the-minute war reporting useless - the media gets initial reports reliably wrong; the allies fill the airwaves with propaganda and misdirection; the Iraqis do likewise. There may indeed be mass surrenders of Iraqi troops, for instance. But some "pre-war" reports of these appear to be wishes fathering thoughts. (See John Smith on the situation in Northern Iraq.) I doubt the validity of this poorly sourced Independent story about a supposed Iraqi helicopter attack on a Kurdish village yesterday. There are strong operational and political reasons for both parties to the war to lie and structural reasons for the press to sieze on rumors. Hesiod and Instapundit both spent much of yesterday tracking and then refuting the rumor that Tariq Aziz had defected, been captured or killed. They did a good job, but they can have it. Obviously, as long as his access lasts, Salam Pax is your source for news from Baghdad itself.

o I won't be installing the Iraqi Body Count doodads, as suggested by my Stand Down colleague Rachel Cunliffe. I'll regret each death, but my opposition to the war has always been rooted in a concern for Americans, not Iraqis. I also instinctlively distrust the reliability of such tracking programs - the people behind them have agendas too, and their own motives for fudging the figures.

o Hawks will sieze on every short-term thing that goes right with the war as proving its merits. After a dozen years of WTC I, the African embassies, the Cole and the massacres of September 11, 2001, one still encounters hawks saying that there was no terrorist backlash from Gulf War Phase I, as opponents had predicted. I will try to resist the countervailing temptation to trumpet every reversal we encounter during the battle as demonstrating that I was right all along. We'll see how I do.

o Return to writing in the third-person impersonal as a symbolic protest. UO promises.

What I will do:

o Write about the war and US foreign policy from what I hope will be a somewhat longer view.

o Link to war coverage by bloggers and others that strikes me.

o Write about other things. Fitness blogging and (soon!) fishing reports will continue, so also with items on domestic politics, comic books, games and, who knows, maybe even music and movies at some point.

o Continue to make the case for a foreign policy grounded in republican virtue and discretion. I obviously have a lot of work to do here.

o Track the injuries to decency that I've been cataloging under that phrase of Orwell's, "the lunatic atmosphere of war."

o Finally clean out my @##$%^ inbox. I apologize for having been so lame about it. Part of the in-box cleaning will include the Kenneth Pollack and torture-related mail that came in this month. I would disagree with any argument that these issues are no longer relevant "because the war changes everything." The war, I think, changes very little (not least because it's been going on for twelve years already). As I've said before, never confuse politics with current events.

o Try to figure out what the hell ant-interventionists should do next. I have, simply, no flipping idea right now.

Anyway, all that starts tonight.

News That Stays News

Our names shouted in a certain dawn...a message...a summons...There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said... no. But somehow we missed it. Well, we'll know better next time

Tom Stoppard, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead"

The Lunatic Atmosphere of War - "Sergeant Stryker" goes down an ugly path in this upbraiding of that moral reprobate - Salam Pax:

God forbid war should cut-off Mr. Oppressed Person's Internet access. I've often wondered how someone who lives in such an oppressed country could afford all he describes. It is curious.

Although I do agree with him. We shouldn't have a war for the sole purpose of bringing democracy to people who would rather live with the status quo under a dictator than live free. It's so much easier to be a smart-ass on a computer than to actually risk your life and leave or stay and fight. Of course, the Kurds and Marsh Arabs actually tried and we left them holding the bag the last time. But at least they tried, unlike our friend here who lives in apparent luxury compared to those outside Baghdad and who would have much to lose if those that have been ground under Saddam's boot actually have a say in how things are run after the war. The Good Days are about to end, Salam. Your patron will be gone shortly and a settling of accounts will take place. Our bombs are the least of your concerns.

The sheer obtuse viciousness on display here is boggling, and I say that as someone who has not previously had any particular axe to grind against Stryker. It's never appealling when the citizen of a relatively free country sits in luxuriant moral judgment of the ordinary subject of an oppressive one. The ordinary person encountering Salam's description of his quotidian existence might react less with conviction that Salam must be an agent of the regime than by adjusting his mental picture of the texture of ordinary life under totalitarianism. Having done that, said person might better understand how totalitarian regimes are able to maintain themselves.

Beyond all that, two ugly features: first, the way war and its prospect foster hatred of the people of the enemy nation; second, the same mindset that justifies terror. Stryker says, as much as dammit, that Salam personally has it coming for allowing Saddam Hussein to do bad things. By this same logic our enemies argue that we have it coming - after all, we (unlike Iraq) are a democracy, so we perforce consent to whatever our government does and are therefore legitimate targets. They're wrong and so is he.

Gosh, Jim, aren't you being rather harsh on what is probably the military equivalent of pre-game locker room talk? Maybe. That's the point, though. In kinder times, Stryker, on the evidence of his writing, was a pretty decent guy. The inevitable deforming of the personalities of decent guys, for what one hopes is a temporary period, is one of the chief moral reasons why one should never fight "optional wars."

Must Read - Salam Pax, on the eve of war.

Salam, I hope you and your family live through this. Odds of that are fair to very good, I'd think. And I hope the better life the hawks are sure you'll live is waiting for you on the other side of the imminent unpleasantness. But my apologies in advance if the odds go wrong. And thanks for a great blog.

The rest was best said by someone else.

Over There - In an interesting item, Max Sawicky, disagreeing with Justin Raimondo and I (and does that take nerve or what?) about the wisdom of "direct action," argues that Gandhi would see things differently. Max offers all sorts of stipulations about the kinds of civil disobedience he thinks would be counterproductive, but concludes

. . . there is no getting around the symbolic power of peaceable disruption of business as usual, not to mention the war machine itself.

I'm sure he's right about Gandhi, but Gandhi's campaign had a crucial advantage. He was protesting the actions of an alien Other. Even if his movement inconvenienced locals in doing so, the locals instinctive identification was with the protesters, the people "like them." The instinctive identification of, say, harried commuters or most news viewers will be, not with a bunch of ectomorphs with black do-rags over their faces, but with the people working on behalf of state policy.

The Lunatic Atmosphere of "Social" "Science" - PulpCulture's Franklin Harris on problems with the latest study purporting to show that violent kids television leads to "aggressive" adults.

The Lunatic Atmosphere of War - A couple of signs that suggest just how bad things could get. From the Seattle Times:

OLYMPIA — An anti-terrorism bill has spurred debate among lawmakers: Is a gun a weapon of mass destruction?

The fight could jeopardize the sweeping bill proposed by Gov. Gary Locke and Attorney General Christine Gregoire to create six new terror-related crimes with harsher penalties than allowed under current state law.

A group of House Democrats wants House Bill 1210 to specifically include firearms as weapons of mass destruction, to make it clear that a terror-related gun crime would be punishable by the stiffer penalties.

Link via Jesse Walker on Hit and Run.

From IDG News Service:

Witnesses and representatives at the U.S. House Judiciary Committee (news - web sites)'s Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property hearing Thursday did express fears that profits from widespread copying of movies, music, and software outside the United States were being funneled into terrorist organizations, but the hearing produced no concrete examples of that happening.

Show me a hobby horse and an organized interest group and I'll show you an attempt to yoke it to the "war on terror." This is our near future. (Our farther future I prefer not to contemplate just now.) We're about to launch a war not so we can be safe but so we can feel safe, for a time at least. That means every rent seeker in the lobby of every legislature in the country will try to make us feel unsafe - unless his favored subvention or prohibition is swiftly and zealously enacted.

This has, by the way, everything to do with the enthusiasm for torturing "terrorists," a word whose meaning determined operators will be seeking to expand for some time to come. So read Arthur Silber on Hannah Arendt on torture.

What Oft Was Said - Radley Balko saves me a lot of typing. Scroll up for some interesting follow-ups.

Hawks all too Clear on the Concept - Your neocon quote of the day, from the Sacramento Bee . . .

"It takes little imagination to dream up other scenarios that might call for pre-emptive military action," said Thomas Donnelly, a military analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank that has led the charge for war against Iraq.

Yeah, that's the problem all right.

No Action - Superb column this morning in which Justin Raimondo upbraids "direct action" advocates in the antiwar movement. Excerpt:

Nothing is wrong with peaceful and legal protests on the day war breaks out, but the advocates of disruption who self-righteously howl "No business as usual!" and advocate illegal acts have got to be told off, in no uncertain terms. How dare they endanger the rest of us, and subject the organized antiwar movement to State repression at a fateful moment like this?! It's outrageous, and impermissible. In San Francisco, in the aftermath of the last mass protests, a contingent of self-proclaimed "anarchists," who go under the vague general rubric of the "Black Bloc," split off from the main march and descended into the financial district, breaking windows, throwing rocks, and creating havoc. Dozens were arrested, but most were out of jail in a few hours later, and all charges were dropped.

As to the notion of a "general strike," it apparently takes a right-winger to remind leftist organizers that

Most people, of course, can't afford to miss a day of work, and, in this economy, can hardly afford to be fired.

Well worth everyone's time, particularly frustrated peace advocates who might be otherwise tempted toward the "asshole path." As a bonus, the "I-word" does not appear.

Weekly Fitness Blog Post - 186 pounds, waist still fluctuating between 37 and 38". It's no longer a gut issue so much - it's my damned haunches. My largest remaining stores of fat are north of the buttocks to the bottom of the rib cage and laterally - your classic (and I hate the phrase) "love handles." Fat seems to be melting preferentially off other areas, like arms and legs. My new plan is not to worry unduly. So long as I keep losing, it has to come off eventually.

Last week I wrote about Atkins for the first time. One reason I hadn't brought it up is its "red flag" quality, as seen in the recent Reason brouhaha. Another is that I consider my personal Atkins jury to be out until I get not only transitional (during weight loss) but maintenance blood test results.

While I consider the effectiveness of Atkins very much an open question - even thirty pounds later - a concern I have is that there seem to be at least two Atkins plans that people debate: the one Atkins actually wrote and the one people seem to think he wrote. For instance, Fumento's original critique quotes the 1973 AMA report:

"The notion that sedentary persons, without malabsorption or hyperthyroidism, can lose weight on a diet containing 5,000 calories a day is incredible," the article says.

The "5,000 calories a day" we'll get to. It's the "sedentary persons" I have problems with. I've never seen a copy of Atkins original book, but the newer one explicitly, repeatedly and voluminously preaches the need for exercise, stating, in so many words, that if you're not exercising you're not really on the Atkins program.

The "5,000 calories" figure is also one I didn't encounter in the book I read. It has its cousin in RiShawn Biddles joke that " three steaks a day isn't exactly going to keep the pounds off either."

This is also at variance with anything I've actually read by Atkins, who repeatedly also says that No, you can't eat as much as you want, you should eat only until you feel full - not stuffed.

There's also the curious claim I've seen in various places that Atkins doesn't work because people who go off the diet gain the weight back. Here I'm not sure quite what they mean. I have no doubt that if I were to once again make soda, fries and chips my core food items I'd be back up to 220 pounds and beyond, particularly if I stopped working out. But how would that be the fault of the Atkins diet itself? A claim that people on the maintenance phase of the diet can't actually maintain their goal weight would be at least a sensical criticism, and one that could be tested. But that doesn't seem to be what they're saying.

Many of the less useful critics also imply that the induction phase - when carbohydrate intake is limited to 20 grams a day from salad vegetables only - is the whole of the program. In fact, you get to add both number of carb grams and variety of carb sources back as the diet progresses. I'm presently consuming about 50-60 grams of carbohydrate a day, with spikes on indulgence days. Those carbs come mostly from vegetables, berries and nuts, though I now have a slice of whole wheat toast under my eggs in the morning. (Never could stand to eat just eggs by themselves - it's a texture thing.) I ate more healthy vegetables a day during induction (the most restrictive phase) than I ever did before I started my diet, when my carbohydrates came chiefly from sugar and processed starches.

I happen to think that portion control more than dietary composition per se probably is the real key to weight loss. I also think that Atkins is an effective way for some people to achieve portion control. (I agree with Diana Moon when she says that "The weight-loss regimen that works for you is the one you can stand to do consistently." Not everyone can stand to do a controlled-carb diet.) I also think that the key to Atkins is to exercise to a level of fitness where you maximize the number of good carbohydrates you can eat. I think, if you're a classic meat & potatoes man like I was, you need to pick one or the other. I think a whole bunch of other things that I can't prove but have only sort of subjectively experienced.

Next week: calories in, calories out, and conservation laws.

All Niger, All the Time! - I continue to be on this story like a tick on your eyelid. The latest reports deepen the Italian Connection:

WASHINGTON -- Phony weapons documents cited by the United States and Britain as evidence against Saddam Hussein were initially obtained by Italian intelligence authorities, who may have been duped into paying for the forgeries, U.S. officials said Friday.

Which is not to say that the Italians just made them up . . .

U.S. officials said Friday that they still do not know who forged the documents, but the disclosure that they were first obtained by Italian authorities sheds light on how they came to the attention of American intelligence.

"I don't mean to suggest that Italy created the documents. I don't think they have any reason to," one U.S. official said. "It's conceivable that some con man sold it to them."

But you could fairly accuse the LAT of burying the lede here:

The CIA first heard allegations that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger in late 2001 but did not obtain the documents until about a month ago, and it promptly turned them over to U.N. inspectors, the official said.

Initially, the existence of the documents "was reported to us second- or third- hand," the official said. "We included that in some of our reporting, although it was all caveated because we had concerns about the accuracy of that information."

What interesting timing. The CIA got the documents "about a month ago." The President gave his State of the Union address, where he brought up the Niger claims, two months ago. So the President was selling Congress and the American people information that "was reported to us second- or third- hand."

Rockefeller's move provoked a pointed response from the committee chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.).

"The implication of Sen. Rockefeller's letter is that the intelligence community forged these documents to somehow bolster the case against Iraq," he said in a statement. "The United States does not need this one piece of evidence to make its case against Iraq."

If their other pieces of evidence are so good, why do they keep throwing this crap out there?

Preemptive Punditwatch - The Pontificator lists the questions that need to be asked this morning. One cavil: he's hot to blame things on the CIA, which would be weird, the CIA being a hotbed of antiwar sentiment. (After the State Department, the CIA is reliably the second-most dovish national security organ on almost any policy.)

In fact, this Washington Post article claims

The CIA, which had also obtained the documents, had questions about "whether they were accurate," said one intelligence official, and it decided not to include them in its file on Iraq's program to procure weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, it also claims that

But Iraq never surrendered the blueprints for its nuclear program, and it kept teams of scientists employed after U.N. inspectors were forced to leave in 1998.

which is sort of, in its way, true, though the implication is that Iraq forced the inspectors to leave, which isn't true.

The latest reports suggest that

Forged documents that the United States used to build its case against Iraq were likely written by someone in Niger's embassy in Rome who hoped to make quick money, a source close to the United Nations investigation said.

But quick money from whom, is the question. Some obvious candidates:

Israel - It's way too soon to conclude, as Justin Raimondo does, that it must be the Israelis. They're a logical cui bono suspect (rather like Iraq was a logical suspect in the September 2001 massacres), but that can only be a starting point, not an ending point. One imagines that the Mossad could produce better fakes.

Iran - This one comes a bit out of left field, but there are some indications that Iran hopes to advantage itself in the confusion. My first question was, Are the Iranians that stupid? After all, they're number two or three on the Official Regime Change list. Iraq may be their ancient enemy, but why help the US to a base of anti-Iranian operations right next door? The answer that has since come to me is, if you think the Americans are coming anyway, and you think you can successfully create a buffer zone of renegade Iraqis between you and them, you might take the gamble. Strikes me as pretty high-stakes though.

Turkey - Depending on how much they really want Kirkuk and Mosul. (These documents have been around since well before the parliamentary defeat for US basing rights.)

China - if you believe the "China's grand strategy is to draw the US into overextending itself" argument. China is our strongest geopolitical rival and has nnot been engaging in the kind of veto talk we hear from France and Russia. I assume this is because they don't need to - not so long as France and Russia are up for the job.

Jordan - if they think there's a "Hashemite Restoration" possibility. (Connection: doesn't Prince Hassan live in Rome?

Kuwait - progenitors of the "Incubator Myth" and possibly the concocters of the "GHWB Assassination Attempt" too.

Time Bomb - I've speculated before that there might be a covert war against the war being waged by the US/UK intelligence bureaucracies. Including a crude fake in the Iraqi bill of attainder might have been intended to cause later embarrassment.

More likely, we're simply witnessing the curruption - perhaps "beat-down" might be a better way of putting it - of the intelligence analysis function by its political masters. In the face of relentless pressure from above, dubious defector reports get upgraded to reliable, dodgy-looking documents get reclassified as authentic. Then its off to the UN or the Halls of Congress (SOTU, e.g.) with the "evidence."