Tag Archives: Congress

Treason’s first cousin: ‘Heads should roll’

Senator Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, seems to think it’s just spiffy if his staffers sabotage the war on terrorism.

As long as they’re plotting to politicize intelligence for partisan reasons and leak secrets to the press to undermine President Bush.

Responding to the scandal over a memo his staffers wrote to that effect, Rockefeller instead defended the plot and blamed Republicans for swiping the document out of the trash.

The conspiracy to abuse secret intelligence as part of the 2004 presidential campaign, he says, merely "reflects staff frustration with the conduct of the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation and the difficulties of obtaining information from the administration."

Rockefeller admitted that one of his three staffers wrote the memo.

Senator Zell Miller, a Georgia Democrat, is appalled. "Of all the committees, this is the one single committee that should unquestionably be above partisan politics," he said. "The information it deals with should never, never be distorted, compromised or politicized."

"If what has happened here is not treason, it is its first cousin. The ones responsible – be they staff or elected or both – should be dealt with quickly and severely," Miller added. "Heads should roll!"

"Beginning with Rockefeller’s," chimed a New York Post editorial.

We agree. The Center for Security Policy reminds readers that Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT) was forced off the Intelligence Committee for a much lesser offense.

Said Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), "First, Democrats sought to blame an unnamed staffer for this memo, saying it had never been approved by any Senators. Next they tried to argue the memo’s merits without accepting responsibility for it. Then, on CNN, Senator Rockefeller attributed it to his three staffers but claimed it was just one ‘option’ or ‘idea’ adding, ‘I disavow nothing.’"

The committee chairman, Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), says he feels burned after having worked so closely with Rockefeller. Yet he’s pre-emptively eager to mend fences with those bent on abusing the intelligence oversight process for political gain.

Click here for the full text of Senator Rockefeller’s staff memo.

Don’t go wobbly, George

(Washington, D.C.): Suddenly, all the “smart people” have an idea for advancing the war on terror while cutting our costs, reducing the burden on over-stretched American forces and affording enhanced legitimacy to our counter-terrorism initiatives: Seek a new UN mandate authorizing an expanded international operation in Iraq.

Notably, this was the theme du jour of the Sunday talk shows, as a gaggle of legislators, retired generals and former officials took turns endorsing such an approach. If only the Bush Administration — and, in particular, Donald Rumsfeld — were not so hung up on the United Nations, the drumbeat went, the U.S. could readily secure heretofore absent international support for the occupation of Iraq. Large numbers of foreign troops would become available, without compromising the principle of unified command. And the American taxpayer could be spared the prospect of being solely responsible for an investment of untold additional billions to try to rebuild Iraq faster than Ba’athist and/or Islamist terrorists can sabotage its infrastructure.

Iraq is No Bosnia

Some of these Sunday morning luminaries cited as evidence of the feasibility of their suggestions a precedent: the UN’s authorization for American-led NATO forces to stabilize post-war Bosnia. There is one significant problem with this analogy, however: Iraq is no Bosnia.

There is, after all, an ongoing war in Iraq, albeit one involving less than “major combat operations.” Unlike Bosnia, what is involved is considerably more than keeping once-warring factions apart and allowing international bureaucrats to perform open-ended nation-building assignments.

Instead, as the past fortnight’s deadly terrorist bombings, infrastructure attacks and serial ambushes of American and British forces make clear, there is an active conflict underway that is taxing the world’s two finest militaries. It is not a place for usually well-meaning, but generally not terribly competent, “blue helmets.”

If there were any doubt about this reality, it should have been vaporized along with the UN’s headquarters in Baghdad. International personnel — be they military or civilian — are going to be treated as fair game by those bent on returning Iraq to one form of despotic rule or another (sectarian or theocratic).

In fact, the only hope the United Nations has of being able to perform its self-assigned humanitarian functions on behalf of the Iraqi people is for the Coalition forces to succeed in defeating the enemies of a Free Iraq. This should motivate the organization’s Secretary General. Kofi Annan, and every member of the Security Council to support America’s efforts to stabilize and secure the country.

With Friends Like These…

Unfortunately, a number of those on the Council — notably, France, Russia and China — and at least some among the UN bureaucracy appear no more interested in seeing the United States succeed in those efforts than are several of Iraq’s neighbors. Coalition officials have charged that Islamists and other terrorists are entering Iraqi territory from Syria (which is, as it happens, currently also a Security Council member), Iran and Saudi Arabia. Presumably, they are being allowed to do so to further these countries’ shared interest in preventing a democratic, peaceable and prosperous pro-Western nation from emerging from the ashes of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny.

Even if the UN Security Council were actually able — and willing — to regard Washington’s objectives in Iraq as both compatible with the best interests of the Iraqi people and conducive to those of the larger international community, there is one further reason for not adopting the Bosnia model: The people of Bosnia-Herzegovina seem likely to remain under UN suzerainty for years, if not decades, to come.

The only hope of sparing Iraq a similar fate is by allowing the responsibility for rapidly establishing the institutions and mechanisms for Iraqi self-governance to remain in the hands of an American-led civil administration truly committed to achieving that goal at the earliest possible time.

This is not to say that the United States should go it alone or eschew international help where it can be obtained without compromising the mission or its prospects of early achievement. In fact, the Bush Administration is doing neither; it has already secured the support of dozens of nations and is continuing to enlist more on terms conducive to success.

No U.S. Forces on the West Bank, Gaza Strip

Arguably the most addled advice about military burden-sharing to emanate this week from one of the Sunday morning quarterbacks came from Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He would not only like to see an international mandate for operations in Iraq. He would also like one authorizing the deployment of U.S.-led NATO forces into an environment that would, if anything, likely make the Sunni triangle seem tranquil by comparison: The Senator wants American and other Western military units to be used to separate Israelis from Palestinians and to help subdue the latters’ terrorist factions.

In fairness to Senator Lugar, he is not the first to come up with or to espouse this lousy idea. Still, it should be clear that if the United States is anxious to avoid shouldering more military burdens, particularly in connection with difficult, urban campaigns against Islamist and other foes willing to die in order to kill Americans, there is a better option than the one he proposes. A far more sensible division of labor would be to let the Israelis deal with the Palestinian front in the war on terror than for the U.S. to try to get more help on surely less-than-satisfactory terms in Iraq while strapping on an inherently impossible new task: serving as the protector of Palestinians while conducting military operations against their embedded militants.

The Bottom Line

President Bush has done the American people and the world a great service by re-establishing a principle very nearly obscured by recent practice: The legitimacy of an American foreign policy initiative derives from its justness, wisdom and congressional approval, not from the vagaries of UN Security Council resolutions. Now is no time to go wobbly on that principle.

US risks losing War on Terror unless it confronts Saudi funding

The U.S. risks losing the global war on terrorism if it doesn’t attack the worldwide infrastructure of Islamist extremism that breeds and nourishes violence. That infrastructure, warns Center for Security Policy Senior Fellow Alex Alexiev in testimony before a Senate terrorism panel in a hearing on “Terrorism: Growing Wahhabi Influence in the United States,” is financed by Saudi Arabia.

The hearing was held on Thursday, June 26, at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room.

“Most of the measures taken to defeat Islamic terrorism to date have been essentially tactical in nature and therefore of transitory effect,” Alexiev says.

Alexiev served for nearly two decades as a senior analyst in the national security division of the Rand Corporation. He is appearing as an expert witness in a hearing on Wahhabi backing of terror before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Homeland Security, chaired by Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

The U.S., Alexiev says, has “attempted to come to terms with the psychology behind the terrorists’ murderous fury, yet refuses to examine systematically, let alone do something about, the effect and implications of daily indoctrination of hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of Muslims around the world into a hate-driven cult of violence.

“Similarly, we have tried and often succeeded in disrupting the terrorists’ tactical organizational structures and communications networks, but have paid scant attention to the huge worldwide infrastructure of radical Islam which breeds and nourishes violence.” That infrastructure, Alexiev says, provides most of the funding and the recruits for terrorism.

Winning the peace in Iraq

(Washington, D.C.): In the next few days, President Bush will be making decisions that could determine whether a Free Iraq emerges from the ashes of Saddam Hussein’s Stalinist state. The most important of these — and the decision likely to determine many of the others — is: Will Mr. Bush entrust the realization of the promise of a liberated Iraq to those whose military successes have nearly brought it to fruition in just over a fortnight’s time?

Who You Gonna Call?

Surely, Mr. Bush appreciates that the alternative — turning this hugely important task over to those who either intentionally sought to forestall such an outcome, or who recommended policies that very nearly had that effect — would be to wrest defeat from the jaws of victory. His own comments and those of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice certainly suggest that they understand the pitfalls associated with giving the United Nations, NATO, the so-called “international community” or just about anybody besides the Pentagon the leading role in post-war Iraq.

Yet the President is coming under intense pressure from various sources, notably British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the State Department and the Congress, to deny the Pentagon the preeminent role it has earned with the development and execution of a brilliant battle plan for toppling Saddam.

For example, at the meeting with Mr. Blair underway in Northern Ireland at this writing, Mr. Bush can expect to be told that, if the UN doesn’t run post-Saddam Iraq, Free Iraq will be denied the international legitimacy and financial help it will require. The State Department insists that a number of its most pedigreed Arabists must be given key responsibilities for building a new Iraqi government that will not offend or destabilize other regional autocracies.

Even more astounding, the Congress, in what appears to be State Department- inspired, late-night legislative skullduggery, last week adopted a supplemental appropriation bill denying the President any discretion concerning the expenditure of $2.5 billion allocated to rebuild Iraq and provide it with humanitarian assistance. Instead, this authority is vested exclusively in the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of State.

Rewarding Failure?

If it had been up to the United Nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell, his deputy, Rich Armitage, their department’s Arabists and many in Congress, however, we would still be debating what to do about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Instead, thanks to the courage and skill of the U.S. military, such weapons have reportedly begun to be found in Iraq and their use denied to Saddam’s forces.

If it had been left to the aforementioned parties, there would be even fewer Free Iraqis to enlist in the liberation of their country. The State Department, abetted by the CIA, have for years assiduously undermined the most representative and democratic of the Iraqi opposition groups, the Iraqi National Congress (INC). The Pentagon finally succeeded in partially overcoming such resistance and began training hundreds of INC troops in Hungary a few months ago, some of whom are now helping coalition forces secure southern Iraq.

President Bush has found it particularly hard to say “No” to Tony Blair. To the British premier’s lasting credit, he put his political future on the line by backing the liberation of Iraq in the face of overwhelming popular opposition and that of many in his leftist Labor Party. Unfortunately, Mr. Blair has sought to parlay his help in forging a multilateral coalition into leverage to induce George Bush to go the UN “route” last Fall, to embrace a dubious “roadmap” for Mideast peace last month and, now, to give the United Nations a major say in post-Saddam Iraq.

There is Really No Choice

Mr. Bush must now draw a difficult, but unavoidable line. If he is serious about restoring to Iraqis at the earliest possible time the responsibility for their self-governance and -administration, he really has no choice but to give the lead to the Defense Department. Its Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, led by retired Army Lieutenant General Jay Garner, is in place in the theater and will be able most efficiently to draw upon the Pentagon’s physical and logistical resources to begin rebuilding Iraq.

There will, of course, be room for UN organizations to help with humanitarian relief, medical assistance, food distribution, etc., just as there will be appropriate advisory roles for State Department specialists and experts drawn from other U.S. agencies. But the authority for making the proverbial trains run on time and the wherewithal for doing so should be reposed in the one organization that has demonstrated the ability to get done the job assigned it by the President: the Department of Defense.

The Bottom Line

As George W. Bush certainly appreciates, as much is riding on the sort of Iraq that now emerges as there has been on the conduct of the war that made its liberation possible. His instincts, which have been shown time and again to be very sound, appear to be to entrust, first and foremost, the challenging task of helping create a genuinely Free Iraq to those whose strategic acumen and blood, sweat and tears have given the people of Iraq such an opportunity — despite the myriad obstacles put in the way by the Pentagon’s often well-meaning but wrong-headed critics. He should veto legislation that would preclude that role and firmly tell Mr. Blair and those of a similar mind that he has confidence in Donald Rumsfeld and his team and that they are going to have the lead in facilitating the Iraqis’ reconstruction of their country.

Moment for truth

(Washington, D.C.): At his Azorean press conference on Sunday, President Bush announced that a “moment of truth” had arrived as a result of the UN’s inability to disarm Saddam Hussein. This welcome statement suggests that Mr. Bush and the U.S. government have also arrived at another critical juncture: a moment for truth.

The Truth about the UN

Specifically, there is an urgent need for clarity about the true nature of the United Nations and the inadvisability of investing in it superior moral authority, let alone of allowing it to define the legitimacy or illegitimacy of actions undertaken pursuant to the U.S. Constitution in furtherance of our national security.

Such clarity is in order for various reasons. For one thing, it bears on one of the most topical questions of the day: the costs associated with the coming conflict. While many estimates have been offered of the combat- and post-war-related price tags, the highest cost of all will likely be that associated with, as it is put euphemistically, “the UN process.”

Unfortunately, the UN-related costs have not been confined to the unseemly haggling with various putative allies and Third World nations aimed at securing their votes for an 18th Security Council resolution concerning Iraq. The spectacle of the greatest power in the world being reduced to begging the likes of Guinea and Angola for support has demeaned this nation even as it shows the true, unsavory character of a “world body” governed by parochial interests, not some higher virtue.

A Price Paid in Lives

The real cost, however, of indulging in the notion that only the UN can provide legitimacy to U.S. military actions may be measured in lives unnecessarily lost — American and allied, as well as Iraqi — in the coming conflict.

Thanks to “the UN process,” we are witnessing the longest telegraphed-punch in history. The months of warning thus afforded Saddam Hussein have been used by the Iraqi despot to ready myriad destructive defensive measures. As a result, he may be able to blow up Iraq’s oil fields and other infrastructure, create mass casualties and foster humanitarian crises with which the liberators will have to contend, and for which they may well be blamed.

Worse yet, the UN process’ essential incompatibility with even tactical (let alone strategic) surprise may invite Saddam to seize the remaining hours granted for diplomacy and the extraction of UN personnel from Iraq to attack preemptively. The targets could be our forces in the region, his neighbors or us here at home. If such attacks involve use of his weapons of mass destruction, the losses could be staggering.

Little Good to Show for It All

And for what? What has been gained by subordinating U.S. national security decision-making and actions to the dictates of the UN Security Council?

Some will say we accomplished a signal victory when, after investing months and considerable American political (and other) capital, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1441 last November. Yet, France and others who have assiduously sought for twelve years to protect Saddam from U.S. and/or UN action, insist that without a further mandate, military action would be — in the words of the French foreign minister — “illegal.” Alas, unless forcefully contested with the truth, this assertion is likely to have considerable resonance around the world — at least until the war is won in Iraq.

It behooves Mr. Bush and other American and world leaders, therefore, to challenge the view held by many mobilized during these long months of wrangling at the United Nations, to the effect that the UN’s principal role is to serve as a check on American power. Regrettably, since this view is shared by not a few UN member nations and virtually all of its bureaucrats, it seems unlikely that this attempt to create a useful “world body” or “international community” will succeed in dealing with the real security challenges of the 21st Century — in particular, terrorist-sponsoring and proliferating regimes — any more than the League of Nations did in the last one.

Is There a Future Role for the UN?

For this reason, it is of some concern that President Bush signaled last Sunday his continuing desire to work with the United Nations, even if it remains unwilling to re-authorize the enforcement of its previous resolutions. He pledged that the U.S. would pursue additional initiatives to enlist the UN in the process of rebuilding and administering a post-Saddam Iraq.

This may be little more than a way to share some of the post-war financial burdens and/or to make clear the United States’ disinterest in establishing a colonial or imperial role in Iraq. On the other hand, if the President wants the UN to do much more than help with the acquisition and distribution of food, medicines and other forms of humanitarian relief, Washington may be entrusting the future of Iraq to an international organization no more likely to succeed in consolidating this opportunity for freedom than it was in creating that opportunity in the first place.

Bottom Line

This is, indeed, a moment of truth. Mr. Bush has courageously brought the Nation to the point of liberating Iraq. He must now take the steps necessary to accomplish this vital task without further delay. As he informs our countrymen of his decision to do so, he must also tell the truth about the United Nations. Most especially, he must serve notice that our future support for and involvement in that organization depends upon an appreciation that the legitimacy of our security decision-making and conduct rests on the processes ordered by our Constitution, not those of a corrupt and feckless UN.

Get on with it

(Washington, D.C.): Six months to the day after President Bush offered not only Saddam Hussein but the United Nations one last chance to disarm Iraq, the verdict is in: So long as the former is in power, he will not voluntarily, fully and permanently surrender his weapons of mass destruction programs or credibly foreswear the aggressive ambitions that drive his desire for such arms. And the United Nations will be rendered — as Mr. Bush warned — just as ineffectual as the League of Nations in dealing with the security threats of our time, thanks to the determination of Saddam’s friends in the Security Council to protect him.

The lead editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal lays out succinctly the dangers associated with allowing the so-called UN diplomatic/inspections “process” to be strung out any further. It argues persuasively for President Bush to get on with the liberation of Iraq, without further ado. We can only hope he heeds this advice, cuts the considerable losses (both domestically and internationally) incurred by the Nation’s long detour in Lilliput-on- the -East-River and begins forthwith the liberation of Iraq.

Bush in Lilliput

Delaying action in Iraq is endangering American lives

Wall Street Journal, 12 March 2003

    “The Bush Administration is putting a special focus on winning the support of Guinea…” –Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.

We’ve never visited Guinea, which is perhaps our loss. But the spectacle of the U.S. government begging that African nation for permission to sacrifice American blood and treasure to save the world from Saddam Hussein exposes the farce that the U.N. Security Council’s Iraq debate has become. Every day of delay in starting the war matters little to Guinea but it puts more Americans at mortal risk.

President Bush is of course trying to accommodate his stalwart friend, Tony Blair. The British Prime Minister wants a nine-vote majority in the 15-member Security Council as a shield against his Labour Party critics. But Mr. Blair’s fate will surely rise or fall on how well the war goes and not on who approves it in advance. Mr. Bush has already done him the favor of going for a first U.N. resolution last fall, followed by weeks of further delay this year to seek a second.

That second effort now looks like a diplomatic blunder, given Russian and the implacable French opposition. The process itself has also forced the U.S. to give up some of the attack advantage of strategic surprise. And it now risks causing more tangible harm as the U.S. agrees to more concessions and extensions–yesterday to one beyond even the earlier “final” deadline of March 17.

This latest delay is aimed at gathering the elusive but somehow “crucial” votes of “six swing Council nations.” In addition to Guinea, those countries are Mexico, Chile, Angola, Pakistan and the always strategically vital Cameroon. The U.S. has already been reduced to bribing these countries with cash or other favors in return for their support. Yet they’ve all played hard to get, posing as Hamlet for their 10 minutes of fame on the world stage.

The Mexican and Chilean fandango is especially insulting given the preferential treatment their exports receive to the U.S. market. Maybe we should transfer to Bulgaria– which is supporting us sans bribery–the trade benefits that these two nations apparently take for granted. These columns have long tried sympathetically to explain Mexican realities to our readers, but President Vicente Fox’s U.N. war straddle will cost his country years of U.S. public goodwill.

Mexican and French soldiers will not be doing any dying once the war finally does start. That privilege will belong to Americans (and some Brits and Aussies), and every day that they are prevented from starting to disarm Saddam is one more day he is able to prepare death traps for them and for us. There are now daily reports that the Iraqi dictator has booby-trapped oil wells, dispersed his mobile poison labs or placed agents among Iraqi civilians. Yesterday’s AP dispatch had him opening “a training camp for Arab volunteers willing to carry out suicide bombings against U.S. forces.” Every day of delay also gives him, or al Qaeda, more time to plant or mobilize agents to attack the U.S. homeland.

There are other growing costs of delay. One is the economic damage from uncertainty–which is small compared with life and limb but seems large if you lose your job. Another is the lesson to other thugs, such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, that they can also use the U.N. to stymie and wait out American resolve. And then there is the cost to President Bush’s own political standing and credibility as he lets the world’s pygmies tie him down like Gulliver.

We could support further delay in starting the war if there were any hope at all that U.N. inspections might disarm Saddam short of costing American lives. The trend is in fact the opposite. Hans Blix, Mohammed El Baradei and the other inspectors seem more inclined than ever to forgive Iraqi intransigence. Mr. El Baradei made a public fuss last week about one British-U.S. claim that turns out to have been false, but which was in any case peripheral to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Blix buried deep in his latest report the news of an illegal Iraqi drone capable of delivering chemical weapons.

As each day passes, the evidence mounts that the U.N. inspections regime is not about containing Saddam; it is about containing America. Messrs. Bush and Blair went to the U.N. in good faith to build international support, and perhaps in the process to rescue the U.N. from irrelevance. The U.N. is proving daily that is in fact another League of Nations. Mr. Bush’s obligation is not to the reputation of the U.N. but to the safety of American soldiers and citizens.

The Democrats’ choice

(Washington, D.C.): Leading Democrats have served notice: They intend to run to the right of President Bush in the run-up to the 2004 elections by assailing him for failing to do enough to protect the homeland against future terrorist attacks.

This would be an obvious political play. After all, the likelihood that there will be additional letting of American blood by terrorists between now and November 2004 — perhaps on a scale vastly larger than any seen to date — is probably about 100%. And there can be no doubt about the electoral potency of insecurity about such vulnerabilities. This fall, Republicans used the failure of a severely wounded war veteran from Georgia to support President Bush’s Homeland Security Department to portray him as soft on defense and deny him reelection to the Senate.

The Democrats have a choice, however. They can retaliate for Max Cleland’s defeat and position themselves for another round of “gotcha” politics whereby they can blame President Bush for the next disaster.

The Responsible Thing to Do

Alternatively, they can join him in forging what could prove to be the most important bipartisan consensus on national security since the great Democratic Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson died twenty years ago. This would entail the “Loyal Opposition” in Congress joining the executive branch and its new GOP majorities on both sides of Capitol Hill in a mobilization of the American people and federal resources in a heretofore- unprecedented effort to secure our homeland.

Specifically, the public will need to be engaged in a comprehensive civil defense initiative, designed to provide greater collective protection for American communities and to facilitate their evacuation where possible in the wake of attacks with weapons of mass destruction. An accelerated voluntary, if not mandatory, smallpox vaccination program would be prudent.

There will also need to be considerably increased funding allocated to such priorities as: training and equipping of police, fire, emergency and other “first-responders”; port and waterway security; vital cyber, transportation, energy and other physical infrastructure hardening and protection; nuclear, chemical and biological monitoring and response teams; border security; and the prompt deployment of defenses against delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction against which we currently have no protection (namely, ballistic missiles).

If the Democrats are serious about defending the homeland, and not simply scoring political points, they will embrace such measures. So, too, will Republicans in the executive and legislative branches.

Of course, there will not, and need not, be complete agreement on every point and each priority. But a fundamental, bipartisan collaboration enabling these sorts of steps to be taken as swiftly as possible is essential if we are to reduce our present, abiding and intolerable vulnerabilities to future attacks. What is more, only tangible progress in these areas — not idle political posturing — will keep the two political parties from properly sharing public outrage for failing to take such steps.

The Immigration Debacle

Even if the two parties can join forces to make real progress on the foregoing agenda, however, they will face a further, and even more daunting test of their seriousness concerning homeland defense: Will they address the soft underbelly of our nation’s vulnerability — the complete meltdown of U.S. immigration policies, programs and procedures?

In an outstanding new book entitled “Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores” (Regnery, 2002), syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin details the magnitude of this meltdown. Using specific examples — in particular, the means by which the September 11th hijackers were able to enter and operate in this country — she provides a comprehensive assessment of what is broken, and what fixes are urgently needed.

Ms. Malkin also offers chilling evidence of the magnitude of the challenge any effort to take such steps will face from assorted labor, civil rights, academic, legal, alien and ethnic advocacy groups. She demonstrates how their past efforts have: created immigration loopholes exploited by terrorists and common criminals; denied needed funding to law enforcement; impeded the installation of mandated immigrant and other tracking systems; punished INS employees trying to do their job; etc.

Unfortunately, many of these advocacy organizations enjoy great sway within the Democratic Party. Of late, Republicans have also shown themselves increasingly susceptible to pressure from such activists, particularly those in the GOP hoping to compete for votes among the Hispanic, Asian and Muslim communities. Until now, neither party has been prepared unilaterally to risk alienating such swing constituencies; instead, both have taken to pandering to them, with ominous implications for national security.

The Bottom Line

As a result, a robust and truly bipartisan approach to homeland security offers the only hope of getting the sort of protection we require — protection that makes it harder both for destructive attacks in this country to succeed and for those who wish to conduct them to have the opportunity to do so. The largely new leadership of congressional Democrats and Republicans can signal their determination to address this problem, comprehensively, seriously and effectively, by creating a new special committee to wrestle with the immigration underbelly of the Nation’s defense while collaborating with Mr. Bush’s new Homeland Security Department to accelerate progress on all other fronts as swiftly as possible.

The alternative is to wait for the next terrorist-spawned disaster. At that point, there will surely be plenty of blame to go around. But there will almost certainly also be a shared willingness on all sides to take the sorts of step that concerted, bipartisan action now might make unnecessary.

President Bush Wants to Liberate Iraq, But the UN Security Council Does Not

In his press conference this afternoon, President Bush demonstrated once again his determination to prevent the danger posed by Saddam Hussein from metastasizing further. At the same time, Mr. Bush repeatedly and passionately expressed the hope that the United Nations will finally "mean it" when, perhaps as early as tomorrow, its Security Council enacts a resolution (as he caustically noted, its 17th) to disarm the Butcher of Baghdad.

There is just one problem: The process of negotiating with the other members of the Security Council (most especially the French, Russians and Chinese) has demonstrated, yet again, that the "international community" does not "mean it." To the contrary, the UN "debate" to date suggests that "community" (such as it is) is determined to allow Saddam to live to fight another day.

As Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. notes in his column which appeared today on FoxNews.com, any resolution that nations with such sentiments can sign onto is, by definition, unlikely to conduce to the actual disarmament of Iraq. It is even less likely, all other things being equal, to produce the liberation of the Iraqi people — a cause to which Mr. Bush forcefully committed himself again today:

…The Iraqi people can have a better life than the one they have now….There are other alternatives to somebody who is willing to rape and mutilate and murder in order to stay in power. There’s just a better life than the one they have to live now. I think the people of the world understand that, too….

I don’t spend a lot of time taking polls around the world to tell me what I think is the right way to act; I’ve just got to know how I feel. I feel strongly about freedom. I feel strongly about liberty. And I feel strongly about the obligation to make the world a more peaceful place. And I take those responsibilities really seriously.

President Bush is to be strongly commended for his vision and leadership aimed at bringing about an Iraq that is free and no danger to its own people or others. He should be under no illusion, however, that the UN is going to help him realize that vision. As Mr. Gaffney notes, rather than disarming and liberating Iraq, the Security Council’s adoption of the U.S.-U.K. resolution will probably seriously impede — and perhaps dangerously postpone — these urgent tasks.

Now, To War

By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Fox News.com, 7 November 2002

President Bush has now cleared the decks for action on his most immediate and important agenda item: Ending the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his ruling clique in Iraq.

The president secured a smashing electoral mandate on the basis of a campaign waged explicitly — at every whistle stop and in every endorsement address — as a referendum on his stewardship of the war on terror. No less significant, he did so after winning overwhelming, bipartisan support for the liberation of Iraq from a Congress that had one chamber in Democratic control. He can be confident of commanding even greater support from a Republican-dominated Senate and House — particularly since Democrats who won closely contested races generally did so by aligning themselves with the President on the war.

There is, in short, now no legal or political impediment to the sort of swift action that offers the best hope of toppling Saddam with minimum U.S. casualties and at the least further cost to the Iraqi people: The weather conditions are about as conducive to military operations as they ever are in that part of the world. Sufficient American and British units are now or shortly will be in the region to execute lightning strikes at Saddam’s security apparatus. And evidence grows by the day that the Iraqi populace senses its liberation is at hand and is prepared to play a role — possibly a decisive one — in ending Saddam’s nightmarish reign of terror.

This outcome is, of course, the only one that holds out any hope for effecting the genuine and complete disarmament of Iraq. After all, even if — against all odds — Saddam Hussein were actually to cooperate with international efforts to find and destroy his weapons of mass destruction, and such efforts were to succeed, he could be back in the WMD business within six-months time. That period could be shortened even further if, as seems likely, a declaration that Iraq was WMD-free would precipitate the end of sanctions against Iraq.

Accordingly, if the international community is finally serious about accomplishing the goal of ridding the world of the threat posed by Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, it would do well to encourage the United States and a coalition of the willing to seize the present moment to rid Iraq of Saddam and his ruling clique.

Unfortunately, Saddam’s long-time friends at the United Nations (notably, France, Russia, China and U.N. bureaucrats like Secretary General Kofi Annan and chief inspector Hans Blix) insist that the Iraqi despot be given one more chance to play hide-and-seek with international inspectors. While the Anglo-American resolution introduced in the Security Council today is long on the reasons why such a further stay of execution for Saddam is undeserved and unlikely to work out, it agrees to give the Butcher of Baghdad still more time — time he will probably use to squirrel away his covert arms caches and relevant files, to try to bring on line nuclear weapons, and to use his allies at the U.N. to hold off U.S. action until the intolerable temperatures return next spring.

There are some indications that, even now, further whittling away may take place on the U.S.-U.K. draft resolution. The French and Russians claim they want more "clarifications." The ever-accommodating Inspector Blix warns that it is unreasonable to ask Saddam to declare his inventory of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems in just 30 days or to remove his scientists and their families from Iraq, thereby maximizing their chances of cooperation with investigators. And Secretary of State Colin Powell — the prime-mover in the U.S. government behind the "hell-no-we-won’t-go-without-the-U.N." strategy — has canceled a trip to Asia this week so as to be on hand for further negotiations.

As a result, President Bush is at serious risk of being denied the latitude to act against Saddam Hussein that his extraordinary domestic political efforts have secured for him. To avoid such an outcome, he would be well advised at this juncture to reject any further dilution of the terms of the draft Security Council resolution. If anything, they should be toughened — particularly, the determination as to whether Saddam is in further "material breach" of his obligations by impeding the inspectors must not be left up to Mr. Blix and/or his International Atomic Energy Agency counterpart.

The United States must be able to make that call on its own, if need be.

Even such a shoring up of the Anglo-American resolution will not, however, correct its major, inherent flaws: In Saddam’s hands, the inspectors can be turned into "human shields" or hostages to stave off U.S.-led military operations. In any event, they will be unable to find everything the Iraqi regime has hidden, but will buy the latter time it will use to our detriment.

For all these reasons, far from fearing and trying to avert a French, Russian and/or Chinese veto of the draft resolution, President Bush should be hoping they will do just that. By so demonstrating they are with Saddam and against us, these nations would help the president put squarely behind him the extra-legal and ill-advised notion that actions he believes necessary in the U.S. national interest and that have been explicitly authorized by Congress can only be undertaken if first secures the blessing of the United Nations.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. held senior positions in the Reagan Defense Department. He is currently president of the Center for Security Policy.

1998-2002 National Security Congressional Scorecard

(Washington, D.C.): On the eve of the mid-term elections, the Center for Security Policy released its fifth Congressional National Security Scorecard.

The new Scorecard evaluates a total of 45 important votes by the two chambers (25 in the House and 20 in the Senate) and gives each legislator a Center National Security rating. Highlights include: the 23 Members who demonstrated the greatest commitment to the security of our Nation by achieving a perfect score of 100 percent (18 in the House and 5 in the Senate); and the two Members who have scored 100 on this and every previous Center National Security Scorecard — Senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Jim Inhofe (R-OK).

National Security Measures: Reviewing the Choices

The forty-five key votes tracked for this Center National Security Scorecard span the spectrum of security policy issues. Among those scored were votes to: cut critical defense spending (including funds earmarked for the Trident D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missile, and space-based missile defense programs); weaken controls over sensitive dual-use exports; protect U.S. troops from the International Criminal Court; ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; weaken the economic embargo on Cuba; object to the Clinton’s Administration’s renewal of Most-Favored Nation trading status with Communist China; and authorize the use of military force against Iraq.

Honor Roll, Hall of Shame: Tallying the Scores

In addition to Sens. Inhofe and Kyl the group of 23 perfect-scoring officials include: Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC); Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL); Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH); Chairman of the Republican Policy Committee Rep. Christopher Cox (R-CA); Chairman of the House Military Research and Development Subcommittee Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA); and Chairman of the Government Reform Committee Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN)

Regrettably, 12 elected officials received scores of ten or under on this Scorecard — 5 in the House of Representatives and 7 in the Senate — suggesting deplorably poor judgment on security policy matters. These 12 include: Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VI), Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI).

The Center for Security Policy produces its National Security Scorecard in furtherance of its mission of educating the public and their elected representatives about security policy — and in the interest of holding the latter accountable for their performance in this regard. Toward that end, the Center has distributed its 2002 National Security Scorecard to all current U.S. Senators and Representatives, members of the press and citizens around the country concerned with the security of our Nation and the defense of its interests overseas.

View full Scorecard (PDF)

Too clever by half?

(Washington, D.C.): Up in Maine, where President Bush and his family have long vacationed, they tell a story about the crusty “Down Easterner” who tries to help a lost tourist get to his destination. After suggesting several routes then concluding they won’t work, the local gives up, saying “You can’t rightly get there from here.”

Powell’s Dubious Diplomacy

The same can be said about three initiatives currently being undertaken in Mr. Bush’s name by Secretary of State Colin Powell that are supposed to denuclearize North Korea, disarm Iraq and create a peaceable state for the Palestinian Arabs. The ineluctable reality is that negotiations aimed at such goals with the likes of Kim Jong-Il, Saddam Hussein’s patrons in the UN Security Council and Yasser Arafat’s surrogates are doomed to produce results incompatible with vital U.S. interests.

The question is: Do the current diplomatic efforts represent clever stratagems by Mr. Bush, aimed at deflecting opposition to and otherwise advancing his, more realistic foreign policy agenda? Or has he actually been induced to believe that he can get where this country needs to go vis vis the North Korean, Iraqi and Palestinian regimes through various “processes” ostensibly managed by Powell’s State Department?

  • North Korea: Last week, the Bush Administration revealed that Kim Jong-Il’s government had admitted it was pursuing a second nuclear weapons program in violation of several international commitments — notably, an “Agreed Framework” which handsomely rewarded Pyongyang for remaining non-nuclear. North Korean officials proceeded to declare the Agreed Framework null and void. For his part, Mr. Powell on Sunday described the agreement as “effectively dead” and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fuel oil and nuclear power reactors promised the North pursuant to that deal apparently will not be forthcoming.

    At the same time, Mr. Powell and his subordinates have made clear that the Administra tion is committed to seeking a “diplomatic solution” to this crisis, presumably hoping that new negotiations will succeed where others have failed. Is this just razzle-dazzle maneuvering, calculated to avoid a crisis on the Korean peninsula as the Bush team prepares for war with Iraq, giving it a chance to stiffen the spines of its South Korean and Japanese allies (who have been keen to normalize relations with Kim Jong-Il) and, thereby, preserving and shoring up containment of the North until such time as it can be rolled-back? Or will this “dialogue” once again translate into more Western concessions that amount to political, financial and technological life- support for a regime that Mr. Bush has properly tagged as a member of the “Axis of Evil”?

  • Iraq: For weeks, Secretary Powell has been negotiating with other Security Council members, seeking a resolution authorizing the return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq. Here again, is the Administration merely going through the motions — getting past the November elections, putting the forces needed to liberate Iraq into place in the region and checking the box mandated by Congress of exhausting diplomatic options before going to war? Or, as seems increasingly likely, is the President going to be stuck inextricably to the tar baby of renewed UN inspections, inspections that will surely prove incompatible with the goal of disarming Iraq, since the only prospect for accomplishing that end is to remove Saddam and his ruling clique from power?

    It is an ominous indicator that Secretary Powell has now repeatedly asserted, without correction, that “All we are interested in is getting rid of those [Iraqi] weapons of mass destruction.” By dumbing-down the President’s clearly stated war aims, Mr. Powell may make it easier to get a watered-down mandate from the UN. But no one should be under any illusion that that road will get Mr. Bush to regime change in Iraq. This advice is at least every bit as flawed as that given in 1990 by then-General Powell to the previous President Bush to the effect that economic sanctions would compel Saddam Hussein to quit Kuwait.

  • Palestinian Statehood: A recent study by the estimable Zionist Organization of America has documented that Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority has not made tangible progress on any of the specific milestones President Bush declared would be preconditions for U.S. recognition of a state of “Palestine.” Yet, the Bush Administration has begun a new round of regional diplomacy aimed at establishing such an entity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Secretary Powell has even declared that a Palestinian state would be recognized in 2003 — undercutting the President’s position that real reforms must happen first, to say nothing of a complete end to Arab violence against Israel.

    It is hard to believe that Mr. Bush really wants to create a new terrorist-sponsoring state, even as he works to take down existing ones. Is the diplomacy now underway going to be allowed, inexorably, to produce such a dismal result — or does the President think he can keep this “process” from coming a cropper like so many before it, yet get credit from so-called Arab allies for not neglecting the plight of Palestinians?

The Bottom Line

Mr. Bush has shown himself to be a serious practitioner of the art of statecraft. The future of his presidency and the outcome of the war on terror may hinge, however, on whether he is now engaging in necessary and controllable stratagems or simply succumbing to the machinations of subordinates who may or may not share his goals, but whose gambits will surely foreclose their realization.