Welcome to Part IV of the six-part series "how they can win", featuring the six "serious" candidates: Dean, Edwards, Gephardt, Graham, Kerry and Lieberman.

For purposes of this scenario building, I'm assuming all six candidates are running strong, without the presence of a major scandal or foot-in-mouth incident.

This edition features Gephardt, currently one of the top two CW frontrunners in the race (along with Kerry).

Iowa: 1.19
Gephardt is the odds-on favorite to win Iowa. It's an interesting conundrum. He gains little by winning Iowa, since it's expected of him. So if he loses, or just squeaks by with a narrow victory, then his candidacy is over. So he must, in order to move on, finish in solid first place.

New Hampshire: 1.27
This state will feature a battle to the finish between Kerry and Dean. Gephardt will be pushing hard for a third place finish, no matter how distant it might be.

The victor this day will live to see Super Tuesday, the second-place finisher is most likely finished. The rest of the candidates will scramble for that second media-appointed slot. While that second candidate won't be selected until February 2nd, a third place finish here helps Gephardt cripple the Lieberman, Edwards and Graham campaigns heading into the following crucial week.

A solid first place in Iowa and a third place showing in NH, and Gep is looking pretty good right now.

South Carolina, Delaware, Missouri, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma: 2.2
South Carolina, Missouri and Arizona are the big delegate states, though I'm not sure the press is sophisticated enough to declare winners or losers by looking at delegate counts. They are more likely to count the states won by each candidate, and annoint the guy who has won the most.

South Carolina already looks good for Gephardt, and Missouri is obviously in the bag. Delaware will go to Dean or Kerry, leaving him needing just one more state. He grabs that third state (doesn't matter which, but most likely Oklahoma), and Lieberman, Edwards and Graham are gone.

It's now a race between Gephardt and Dean or Kerry. It would be a peculiar thing seeing Gephardt cast as the "moderate" candidate given his long progressive track record. But it's a designation he himself sought as he positioned himself for this presidential run (culiminating in kissing Bush's butt before the Iraq War vote).

Michigan, Washington (caucus): 2.7
Graham can essentially ignore these states.
Split this one down the middle. Gep grabs MI, Dean/Kerry graps Washington. Note that even if Gephardt lost Michigan, it would do little to affect his chances. Everyone is essentially in a holding pattern until the first Super Tuesday.

Maine: 2.8
Gephardt ignores Maine. Loses it. Doesn't mean a damn thing.

Virginia, District of Columbia, Tennessee: 2.10
Some skirmishes. All Gephardt has to do is grab one of these states and he's okay. He wins more than one, it means little. Still in a holding pattern.

Wisconsin: 2.17
Everyone ignores WI. It will go to the more progressive candidate. It won't be Gephardt. Again, no one cares.

Idaho: 2.24 and Utah: 2.27
No one cares. We're only one week away from the final day of this primary race.

California, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, Hawaii, North Dakota, Texas (tentatively), Washington (primary): 3.2
The appearance of Texas on this day is actually a huge boost to Gephardt's candidacy, and will feature prominantly in the "Gephardt wins" scenario.

Lots of states this day, most of them trending progressive. Gephardt merely has to hold his own. If he breaks even of lags just slightly, the more conservative states on March 9 will give him his margin of victory. If he loses big, it's all over for him.

As I mentioned above, Texas will feature prominantly. Ohio, with its massive union base, should be an easy win. Georgia and ND should be there for him. To survive, it looks like he'd also have to take Connecticut, as well as one of the following: California, New York, or Minnesota.

Bottom line: There is some talk that the calendar somehow favors Gephardt. I really don't see this. There are some friendly states along the way, but they're easily offset by a string of progressive states that will better favor the candidates on Gephardt's left flank.

Gephardt's strategy will probably be in the vein of Lieberman's "It's a marathon, not a sprint". Win February 2nd, ride out the string of unfriendly states (picking up a state here and there just to keep the media sharks at bay), and then holding his own on the first Super Tuesday. If he battles his opponent to parity on March 2nd, It's all his for the taking on March 9th.

In four years, this will all be standard stuff. But it's interesting that this election cycle, it is the underdog campaigns that seem to be jumping all over the weblogging medium. Kucinich just announced his weblog. Deanhas his. Hart was the pioneer (launching his mere days before Dean's went live). Heck, even Jerry Springer is in on the blogging bandwagon.

There may be more out there. What's interesting is that none of the "frontrunner" campaigns are employing weblogs. I get the sense none of the big name consultants running those campaigns consider blogs to be anything more than hacker playthings, not worthy of serious consideration.

I spoke with Terry McAuliffe on Friday (more on that later). One thing that struck me was his embrace of the medium. The Democratic Party gets the weblog, and the power it has in nurturing and growing the party's grassroot. Among things he promised was blogger interviews of top party officials (paging Liberal Oasis!). In other words, just as the party sends out its top elected officials to make the cable news rounds and editorial boards, so too will they send them out for blogging interviews.

Of course, we must translate a promise into practice, and there's much work left to do. But the framework is there. The understanding is there.

Blogging will allow the party's grassroots to connect with the party and its top representatives in a way never before possible. The party is starting to get it. And, not to be shy about it, $15,000 in two weeks had a lot to do with it.

It's all very early. It's all very rough. At this point, the "official" political weblog remains the exclusive domain of the underfunded or underappreciated candidate. It won't stay that way for long.

I'm back. Just a quick reminder that if you haven't donated to ePatriots, there's no better time than now. In fact, do a recurring donation and help arm the Democratic Party for its battle next year against Bush and the $200 million + he will use to pummel our party's nominee.

And, thanks to popular support (read: you guys), the DNC has added an informative donation FAQ. I think it answers just about every question you guys have asked the past couple of weeks.

I hijacked this space. But the thread is yours.

The recent protests against the mullahs of Iran have been coming for years. Reports from visitors to Iran have shown an increasing irritation with the pervasive control of the mullahs.

The religious police, the hypocrisy in the rules on sex and marriage and the growth of aysmetric media including everything from sattelite TV to the Internet has loosened the hold of the theocracy running Iran.

The Iranians, according to some reports, await American assistance in overthrowing their government, on the mistaken belief that their government, yet again, is lying to them.

Most Iranians are tired of the extremes of their clerics, but there is nothing like a serious mass movement which could overthrow the government, at this point.

The US approach, which is to encourage the protests, of course, fails, not only in that it gives the government more ammunition, but that it undermines the activists. This is a situation where NGO's, now the target of the neocons, could play a very important role. Encouraging democratic systems in Iran could lead to the kind of fall which occured in Eastern Europe and minimize bloodshed. But with the kind of aggressive "they better not get nukes" talk, you would think that the Bush Administration wanted to keep the mullahs in power. Obviously, there is a resevoir of good will for Americans in Iran. The question is how do we mobilize it without playing into the hands of the religious fanatics seeking to blame their ineptitude to US Policy.

David Frum's "Axis of Evil" speech may send more Americans to their early graves than anything said since the Civil War.

Steve Gilliard

On Face the Nation, the one Sunday talk show run by a sane person, Bob Schieffer, he showed the picture of the US soldiers holding off Iraqi soldiers with bayonets and it disturbed him. John McLaughlin, who's been opposed to the war from the start, also commented on the picture.

This seems to have caught a lot of pundits unaware. While some seek to continually justify the war effort, a lot more are wondering exactly what the hell is going on in Iraq.

Let's take a short tour of today's US and UK newspapers

Observer

Iraq's summer war

Katy Cronin and Joost Hilterman
Sunday June 22, 2003
.........................;

This is a dangerous time. The United States and Britain will have to work much more quickly - and with more than sheer force of arms - if they are to keep the Iraqis on their side. The coalition has barely begun to address the Iraqis' most basic needs - personal safety, steady electricity, clean water, health care, a modicum of job security and the prompt payment of salaries. As the blistering summer heat sets in, there is a real risk of widespread and serious trouble.

Dangerous liasons

Peter Beaumont
Sunday June 22, 2003
The Observer

.................

....... As they ran towards us and searched us and our vehicles I recognised something - that these men were both very scared and very angry, the worst kind of soldiers to encounter.

They led us to their headquarters where they fed us and let us sleep. They seemed nice boys. But something the gunner on the Bradley said, scared me. He apologised and told us that he had been about to kill us. He said he had his finger on the trigger. A second later, it would have been too late for an apology

Independent

Powerless Iraqis rail against ignorant, air-conditioned US occupation force
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
22 June 2003

Electricity is vital to life in the Iraqi capital where the temperature can soar as high as 60C (140F) at the height of summer. Without it there is no air-conditioning, no refrigerators to prevent food rotting and no light in a city terrified by looters. The failure to get the electrical system working has become a symbol for Iraqis in the capital of the general failure of the American occupation to provide living conditions even at the miserable level they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein.

New York Times

2,000 at Rally Demand Islamic Supervision of Elections
By PATRICK TYLER

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 21 — About 2,000 Shiite demonstrators marched on the gates of the Republican Palace here today, demanding that the American and British occupation authorities allow elections under Islamic supervision for the formation of a national government.

America Brings Democracy: Censor Now, Vote Later

By DAVID ROHDE

.........

......The United States isn't perceived as a cultivator of democracy here. It is seen as a military occupier that supports democracy and free speech when they serve its interest, but suppresses both when they don't.

Washington Post

Attacks In Iraq Traced to Network
Resistance to U.S. Is Loosely Organized
By Daniel Williams, Page A01

FALLUJAH, Iraq, June 21 -- Groups of armed fighters from the Baath Party and security agencies of ousted president Saddam Hussein have organized a loose network called the Return with the aim of driving U.S. forces out of the country, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. The officials said the group is partially responsible for the string of fatal attacks on American soldiers in recent weeks.

Policing of Iraq to Stay U.S. Job
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 22, 2003; Page A20

...................

"A lot of countries don't want us to fail, but they don't feel any responsibility for making the United States succeed or even to contribute to that success, because of the manner in which we went to war," said Brookings Institution scholar Ivo Daalder, who wrote a book with colleague Michael O'Hanlon about the Kosovo campaign. "The chickens are coming home to roost."

I could go on, but these articles, all running today, give a picture of absolute ineptitude now taking place in Iraq. While there was some effort to depict the war as a three week affair, the reality is that the enemy has changed shape and form and is still more than willing to engage Americans.

In the meanwhile, civil life is turning into a nightmare for the average Iraqi. No electricity, no secruity, random, violent encounters with Americans. Saddam may be gone and the police may not take you for a beating, but the environment of instabity and growing rage poses an ongoing danger to American troops.

The American viceroy, Paul Bremer, why mince words, was told directly at a World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan that the US needs to form an Iraqi government, not a hand selected council to advise on running the country.

But it's the picture of the US soldiers holding the bayonets to fend off the former Iraqi soldiers which has left people wondering about our policies in Iraq.

The reason this is happening comes from two decisions driven by Donald Rumsfeld, a desire for an American-dominated victory and the refusal to fully plan for the occupation of Iraq. These two decisions have lead to the current mess in Iraq.

Rumsfeld and his PNAC buddies wanted an American victory in the war on terrorism. The fact that Iraq was not actively attacking the US was irrelevant. So the quest for allies was a short, cosmetic one. They wanted to eliminate Saddam and show the rest of the region that US power was to be feared. Well, it didn't work out that way.

The latest buzz is that, once again, we may have killed Saddam, but frankly, he's no longer relevant to this discussion. Even if he was directing a guerrilla war, the Kurds and Shia would prevent his return to power, by force of arms if necessary. So the idea that he's hiding in the shadows and waiting to come back to his palaces is a pipe dream.

Instead, our solitary victory had led our allies to offer nominal troops, most of whom will avoid combat as much as possible. There is no peacekeeping in Iraq, only anti-partisan warfare. So, each day, American troops grow angrier at their fate, Iraqis grow angrier at their presence, and the dream of democracy is just that. A "democracy" in Iraq would most likely lead to an Shia Islamic Republic and a civil war soon after. The problem is that if we don't hand over power, an uprising will occur.

The US needs to blame Saddam and some of the violence comes from his people, but the American policing efforts have alienated enough people and left enough residual violence for the average Iraq to demand results or to demand departure.

Until Washington realizes that a government, any government run by Iraqis is going to be better than Americans trying to rule a people that resent them, this will continue. If we fall into the trap that we must "remake" Iraq into a US ally or that we have to prevent an Iran-friendly Shia government, we are doomed to fail. The exiles were wrong, the leadership we expected from them was best suited for the boardrooms of Washington and not the streets of Iraq. The only thing most Iraqis have to say about Ahmed Chalabi, is that they don't like him. These people are irrelevant.

We need to sit down in a room with Ayatollah Al-Hakim, the Kurds and the political officials of the Sunnis, draw up a plan for elections and withdrawal and be done with it, replacing US troops with UN-mandated troops from largely muslim countries. We will never have enough troops to manadate a colonial state, nor will our allies help us do so. We cannot remake Iraq to serve our purposes. The only reason that we're hanging on is that the Shia hold their guns in reserve. If they choose to evict us by force, we will go.

Steve Gilliard

RonK, Seattle

From earlier WaPo discussion of a DIA report leaked all over Hell and back, "DIA's analysis is just one piece of an intelligence mosaic that Rumsfeld ... could consider".

Good analogy. Intelligence on any subject -- military, industrial, or complex -- is a mosaic. It's usually a mosaic read from glimpses between structures, through breaks in seasonal foliage, from reflections, hearsay, opportunistic snapshots from varied angles and distances. Even if we get the essential geometry right, we are almost always standing too close or too far away to make out the pattern directly.

An intel estimate is a product of the collective mind's eye, subject to every conceivable trick of the interior light.

Recently I suggested the intel fiasco would pull key blocks out of Dubya's Jenga tower. Skeptics objected, citing public apathy, Presidential popularity, a hapless media, a Republican House and Senate (not to mention the courts), a cowed and compromised opposition, and the fact that (short of impeachment) Bush has the last word on everything.

All true, but the "missing WMD" story has legs ... and fangs. Here's a look ahead.

First, the story is not going away. End to end, the Process failed ... and it failed in the second worst possible way. Iraq's WMD programs were longstanding major foci. The findings were pivotal. The stakes were enormous. And the findings were comprehensively wrong, damaging national security in ways that will take years to appreciate.

Damned if they knew it. If senior officials strong-armed agency heads into affirming bogus assessments, intel officers at every level had a higher duty to break protocol and sound alarms.

Damned if they didn't. If "the integrity of our process was maintained throughout" (as Tenet asserts), and senior officials acted on the best intel money can buy, we're all in a world o' hurt. Ain't broke, can't fix it, expect more of the same next time. Not acceptable. Not for a nascent empire, or for the leading power in a dangerous world.

Either way, there's no broom big enough, nor carpet thick enough, to sweep this cowpie under the rug.

Hundreds of Gay Couples Make Their Way to Ontario to Say 'I Do'

Hundreds of gay and lesbian couples have wed in Ontario since an appeals court issued a historic decision last week that changed the definition of marriage in the province from the union of a man and woman to the union of two people. Prime Minister Jean Chretien has announced that his government would draft legislation legalizing same-sex marriages in all of Canada.

....................

Court officials in Ontario report that dozens of American same-sex couples have crossed the border to register and exchange vows, hoping that some day their Canadian licenses will be recognized back home. Tour companies have created packages aimed at attracting same-sex couples in the United States to travel to Canada for weddings. Toronto's City Hall plans to remain open for Pride weekend, June 28-29, to give couples a chance to marry.

"I'm hoping more Americans come up here and get married and erode the Defense of Marriage Act," said Kyle Rae, a Toronto city councilor. "I think as more and more Americans come up to get married, states will have a difficult time not recognizing a sovereign state's marriage license."

FRANK RICH
Gay Kiss: Business as Usual

All of this puts our current president in a jam. By keeping the gay baiters and bashers in his party under wraps at the 2000 convention, he may have received as much as a third of the gay vote, according to exit polls — a far cry from 1992, when his father presided over a convention marked by homophobic ranting. .....

No wonder the White House tried (unsuccessfully) to keep its distance from Mr. Santorum's embarrassment and remained mum when John Ashcroft's Justice Department moved to cancel its annual Gay Pride Month celebration. Mr. Bush has left in place a Clinton executive order protecting gays from being penalized in federal employment. Only six years after Republican senators, including Mr. Ashcroft, went ballistic over Bill Clinton's appointment of a gay man as ambassador to Luxembourg, Mr. Bush has appointed a gay man with a live-in partner as ambassador to Romania. .....

This ideological switch-hitting doesn't fly anymore. Patrick Guerriero, the former Melrose, Mass., mayor who now runs the gay Log Cabin Republicans, said in an interview last week that the time is arriving when "the Bush administration is going to have to decide to go on record" embracing gays "as part of the American family and the Republican party."......

This is an interesting dilemma, as things go. To pander to the right, Bush must support homophobes. Yet, the trend in America is to be more tolerant towards homosexual sex. Jerry Springer is a perfect example of this. Same-sex relationships are treated with respect there, as they are on most talk shows. It is rare to see openly homophobic comments in mainstream entertainment. Even entertainment's most homophobic art form, hip hop, is changing

But the reason I'm interested is that it reaches a fault line for the GOP. If they reject gays or make an issue of civil rights issues like marriage (a right denied blacks well past slavery), they become, once again, the party of intolerance. Given the fact that Dick Cheney's daughter is a lesbian advocate (she worked for Coors in that role for several years), it's amazing that this issue hasn't come home to roost for Bush before.

Now, the Bush Administration is faced with two unpalatable choices, decide to reject Canadian marriages and face ridicule from our allies or accept them and face the ire of his base. Because this will be litigated and it will come before federal court, probably as soon as this fall.

This also points out Canada's increasingly liberal stance on other social issues like Marijuana use, as the Bush Administration tries to defend conservative dogma.

It remains to be seen how Bush and Rove play this issue. My bet: where can the right go if Bush accept this? They can whine and complain, but the best they can do is stay home. They would have to decide how important this issue truly is to them and given that one can see lesbian liplocks every day on American TV, forget the multi-billion dollar porn industry, how many people really care if gays marry to the point they would abandon Bush?

Steve Gilliard

The political press makes a habit of denigrating Democratic candidates running against Republican presidents. In 1992, the entire field was denigrated as the seven dwarves who had no chance against President Bush.

The fact that Clinton won with a fairly large margin only began eight years of contempt for the man and his administration, while many of his critics grew richer as a result of his policies.

Bickering over how a candidate sounds on one talk show or another misses the point. The media is fundamentally misreading this election, as they have misread other elections. Why? Because most political reporters have no idea how spoonfed they are and how they're manipulated by the campaigns. The operatives feed reporters stories about this candidate or that and then they launch their attacks.

All of these reporters have biases, if not agendas. Take Tim Russert. While he may have thought he was going after Hillary Clinton, his performance at the first Senatorial debate between her and then Congressman Rick Lazio gave her a leg up with suburban women. Why? Because he asked her point blank about her husband's affair. A wildly inappropriate question, but one which emboldened Lazio to start screaming at her.

Watching this, I saw what a gold mine this was for Clinton. Why? She's a slight woman, thin, short, and no matter what you think of her politics, you recoil when you see a younger, taller man hectoring her. Russert did himself no favors with his question either. Combined, they gave Clinton the aura of being bulied by two men.

The whole aura of invincibility doesn't apply to Bush, but Karl Rove. Everyone in the Beltway treats him like a boy genius, my feeling is that he's closer to Cardinal Richelieu, but no matter. They stand amazed at his next manuever and political gambit.

But the Beltway pundits and the political press are missing the two stories which the election hangs on. One is the war. We cannot be at war in Iraq by September, 2003. If the war continues past then, Bush will have to explain why there is a US army of occupation taking casualities every day, months after the war was supposed to be over. The trickle of dead and stream of wounded will turn into a stream of dead and flood of wounded as soon as the Shia conclude we will not run a participatory government. Once that happens, and unless the US government gets smart fast, it will, the US public will face two brutal conclusions:

One, we're losing the war in Iraq.

Two, we are far more committed than anyone said and this is not a policy we can support.

The other story is the economy. The recession has lasted for three years. Since the crash, people have been scrambling for work. A casual glance at my friends shows two people with full-time work out of maybe 25 people I know. The economy's numbers may be recovering, but the jobs aren't. Many are being shipped overseas.

I attended a trade show last week that lacked exhibits and customers. This was a tech show, but the slump is across industries and even affects the trade show industry itself.

The media pundits are rarely deep thinkers. Most are as trendy as the worst MTV-addicted teenager. But instead of Hello Kitty cellphone face plates and belly shirts, they leap on the latest trend. If it's George Bush commander in chief, they'll repeat that theme until a new trend comes up.

The punidts are all misreading the Dean campaign as well. If either Dean, Kerry or Edwards gets the nomination, Bush is is very serious trouble. None of these men are McGovern Redux. They love to whip out that race, but forget Carter and Clinton. For any of those men to win, it means the base of the Democratic Party is energized and willing to vote against Bush in large numbers.

What people have to keep in mind is that elections are like battles. If you had asked Lincoln in 1861 who would lead the Union to victory, he would have never named a half mad professor (Sherman), a drunk who left the Army (Grant) and a bantam-weight horse soldier (Sheridan). People rise to the occasion during conflict. We simply don't know who will not only stand up to Bush, but bring the battle to him.

I get the feeling that if things don't change for the country, it will not matter who runs against Bush nor how much money the GOP raises. The common denigration of the current Democratic field is par for the course. No one looks like a president at first.

But if one of these men gets momentum, and real support, Bush will be in real trouble. His record is weak and stands only because no one has examined it in detail. As they do that, his reelection is no sure thing with the numbers he has now. The odds are good that they will not get better.

I refuse to read books by political reporters because they talk much and know little. I regard their cheerleading sessions in the same way. The only thing I know is that if they think Bush will have an easy time next year, given their track record, Bush will be lucky if he's running next year.

Remember, in the next election, the average Iraqi has a big vote. If they cause his Iraq policy to fail, he may join Truman and Johnson on the ash heep of one term Presidents who couldn't run for a second term.

Steve Gilliard

US general condemns Iraq failures

At the end of a week that saw a war of attrition develop against the US military, General William Nash told The Observer that the US had 'lost its window of opportunity' after felling Saddam Hussein's regime and was embarking on a long-term expenditure of people and dollars for which it had not planned.

'It is an endeavour which was not understood by the administration to begin with,' he said.

Now retired, Nash served in the Vietnam war and in Operation Desert Storm (the first Gulf War) before becoming commander of US forces in Bosnia and then an acclaimed UN Civil Affairs administrator in Kosovo.

He is currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, specialising in conflict prevention.

In one of the most outspoken critiques from a man of his standing, Nash said the US had 'failed to understand the mindset and attitudes of the Iraqi people and the depth of hostility towards the US in much of the country'.

'It is much greater and deeper than just the consequences of war,' he added. 'It comes from 12 years of sanctions, Israel and Palestinians, and a host of issues.'

As a result, he says, 'we are now seeing the re-emergence of a reasonably organised military opposition - small scale, but it could escalate.'
...................

'You can't tell who is behind the latest rocket propelled grenade. It could be a father whose daughter has been killed; it could be a political leader trying to gain a following, or it could be rump Saddam. Either way, they are starting to converge

..................
Nash is reluctant to make comparisons with Vietnam: 'There are far more things that were different about Vietnam than there are similarities. Except perhaps the word "quagmire". Maybe that is the only thing that is the same.'

Steve Gilliard

From daily CENTCOM news releases:

2003-06-15: The goal of Operation Desert Scorpion, in keeping with our ultimate mission, will be to help establish a permissive and secure environment and to facilitate a rapid transition to Iraqi self-sufficiency.

2003-06-16: Operation Desert Scorpion is the Combined Joint Task Force 7 operation designed to isolate and defeat remaining pockets of resistance that are seeking to delay the transition to a peaceful and stable Iraq.

2003-06-17: The purpose of Operation Desert Scorpion, which started June 15, is to prepare the foundation for Iraqis to form a new self-rule government and provide a safe and secure environment to live and work.

2003-06-18: [No report. Maybe the Desert Scorpion Interdisciplinary Mission Statement Development Team Public Diplomacy Focus Group Joint Definitional Task Force went on planning retreat Wednesday.]

2003-06-19: Operation Desert Scorpion is designed to identify and destabilize terrorist organizations, criminal elements, and non-compliant forces throughout the country while improving the quality of life for the Iraqi people.

2003-06-20: The mission of Operation Desert Scorpion, which started June 15th, is to prepare the foundation for Iraqis to form a new self-ruled government and provide a safe and secure environment to live and work.

2003-06-21: Operation Desert Scorpion was created to neutralize non-compliant influences in order to create a secure environment and concurrently provide support to the local government and assist with the economic growth.

Desert Scorpion -- the elastic plastic Swiss Army Knife of field operations.

It's a big news/pre-news day for Gov. Howard Dean. Full hour on Meet The Press. Formal announcement tomorrow. 17-year-old son in trouble back home.

Rather than load all the threads with Dean talk, make this a special all-Dean-all-day open thread.

"All the Dean that's fit to print"

RonK, Seattle

Certified 100% homeopatheophileophobia free.

I was listening to the Capital Gang as I woke up from a horrifying dream of being chased by elephants and rhinos, and I heard the Beltway Kool Kids justify the latest Bush spin on why the snipe hunt was no big deal.

I beg to differ.

1) American soldiers are dying because Saddam was alleged to have a specific amount of hidden chemicals and pose a direct threat to our troops and our allies in the region. This is not past history. As you read this, some poor infantryman or MP is on patrol in Iraq and yet another teenager is going to come home in a metal coffin. Some poor Iraqi is going to have his home burst into and searched. In the real world away from the Beltway, real people are being harmed.

2)If the weapons are a threat and exist, they need to be found and destroyed. If they do not exist, we need to know their fate. Not knowing this is gross incompetence on the part of the Bush Administration.

3)The mass murder of Shia and Kurds, while a valid reason for the overthrow of Saddam, are not the valid reasons to send US soldiers to die after the fact. No one asked them to die for people they never heard of. They were sent because of WMD.

4)There was no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda in any way, shape or form, and focus against a deadly terrorist sponsor was lost to invade and occupy Iraq.
The only loigical reason to invade and occupy Iraq was due to WMD.

5) As long as US forces are in Iraq, the North Koreans have a free hand. If they were to plunge across the Han River tomorrow, we have ONE heavy division able to deploy to Korea. Half of the US combat power is now stuck playing policeman in Iraq and will be for months, their equipment breaking down daily, men being killed by enemy action.

6)The entire intelligence establishment was sent to find these weapons and cannot. Either they don't exist or were destroyed and if determining that is too difficult for our intelligence community, we need a new one.

7)The fact is that the war is not over and has never ended. When Saddam left the field, guerrillas, some from other Arab countries, took the field. Sure, it would be like starting to play the Yankees, have them quit and then play the Texas Rangers, but unlike baseball, wars have no rules about substitutions. 54 dead Americans, most of who were too young to buy a beer. 54 families burying sons, most teenagers. For what? An American empire in the sand? Certainly not for the right of Iraqis to elect the fundamentalist government of their choice. It may not matter to Paul Wolfowitz, who's children aren't sweltering in the Iraqi summers of 107 degrees in the day, 80 at night. Nor are any of the Beltway Kool Kids children walking point before the glares of hostile Iraqis. Nope, just average Americans get that job.

8) When it comes to national security, one can lie about the details, but the fundamental case should be true. Yes, the Gulf of Tonkin was a mistake, and at best an error, but the fact was that the North Vietnamese were close to toppling the South Vietnamese government. Maybe they should have, but the threat was real and evident to anyone who cared to notice. In this case, even the fundamental case seems to be a lie.

Only the most desperate partisan expects to find bunkers of WMD. Or to have them planted. The time for planting is long over. A few rusty shells may even be worse than no WMD. Because to find junk would mean the Bush Administration sent Americans to die for what? A family grudge? The ambition of exiles? Iraq would have posed no threat and the evidence will be on TV for all to see. Despite the Hearst-like fear mongering of Ken Pollack, Saddam was a minor threat with a weak army who had no chance to rebuild that, much less his special weapons (what the Army calls WMD) program.

It matters if we find them or not because the President said they were there in quantity and that America should risk their sons and daughters to eliminate this threat. Saddam is gone and in hiding somewhere, US troops are still dying, this time in a nasty guerrilla war and someone needs to be held accountable for this. Waving the dead Shia about will not protect Bush and his cronies from the justifiable rage of those burying their teenage sons.

Steve Gilliard

Culled from PollingReport:

In the June 17-19 polling period, Ipsos-Reid has W's "Definite Reelect" number at 40%, down from 44% two weeks earlier.

That's near his all-time low of 38% in early March (when one faction was mad at him for taking us to war, and another faction was mad at him for not taking us to war fast enough).

In other words -- despite the Trifecta, the War, the Tax Cuts, the Bully Pulpit, the Money Machine and the Mighty Wurlitzer -- Dubya still hasn't "made the sale".

Confirming signals include a 7 point leap for Dem's in I-R's congressional generic ballot (often a wobbly indicator) ... a 7 point drop in W's net job approval (I-R, unconfirming by FOX or Gallup) ... and a WHOPPING 14-point swing in I-R's net Right Track / Wrong Track indicator (confirmed by a 13 point swing in Gallup's corresponding indicator, over a five week interval).

The last result may reflect shifts from war focus to domestic focus ... or it may tell of a deeper shift.

Harris reports 50% of us think the tax cut is a good thing, but an overwhelming majority of us don't think there's much in it for us personally! Only 8% of Republicans -- and 6% of independents -- think their own family will benefit "a lot". (In one of those quirks of polling, respondents are consistently more likely to think it helps some other demographic "a lot".)

In other business, "don't know", "not sure" and "someone else" are gaining ground in several polls of Democratic presidential primary preference. Interesting.

And who might that "someone else" be?

RonK, Seattle

When I woke up this morning I caught Bush's weekly radio address where he lauded us for helping the Iraqis. Of course, some Iraqis are none too happy with this.

Pipeline 'sabotage'
But even as Bremer spoke from Baghdad on Thursday, the Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline suffered two explosions that will hinder the country's export capacity, according to the US-appointed Iraqi Oil Minister Thamir Ghadhban.

"There is an incident in the pipeline somewhere near Baiji refinery. We are now assessing and evaluating the damage. I don't know exactly how it happened, and why it happened, but we will do our best to fix it.


"It will affect export capability. It is a pipeline and any incident in a pipeline would affect exports, but it can be repaired," Ghadhban told Reuters in an interview.

In Ankara, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said the pipeline had been sabotaged and an investigation was under way. But US Army spokesman Capt. John Morgan said the explosions appeared similar to previous accidents, and dismissed reports of deliberate bombing. The pipeline was still burning on Monday, reports said.

LPG plant damage

Bremer is well aware of acts of sabotage from Iraqi diehards that have hindered US efforts to restore the country's oil exports. He told Congressmen of destruction to Basra's South Gas LPG plant (SGLPG), which he visited last Wednesday. "It was a pure act of political sabotage, almost certainly, by elements of Baathists who want to show that the coalition is unable to run this country," Bremer said, adding, "we still face this kind of activity, and we need to defeat it."

SGLPG, which produces about 50% of Iraq's LPG, is not operational because of sabotage to equipment and a lack of adequate electricity. According to Jabbar Al Eaby, the facility's director, it was professionals who carried out the sabotage since they knew "exactly" how to most severely damage the plant's equipment.

Although enough electricity should be in place by Friday, the parts to repair the plant's damaged equipment will not be available until later. Al Eaby, who escorted Bremer through the SPLPG Wednesday, could not even estimate when the facility would be back online.

Thieves and Saboteurs Disrupt Electrical Services in Iraq

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 20 — The electricity system of Iraq, already damaged by the war, is now being torn apart by systematic looting and possibly by sabotage.

Not far from the Bayji power plant in northern Iraq, high-tension cables that run to Baghdad now either hang like spaghetti or have disappeared altogether.

Near the southern city of Basra, dozens of the biggest electric towers have been toppled in the past few weeks and now look like giraffes with their necks broken.

In the city of Falluja, about 30 miles west of Baghdad, unidentified attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade on Thursday night that blew up a transformer serving half the city.

With daytime summer temperatures already climbing past 110 degrees and still rising, the attacks have become a major worry for the American-led occupation authorities.

Daily power cutoffs are getting worse in many areas. Electricity failures have disrupted water supplies and led to huge backups of sewage because neither water nor sewage can be properly pumped.

The Iraqi resistance is clearly more than pissed-off Baathist looking for the great man's return. The Shia intend for that not to happen.

Everytime I hear Paul Bremer say that these are just "criminal gangs" or "small pockets of resistance" I get the feeling I'm listening to the Gaulieter of Ukraine or Central Yugoslavia. Does Bremer know he sounds like a Nazi official flailing around, talking about bandit gangs? It's sad and amazing.

The methods of the US Army are woefully inadequate to deal with even this nominal amount of resistance. US troops are deployed in small detachments, isolated from the people, who are undecided on what to do. The clerics are calling for American blood and ranting about Jews buying land. The 50 or so Jews left in what was once one of the Middle East's most thriving Jewish communities, are not buying any land. They don't exist, except as the new Iraqi boogie man.

But the anti-semitic rantings reflect the real fear of the Iraqis, which is that they are going to lose their identity in a colonial takeover of their land. The sabotage of oil and gas facilities is no accident. The Iraqis, regardless of their politics, are talking with nearly one voice in that they want to run their country.

Do you really think bands of guerrillas could survive if their main goal was to restore Saddam? Even with the post-war revisionist talk, it is clear that Saddam was not a popular ruler in any sense of the word. He sucked the life out of Iraq.

I think it gives the Bush Administration far too much credit to say their ineptitude is purposeful. I think these are people who simply think they are chosen to lead this country and anyone who objects has venal motives. So they just don't listen.

The Iraqi resistance is growing. Our anti-partisan sweeps only create more partisans. The locals aren't helping and even at this early stage, anyone looking to get too close to the Americans can expect a visit from the guerrillas. We're not just running into organized resistance, but widespread tacit support from the populace. Not cooperation, but the silent head turning and nodding which leaves US forces mystified. They aren't helping , yet, but they sure are watching and keeping silent.

As long as the US insists on running Iraq, Americans will die.

Steve Gilliard

Looters Stole 6,000 Artifacts

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 21, 2003; Page A16

U.S. and Iraqi officials have confirmed the theft of at least 6,000 artifacts from Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities during a prolonged looting spree as U.S. forces entered Baghdad two months ago, a leading archaeologist said yesterday.

University of Chicago archaeologist McGuire Gibson said the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement told him June 13 that the official count of missing items had reached 6,000 and was climbing as museum and Customs investigators proceeded with an inventory of three looted storerooms.

The June 13 total was double the number of stolen items reported by Customs a week earlier, and Gibson suggested the final tally could be "far, far worse." Customs could not immediately obtain an updated report, a spokesman said.

The mid-June count was the latest in a confusing chain of seemingly contradictory estimates of losses at the museum, the principal repository of artifacts from thousands of Iraqi archaeological sites documenting human history from the dawn of civilization 7,000 years ago to the pinnacle of medieval Islam.

Hmmm, so the looting wasn't so bad?

Steve Gilliard

It's raining for the fifth weekend running here in New York, so I'm home watching TV. Oddly enough, I'm watching Punk'd, the MTV show with Ashton Kutcher, celebrity boy toy. However, the show has an oddly subversive take on class, as he introduces real life dilemmas (shoplifting, destroying one's car, being arrested) to his co-stars and friends. Their reactions to having their pleasant little lives messed with is amusing. But what stands out is his awareness of class. As if he knows rich people don't get arrested or hassled. It adds a bite to what could be just another MTV show. It's worth a look, if only for the cheap jokes on semi-famous people.

Steve Gilliard

I'm tired of the poor dead Shia being used as a post-facto justification for our war in Iraq.

In an especially shameless effort this week, William Shawcross sought to use the dead Shia as a way to attack Robin Cook and Clare Short.

No one asked the American or British people to liberate the Shia. We were told that Saddam Hussein posed an immediate, vital threat to US interests. That we had to protect ourselves from the prospect of a surprise attack on our allies in the Gulf.

No one said "Saddam has to go because he kills the Shia". If they had proposed such an expedition, they would have lost the vote in record numbers.

I believe that the record and subsequent investigations will show that the government and the intelligence agencies acted properly in the face of a deadly, if unquantifiable, threat from Saddam. The record will also show that Mr Cook and Ms Short have behaved in a manner which should shame even them.

Well, that's nice to believe that and it's a valid argument, but we don't wage war because of unquantifiable threats. I don't think the relatives of the dead would accept such an explaination.

"I'm sorry, but your son was killed because Saddam was scary."

Anyone saying that to the grieving should be beaten into within an inch of their lives. I can assure you Mr. Shawcross will not be making such speeches before veterans groups.

The reason the Shia died is because we seduced and abandoned them. We're 12 years too late to save them and they are in no mood for forgiveness. It is odious that the US and UK would hide behind the dead Shia as a justification to impose a new strategic order on Iraq.

They certainly have no plans to let the Shia vote, mainly because they might elect the wrong person.

Yes, we've found mass graves in Iraq. Oddly enough, most date back to the uprising after the Gulf War, the one where we encouraged the Shia and Kurds to rise up against Saddam and then let them be slaughtered. It's as if we unleashed a pit bull in a petting zoo and then express astonishment at the dead bunnies and chicks lying around. Then, a few weeks later, say that we need to take over the petting zoo because the owner lets pit bulls run around and kill things.

The fact is that the Shia are not stupid. They know who betrayed them, who turned their back as Saddam attacked and killed them and now uses those bodies to ward off criticism of the occupation. They don't want us there any more than the Sunni do, they just haven't unleashed their guerrilla war, yet.

For apologists of our occupation of Iraq, the dead Shia are convienent, like a handy talisman to ward off criticism. Despite years of Amnesty and Minority Rights Groups reports, despite the Southern no-fly zone, the only value the Shia had was as a way to indict Saddam's government. The fact that 15,000 Shia guerrillas sat in in Iran would usually get overlooked.

Now, this is why we went to war in Iraq. We had to save people who we condemned to death without a second thought.

It is hard to decide what is morally bankrupt, lies and distortions over WMD or justifying them by the dead we help lead to the slaughter.

Steve Gilliard

Ken Pollack, author of the modern day Remember the Maine The Threatening Storm is now trying to explain why there has been no discovery of WMD in Iraq.

Saddam's Bombs? We'll Find Them
By KENNETH M. POLLACK

The fact that the sites we suspected of containing hidden weapons before the war turned out to have nothing in them is not very significant. American intelligence agencies never claimed to know exactly where or how the Iraqis were hiding what they had — not in 1995, not in 1999 and not six months ago. It is very possible that the "missing" facilities, weaponized agents, precursor materials and even stored munitions all could still be hidden in places we never would have thought to look. This is exactly why, before the war, so few former weapons inspectors had confidence that a new round of United Nations inspections would find the items they were convinced Iraq was hiding

However, Scott Ritter disagrees with this assessment. Ritter, unlike Pollack, actually spent time in Iraq as a weapons inspector.

[While we were never able to provide 100 percent certainty regarding the disposition of Iraq's proscribed weaponry, we did ascertain a 90-95 percent level of verified disarmament. This figure takes into account the destruction or dismantling of every major factory associated with prohibited weapons manufacture, all significant items of production equipment, and the majority of the weapons and agent produced by Iraq.

With the exception of mustard agent, all chemical agent produced by Iraq prior to 1990 would have degraded within five years (the jury is still out regarding Iraq's VX nerve agent program - while inspectors have accounted for the laboratories, production equipment and most of the agent produced from 1990-91, major discrepancies in the Iraqi accounting preclude any final disposition at this time.) ]

It was pretty clear from comments by several people in the inspection team that they would not find large stocks of chemical weapons in Iraq. And according to the way most countries make and use chemical weapons, that is what would have had to been found.

[Chemical agents can either be stored in bulk quantities or loaded into munitions. With the nerve agents in particular, the quality of the initial material must be excellent and they must be stored under inert conditions with the absolute exclusion of oxygen and moisture. Generally an overlay of dry helium was employed to leak check munitions. A small amount of stabilizer (2–4 percent) was also used to extend agent life span. The United States stored agent in both bulk containers and in munitions. In the latter instance, the munitions were normally stored in revetted bunkers. This was particularly true when explosives and propellants were uploaded in the munitions. Storage of agents in explosive, uploaded munitions has both advantages and disadvantages. The principal advantage is speed of use when the munition is needed. There is no labor-intensive or time-consuming uploading process, and most munitions can be handled and shipped as if they were conventional munitions. The principal disadvantage is that explosives and propellants become part of the “system,” and their storage and deterioration may complicate the handling of the chemical weapons. An illustrative case is seen in the 115-mm M55 rockets where burster, fuse, and rocket propellant cannot be easily and/or safely separated from the agent warhead before demilitarization. As a consequence, demilitarization is far more complicated and costly than it would be otherwise.

Agents stored in bulk in the United States are now stored entirely in large cylindrical “ton” containers similar to those used to store and ship many commercial chemicals. The procedure for the former Soviet Union’s stockpile appears to have been to upload their stocks of nerve agent into munitions when produced, but to store them without the bursters or fuses. These munitions were then themselves stored in more conventional warehouse-like structures. Conversely, the older stocks of vesicants (i.e., mustard, lewisite and mustard-lewisite mixtures) are stored in bulk, apparently intended to be filled in munitions a short time before use. Bulk storage of the vesicants by the Russians is in large railroad-car-size tanks again located in warehouse-like structures.

When the Iraqis produced chemical munitions they appeared to adhere to a “make and use” regimen. Judging by the information Iraq gave the United Nations, later verified by on-site inspections, Iraq had poor product quality for their nerve agents.]

Actually, there are many possible explanations. Saddam Hussein may have underestimated the likelihood of war and not filled any chemical weapons before the invasion. He may have been killed or gravely wounded in the "decapitation" strike on the eve of the invasion and unable to give the orders. Or he may have just been surprised by the extremely rapid pace of the coalition's ground advance and the sudden collapse of the Republican Guard divisions surrounding Baghdad. It is also possible that Iraq did not have the capacity to make the weapons, but given the prewar evidence, this is still the least likely explanation.

The ridiculous assumptions here are numerous, but let's say this: even if Saddam had been killed and there were no weapons filled, there still should have been stocks of dried chemicals and empty shells ready to be filled with chemicals at secure sites. Given the temperature sensitive nature of these chemicals, not to say bio weapons, storage in the oven like Iraqi heat would be difficult.

You simply cannot make this up as you go along. There would have had to have been trained soldiers near chemical depots, ready to go.

The one potentially important discovery made so far by American troops — two tractor-trailers found in April and May that fit the descriptions of mobile germ-warfare labs given by Iraqi defectors over the years — might well point to a likely explanation for at least part of the mystery: Iraq may have decided to keep only a chemical and biological warfare production capability rather than large stockpiles of the munitions themselves. This would square with the fact that several dozen chemical warfare factories were rebuilt after the first gulf war to produce civilian pharmaceuticals, but were widely believed to be dual-use plants capable of quickly being converted back to chemical warfare production.

According to the Observer, these "mobile germ-warfare" labs were sold to the Iraqis in 1987 for hydrogen production for artillery balloons. Not some ghastly biowar experiments.

In 1995, for example, United Nations inspectors found Russian-made ballistic-missile gyroscopes at the bottom of the Tigris River; Jordanian officials intercepted others being smuggled into Iraq that same year. In July 1998, international inspectors discovered an Iraqi document that showed Baghdad had lied about the number of chemical bombs it had dropped during the Iran-Iraq War, leaving some 6,000 such weapons unaccounted for. Iraq simply refused to concede that the document even existed.

Even if they still existed, the fact is that they would have been useless by 2001, their shelflife date. This also sounds sinister, until you talk to any service member who has suffered through an inspection. All manner of unauthorized equipment gets buried in conex boxes and hidden so they can pass inspection without question. The numbers of something like artillery shells might simply be an accounting error or a lie to cover corruption. Whatever it is, the weapons have not shown up in any depot or stockpile since 1998.

As for the estimates the Bush administration presented regarding Iraq's holdings of weapons-related materials, they came from unchallenged evidence gathered by United Nations inspectors (in many cases, from records of the companies that sold the materials to Iraq in the first place). For instance, Iraq admitted importing 200 to 250 tons of precursor agents for VX nerve gas; it claimed to have destroyed these chemicals but never proved that it had done so. Even Hans Blix, the last head weapons inspector and a leading skeptic of the need for an invasion, admitted that the Iraqis refused to provide a credible accounting for these materials.

He also forgets that UN inspection regime has a four year gap. Saddam may have well destroyed those weapons in the four intervening years. If all the known chemical production facilities were destroyed and no new ones found, how could they have made new weapons?

Nor was it just government agencies that were alarmed. In the summer of 2002 I attended a meeting with more than a dozen former weapons inspectors from half a dozen countries, along with another dozen experts on Iraq's weapons programs. Those present were asked whether they believed Iraq had a clandestine centrifuge lab operating somewhere; everyone did. Several even said they believed the Iraqis had a covert calutron program going as well. (Centrifuge and calutron operations allow a country to enrich uranium and produce the fissile material for a nuclear bomb.)

Believe and prove are two different things. By March 17, 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded the following:

[ASSESSMENT OF IRAQ'S NUCLEAR-RELATED CAPABILITIES
Basis of the Assessment

As of 17 March 2003, the IAEA did not find in Iraq any evidence of the revival of a nuclear programme prohibited under resolutions 687 (1991) and 707 (1991). However, the time available for the IAEA before inspections were suspended was not sufficient to permit it to complete its overall review and assessment. This review would have required further investigation of various types of assets needed for Iraq to develop a nuclear programme, as well as investigation of all the possible processes of nuclear weapon development.
Review of Assets

Infrastructure, Equipment and Materials

The industrial capacity in Iraq has deteriorated substantially over the past decade, mainly due to the lack of equipment and the lack of consistent maintenance by Iraq of sophisticated equipment. All previously inspected and tagged critical machine tools were accounted for. At a few inspection sites, new machine tools had been installed and, at a few others, machine tools which had been inoperative in 1998 were retrofitted.

Expertise

Many areas of Iraqi expertise seem to have gone through significant depletion through the years, particularly as a result of the departure of many qualified staff. For instance, based on the list provided by Iraq and interviews conducted with centrifuge enrichment experts, the IAEA has obtained a more detailed understanding of the responsibilities and expertise of many former members of the group that conducted all of Iraq's centrifuge enrichment research and development work from 1987 to 1991. Less than a third of this staff remained in the company that succeeded that group, and the core of expertise that existed in 1990 appears to have been largely disbanded]

So, by the time the war began, the idea that a nuclear program remained in Iraq was completely discreted by the IAEA and the US has uncovered no evidence to alter that conclusion.

As important as this debate is, what may ultimately turn out to be the biggest concern over the Iraqi weapons program is the question of whose hands it is now in. If we do confirm that those two trailers are mobile biological warfare labs, we are faced with a tremendous problem. If the defectors' reports about the rates at which such mobile labs were supposedly constructed are correct, there are probably 22 more trailers still out there. Where are they? Syria? Iran? Jordan? Still somewhere in Iraq? Or have they found their way into the hands of those most covetous — Osama bin Laden and his confederates?

I think it is safe to say at this point the "labs" didn't exist in practical terms. And the idea of 22 of them being around would be comical if US troops weren't dying. Task Force 20 has found no evidence of a fleet of labs, nor has the 75th Explotation Task Force and now the Iraq Survey Group takes their turn.

Add in UNMOVIC and the IAEA team and no one has found ANY evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction in a period lasting months. Complete with help from the US's most secret intelligence platforms, and defectors. Nothing. Not one lead.

Maybe this means Saddam was the most fiendish and clever dictator in history. A master of the Russian arts of maskirova better than his teachers. Then again, maybe Scott Ritter is right and we blew up most of it and Saddam got rid of the rest, saving him the effort of actually maintaining the finicky weapons. Let's not forget Saddam needed to maintain his regular forces with regular munitions. The odds are that he shifted the budget and production effort to building vast stores of conventional weapons to wage a guerrilla war with. Yet, left the remnants in place to amuse and bewitch the Americans. However, there might be remnants left in place.

Nor can we allow our consideration of weapons of mass destruction and politicized intelligence to be a distraction from the most important task at hand: rebuilding Iraq. History may forgive the United States if we don't find the arsenal we thought we would. No one will forgive us if we botch the reconstruction and leave Iraq a worse mess than we found it.

Which we seem well on the way to be doing

Explosion Knocks Out Power in Iraqi Town
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 2:58 p.m. ET

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AP) -- Attacks against U.S. forces showed no sign of letting up Friday after a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into a power station in Fallujah, injuring two American soldiers and blacking out much of the city -- a center of anti-American hostility.

At Friday prayers, imams preached anti-American sermons, claiming Jews are buying up real estate in Iraq. Based on groundless rumors, the warnings from pulpits, on leaflets and in Iraqi newspapers reflected Iraqis' fear and anger over the U.S.-led occupation.

Steve Gilliard

Yet another open thread........

Steve Gilliard

Florida Congressman Mark Foley is extremely concerned about a nude summer camp for kids.

The childless Foley, who recently sought to block all discussion of his sex life, which many gay activists and Republican opponents say is homosexual, is disturbed by naked kids

Nude summer youth camps alarm lawmaker

"What's wrong with your kids going to Boy Scouts, Campfire Girls or sports camps?" Foley, the West Palm Beach Republican, said Wednesday from Washington. "It's beyond the pale that this is a normal way to bring up a 14-year-old child."

The adult nudists who run the camps say they teach teenagers healthy lessons about accepting their sometimes awkward adolescent bodies. Aside from the Pasco camp, others are held in Virginia and Arizona.

Erich Schuttauf, executive director of the nude association, called Lake Como's camp, which attracted about 25 young nudists from June 5 to 13, "good old-fashioned naked fun."

"We have always been about a wholesome family-oriented environment suitable for people of all ages," Schuttauf said from his Kissimmee office.

Oddly enough, the kids and their parents seem to have been exposed to other camping environments.

Old Enough to Make a Lanyard, and to Do It Nude
By KATE ZERNIKE

.....................

Here at the Youth Leadership Camp run by the American Association for Nude Recreation, the dress code for regular volleyball — and for the pudding toss, mini-golf and campfire sing-alongs — is the same as it is for skinny dipping.

Basking in what nudist organizations say is a growing interest in nude recreation, the association has begun a nationwide expansion of summer camps for nudists age 11 to 18. The first began here 10 years ago, in a county north of Tampa known for its concentration of nudist resorts. In 2000, the association opened its second camp in Arizona.

A third is to open outside Richmond, Va., this month, and organizers in Texas are planning a fourth camp there for the summer of 2005.

Naked summer camp might strike non-nudists as illegal or prurient, or like striking a match to the gasoline of adolescent hormones.

Anti-nudity statutes in Florida and other states, however, say that nudity on private property is perfectly legal, even among minors, as long as there is no lewdness. And camp rules, drawn up by campers themselves a few years ago, guard against that. "Do not allow nudity and lust to mingle," they state. "No improper touch. Nudity must not be humiliating, degrading or promote ridicule." Even the occasional clothing, worn in the camp's shuttle van, must not be "sexually alluring."

Nude tourism has grown to a $400 million business this year from a $120 million business in 1992, reports the nudist association, with travel agencies noting a surge in nude cruises and, in May, the first nude charter flight. The association itself is growing, with 30 new clubs, for a total of 267, in the last two years.

There are still few places, however, for teenagers.

"I've spent my life around nudist resorts; this is the first time I've ever been around kids my own age," said Halie, who had been named Camper of the Day the previous night for participating fully despite a foot swollen by a bee sting. "It's either 45 and over or 10 and under."

The campers, many of them alumni of church or scout camps, say they like this better, but not for the reasons most people might expect

Congressman Foley, who cannot answer a simple question about his sex life is now going to judge how people raise their kids.

We’re not, after all, talking about a deeply closeted married man who is having secretive homosexual sex in a public rest room. We’re actually not talking about sex at all, at least not as in the case of Bill and Monica. We’re talking about identity–how one defines oneself and is known to family and friends. We’re talking about someone who is 48 years old, unmarried and is, according to the New Times, quite comfortably known to be gay to many people in politics on both the right and left in Florida, and whose own boyfriend has been out with him in public, as described by the gay military hero Tracy Thorne

.........

Foley’s strategy since then has been to try to ensure that his sexual orientation never becomes a story again. He began voting in favor of gay rights, even as he lurched to the right on most other issues in the past two years, supporting the president, whose brother Jeb he will need if he wants that GOP nomination for the Senate.

So exactly who is Mark Foley to judge the morals of other people when he cannot admit that he's a gay man in a long-term relationship. His refusal to answer that simple question and then turn it into a smear against the Democratic Party makes him a poor judge of character.

His simple argument is that nude teenagers may have sex. Well, clothed teenagers seem to have the sex thing down fine. So do child molesters. The Catholic Church certainly never encouraged nudity in the pulpit or church house, did they? You don't have to agree with nudism as a lifestyle to find Foley's crusade hypocritical at the very least.

As a gay man, he couldn't be a scoutmaster, yet he thinks that organization, one I and I'll assume many of the readers here either belonged to or have children in, is a more moral one than a nudist camp? Nudity and sex are two different things, at least to most people.

Mark Foley is perfectly capable of obscuring his sex life for his political career. Now, however, to get into the good graces of the right, who don't like gays and would refuse to support him because of that, he wants to dictate his brand to morality to people perfectly capable of raising their children. As long as the camps are law abiding and no children are harmed there, the only issue is in Congressman Foley's mind.

Personally, it's not something I would do, or introduce children to, but as long as the kids feel comfortable, and many seem to enjoy the experience in the company of their parents, it's not my place to judge.

What ever happened to the conservativism which believed that people could make their own judgments about their own moral conduct? I guess that died with Barry Goldwater and we now have the Cross and Sword nanny state, where religious coersion will now decide how people live, regardless of their opinions. Given Foley's trouble with his sex life, he might want to mind his own business as long as the law is followed.

Steve Gilliard