US troops in Iraq are again emulating tactics that the Israelis have been proving are counterproductive for decades. According to The Independent, US troops have destroyed crops in Dhuluaya, north of Baghdad, as collective punishment for the residents, who they accuse of not providing information on local guerilla groups.

A stunning headline on CNN.com today:

Iraqi boy who lost arms in war angry at U.S. pilot

...just above:

Researchers: Monkeys use mind to move objects

According to The Olympian, newspapers around the country are receiving letters from soldiers in Iraq. The odd part is that the letters are all the same and the soldiers never wrote them. “It makes it look like you cheated on a test, and everybody got the same grade,” said one.

On two points, anyway.

There have been some anti-war protests recently calling for a pull-out from Iraq. Probably people with a mix of ideologies take this view, but I presume that these protestors are largely of a leftist bent, as habitual protestors often are. I met a lot of these people during the anti-war protests earlier this year, and I was not particularly proud to be associated with them. But I digress. We can’t just pick up and leave Iraq.

In the build-up to the war, the Administration argued that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States. This was not true to anything like the extent that was argued, but it was true. It was spectacularly unlikely that Hussein would have shared WMDs with al-Qaeda, but it was conceivable. And Hussein was a bad actor who could cause other problems in the future. Some risk did exist.

But now, predictably, the risk posed by Iraq to global security is much higher. Before the war Colin Powell showed the Security Council pictures of a “terrorist training camp” in Kurdish-controlled territory. He never explained why this was supposed to be Saddam Hussein’s fault, but he was emphatic that it presented a threat. Well, now the whole country is a terrorist training camp, a la Afghanistan, complete with target practice, leadership training, and fertile recruiting grounds. Taking away the target practice doesn’t help much.

Were there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Probably not in the quantities the Administration claimed, but it would not be surprising if there were some chemical munitions around. Where are those (theoretical) weapons now? In the free-for-all that has been Iraq for the last six months, absolutely nobody knows. By invading the country, we presented a much greater proliferation threat than Saddam Hussein’s regime did, and we cannot leave until the situation is stabilized and some accounting can be attempted.

If we left Iraq today, what would happen to it? Would a stable government take over? Would an ethnic and sectarian war, fueled by neighboring Iran and Turkey, ensue? Would a new dictator take charge? It is impossible to say, but as Colin Powell once observed, it’s not like there are a lot of little Jeffersonian democrats waiting around to run for office. An unstable, chaotic Iraq is a worse threat to US security than a stable, if brutal and unfriendly, Iraq, just as an unstable Afghanistan proved to be, and may well again.

So we can’t just pick up and leave even though staying is unpalatable.

There have also been Congressional Democrats (working with some Republicans) pushing to convert some of the President’s requested $87 billion for reconstruction to loans rather than grants. If there was an Iraqi government requesting the assistance, that might be fine, but how can we seriously impose loans on Iraq to buy stuff they are not even in a position to say they really need? We can’t just take over their government, order a bunch of stuff from expensive American suppliers (of whom I am one), and then expect them to pay for it, with interest, on the extended payment plan.

$87 billion is indeed a lot of money, and it’s only the start, but they should have thought of that before they voted for the resolution giving Bush the power to do whatever he wanted.

President Bush today gave an empassioned speech to members of the New Hampshire National Guard and Air National Guard. The latter were no doubt doubly excited because of the President’s own illustrious Air National Guard career. The speech was part of a reported campaign by the White House to try to justify the war in Iraq to the American public for about the millionth time. At least this time, he did not drag out the same old tired arguments that have been unconvincing for the last six months or so.

Oh, wait. Yes he did.

“There is only one decent and humane reaction to the fall of Saddam Hussein: Good riddance.” Yes, good riddance. We are all happy to be rid of that guy, and that makes it OK that the war drags on and on and we haven’t actually caught Saddam and US soldiers are killed and wounded every day and Iraq is becoming a training ground for terrorists, and Iraqi patience with the CPA is nearly gone and…

“I acted because I was not about to leave the security of the American people in the hands of a madman,” said the President, whose Secretary of Defense is Donald Rumsfeld.

But the President was not simply resting on his laurels from the war to not secure Iraq. He was sure to bring up the war to not secure Afghanistan. “Thanks to our great military, Afghanistan is no longer a safe-haven for terror, the Afghan people are free, and the people of America are more secure from attack.” Clearly Mr. Bush has not been to Afghanistan. In fairness, though, it could be said that “the greater Kabul area is no longer a safe-haven for terror, the Afghan people who live in the greater Kabul area are free, and the American people are more secure from attack from Afghanistan-based terrorists, because they’ve found it more convenient to go to postwar Iraq.”

The President also had a warning. “After all the action we have taken, after all the progress we have made against terror, there is a temptation to think the danger has passed. The danger hadn't passed,” the President told the National Guardsmen, many of whom will soon see this point graphically demonstrated when they are shipped to the Sunni Triangle.

Apparently not thumbing through his Administration’s budget projections, the President said, “I came to this office to confront problems directly and forcefully, not to pass them on to other Presidents and other generations.” No word yet on how his father feels about that comment.

You will all no doubt remember the wacky exploits of the Saddam Hussein-era Iraqi Information Ministry, whose much beloved Minister, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahaf, came to public attention with statements that clearly contradicted facts on the ground.

According to the Guardian, “The second-in-command at the information ministry... has been employed by Fox News.”

No word yet on whether he will be writing for The No-Spin Zone.

“Just a few months ago, this administration went out of its way to tell us how important human intelligence is. We cannot find Saddam Hussein because we have no human intelligence. We cannot find Osama bin Laden because there is no human intelligence. And here you are, you have a case officer who is gathering human intelligence, who is running agents, and here you are exposing her and everyone that she came in contact with.”

- a serving undercover intelligence agent, on the Wilson leak

...this is not me.

Allow me to introduce you to a fabulous opportunity. A tax 'loophole' so big you could drive a Hummer H2 through it! Imagine being able to purchase the #1 large luxury SUV in America today . . . and receive a deduction for the entire purchase amount from your taxes this year!

How is this possible? Thanks to the Bush administration's recent economic stimulus package, small businesses and the self-employed are eligible to deduct the entire purchase cost of new equipment up to $100,000 the year of the purchase. The Hummer H2 qualifies for this IRS Sec. 179 deduction by its gross vehicle weight of over 6,000 lbs. Cars and medium sized SUV's don't qualify for this deduction.

- An actual promotion letter from a Hummer dealership

A new Government report alleges that an organization known to possess weapons of mass destruction has been selling the means to manufacture them on the Internet, “for pennies on the dollar.” Even Saddam Hussein never contemplated such a proliferation scheme. The name of this nefarious evildoing organization?

Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon.

We had some really interesting talk shows on Sunday morning, if you’re into that kind of thing. Ambassador Wilson made the rounds to denounce the Administration’s outing of his wife as a CIA agent, and Robert Novak lamely tried to defend his role.

And David Kay appeared on ABC’s This Week to talk about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This appearance included an unprecedented event: it made me say, “right on!” to George Will:

GEORGE WILL, ABC NEWS

You just used the phrase very nascent to describe this [Saddam’s nuclear] program. Elsewhere you've said very tentative and rudimentary. But you've also said he was firmly committed to getting nuclear weapons, now, that's a description of his state of mind. An alchemist in the Middle Ages was firmly committed to turning lead into gold, but wasn't gonna get there.

Musing over why WMDs have yet to be found, George Stephanopolous asked:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS

But everybody asks if he didn't have the weapons, why not let [inspectors] in at any moment? What purpose would be served in your mind by bluffing?

DAVID KAY

Well, that continues to be the problem I have with that hypothesis. Would you carry a bluff to lose your actual life and your actual country? If you didn't have the weapons, why at any point, particularly when you got near the end, didn't you say, I'm folding my cards, here, you've got it, the most you can charge me with is bluffing instead of losing your country. That's one reason I don't think that hypothesis is ever likely to rise to the top.

By the same token, if he had them and was about to lose his country to an invading army, why on earth would he not use them?

Maybe it was a bluff, and maybe the bluff was worth taking to the end because the bluff itself was the only thing keeping Saddam from losing his country.

Saddam Hussein in 1992 was in quite a pickle. He used to hold on to power by controlling the most powerful military in the Arab world, but that force had been decimated and humiliated. He had only barely been able to quell uprisings in the south of the country, and had lost control of the north entirely. His regime was teetering, and he was surrounded by enemies foreign and domestic.

He had some chemical weapons, and these had been effective in intimidating domestic groups into submission in the past, but he had been forced to agree to the elimination of these weapons, and international inspectors had already publicly destroyed many and probably most of them. He could try to hide the rest, but with technology on the inspectors’ side, he would probably not be able to hang on to much.

It may be that he decided to walk a fine line: get rid of the remaining weapons or bury them, but lead everyone to believe that he actually had mass quantities that he could use at any time. That might serve to dampen enthusiasm for nascent rebellions, and provide an extra deterrent to any adventurous neighbors.

Obviously I don’t know if that is what happened, but it strikes me as more likely than Saddam deciding not to use his vast quantities of chemical and biological weapons in order to embarrass George Bush, as some conservative commentators have suggested.

And now, math:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS

But let me, let me follow up on that. Secretary Powell, when he went to the United Nations, was very, very specific. He said that Iraq had 100 to 500 tons of chemical weapons in a stockpile. You've had 1200 people. You've had several months there. Wouldn't you be able to find a stockpile of that magnitude?

DAVID KAY

Well, you should say, first of all, not only Secretary Powell said that, that was from the UN data. UN officials had said they had that much unaccounted for. You know, 500 seems large but the actual physical amount would fit in a suburban 2-car garage. And this is a country ...

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS

500 tons!?

DAVID KAY

Yes. Yeah, it is easy, it is not a large physical amount.

I had seen the same comparison in Kay’s report and been skeptical. So I did the math: If we assume that sarin, mustard and VX are as dense as water, then you're looking at 16,000 cubic feet of the stuff, or a cube about 25 feet a side. About the size of a two-car garage.

Funny how Colin Powell did not get up in front of the UN Security Council and tell them “Saddam Hussein may have as much as a two-car garage full of chemical weapons,” isn’t it?

Today Israeli warplanes attacked a camp in Syria that Israel claims was an Islamic Jihad training camp. This is a serious development, and has implications not just for Israel's relationship with its neighbors, but for the United States, since the Arab public will not interpret Israeli actions separately from Coalition™ activity in Iraq.

Adding to the tension is the publication of photos of Henry “Fonzie” Winkler inside the camp. Is Winkler bringing advanced American “cool” technology to Middle Eastern terrorists?

The University of Maryland has put out a fascinating but deeply depressing study on people's perceptions of the war in Iraq and their favored media sources.

The study looked at three widely held misconceptions about the Iraq war:

a) That Coalition™ forces found evidence of collusion between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda in Iraq,
b) That weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq after the war, and;
c) That world opinion had been in favor of prosecuting the war, or at least evenly divided over the subject.

The new study concludes that people who got their news primarily from television -- and especially from Fox News -- were much more likely to believe in one or more of these misconceptions than people who got their news primarily from print media or from NPR or PBS. More worryingly, people who held these misconceptions were much more likely to have supported the war than those who did not.

You could take different things from these data. It may be that the kind of people who watch Fox News would believe anything the President said even if Fox News did not exist, for example. But I find it disturbing that such important policy is made with the support of the public, but only because the public does not understand even basic facts about the policy.