The president has gotten a lot better (and seemingly more comfortable) at not answering any questions

QUESTION: Mr. President, in the debate over Dr. Rice's confirmation, Democrats came right out and accused you and the administration of lying in the run up to the war in Iraq. Republicans, in some cases, conceive it that mistakes have been made.

Now that the election is over, are you willing to conceive that any mistakes were made? And how do you feel about that?

BUSH: Let me talk about Dr. Rice. You asked about her confirmation.

Dr. Rice is an honorable, fine public servant who needs to be confirmed. She will be a great secretary of state.

And Dr. Rice and I look forward to moving forward. We look forward to working to make sure the Iraqis have got a democracy. We look forward to continue to make sure Afghanistan is as secure as possible from potential Taliban resurgents. We look forward to spreading freedom around the world. And she is going to make a wonderful secretary of state.

QUESTION: No reaction to the lying?

No reaction?

(LAUGHTER)

BUSH: Is that your question? The answer's no.

BUSH: Next.

Of course the reporter didn't ask anything about Rice's confirmation. But look at the confidence and sureness the president had in taking the question and responding with psuedo-campaign fluff. That's progress.

And speaking of freedom and liberty here (in order of independence) are the least free countries according to Freedom House

Belarus
China
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Haiti
Laos
Somalia
Uzbekistan
Vietnam
Zimbabwe
Burma
Cuba
Libya
North Korea
Saudi Arabia
Sudan
Syria
Turkmenistan

Note: The U.S. has diplomatic relations with all but two of these beacons of freedom. We're breathlessly awaiting news of the plans for the liberation of Turkmenistan.

The running joke now is how many times President Bush used the words freedom and liberty in his inaugural address. You can watch Jon Stewart's deft take on it here.

Now torture from the interim Iraqi government. From Reuters

Iraqi authorities routinely torture prisoners, a leading human rights group said Tuesday, citing examples of abuse which will sound all too familiar to those who suffered under Saddam Hussein.

Prisoners have been beaten with cables and hosepipes, and suffered electric shocks to their earlobes and genitals, the U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch said. Some have been starved of food and water and crammed into standing-room only cells.

Read the HRW report here.

Let’s get something straight about Iran’s nuclear program. If the U.S. or Israel decides to attack Iranian nuclear facilities in the near future, such attacks will be based on notions of Iranian intent to build a nuclear weapon. This is an important distinction not simply because intent is hard to measure from the outside, but also because Iran is entitled to a civilian nuclear program, whether it needs one or not, by virtue of being a signatory to the nonproliferation treaty. I mention this for two reasons. One, entitlement to a civilian nuclear program is downplayed both by the media and the Bush administration. Obviously, it must be a concern for the administration because a robust civilian program is easily converted to a weapons program. This line from Seymor Hersh’s current New Yorker article got me thinking about this.

Iran has agreed to temporarily halt its enrichment programs, which generate fuel for nuclear power plants but also could produce weapons-grade fissile material. (Iran claims that such facilities are legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or N.P.T., to which it is a signator, and that it has no intention of building a bomb.)

Iran “claims” implies there is some sort of ambiguity. There isn’t. Enrichment facilities, properly declared and open for IAEA inspections are legal. Because we don’t like them or because they have the potential to produce fissile material that could be used in a nuclear weapon doesn’t change that fact.

That brings me to my second point. Suppose the U.S. launches a military strike against Iranian facilities. Absent proof of a nuclear weapons program, Iran will have the moral high ground. We know how this administration’s case was built for war in Iraq. Maybe Iran does want nuclear weapons. That’s intent (maybe). But this administration will have to show a lot more evidence than “these are bad guys and we can’t let them get a nuclear weapon.” A military strike based on this kind of intent will make the U.S. a lot less secure than a nuclear Iran would. The frontline in the war on terror would move from Baghdad to Tehran – or worse yet, a second front would open in Tehran.

The bottom line is we had better start having more conversations about the implications of an attack on Iran would have for us. If you think the U.S. is unpopular in the Middle East now…

Predictable, but sobering nonetheless

According to a new BBC World Service Poll of twenty-one countries from all regions of the world, the reelection of President Bush is seen as negative for world peace and security by a majority in sixteen countries and a plurality in another two. [ed. note: "all regions of the world" is misleading. The only African country represented is South Africa.]

Hey, we're polling well in the Philippines and India! See all the poll results here.

But wait a minute Dr. Rice

As for U.S. troops leaving, she said in response to forceful questioning from Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, "Our role is directly proportional ... to how capable the Iraqis are."


"I am really reluctant to try to put a timetable on that, because I think the goal is to get the mission accomplished and that means that the Iraqis have to be capable of some things before we lessen our own responsibility," she said.

Good thing we've done that. Troops should be headed home any day now.

Two good stories in as many days about Condoleezza Rice. This one in the LA Times characterizes her as a divisive person while provost at Stanford.

Her years as provost left a deep divide here on the elite Northern California campus, much as her polarizing performance as war counsel has defined her image nationally.

As the university's No. 2 administrator, Rice is widely credited with helping the school regain its footing during the 1990s after red ink and a financial scandal threatened to engulf it.

But critics say Rice was harsh, even ruthless, during her administration, the one time in her gilded career she has overseen a large institution. Improbably, the youngest provost in Stanford history and the first black and woman to hold the post helped prompt a Labor Department probe into the treatment of women and minorities.

This NYT story quotes a number people predicting success for her as secretary of state.

But Ms. Rice may well prevail more often than Mr. Powell did, given the broad trust Mr. Bush places in her.

Mr. Bush told The Washington Post in an interview published Sunday that he expected Ms. Rice to embark on a campaign that "explains our motives and explains our intentions," and added, "There's no question we've got to continue to do a better job of explaining what America is all about."

Even some foreign policy experts who have been critical of Ms. Rice in the past say they see her selection of Robert B. Zoellick, the administration's top trade negotiator and a veteran diplomat, as deputy secretary of state as a sign that she intends to pursue a pragmatic, traditional Republican internationalist approach.

Administration officials say that Ms. Rice's choice of a colleague with expertise in trade and economic matters means that she realizes such issues will occupy much of her time, as they did Mr. Powell's, to his initial surprise.

Update: The Washington Post has its pre-confirmation story also. Here's my favorite "Condi's so tough" anecdote

Though the Bush administration has had exceedingly close relations with Israel -- and has generally avoided putting pressure on the Jewish state -- Rice another time sternly reprimanded Sharon's chief of staff in late 2002 when Israeli forces encircled former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound. She told Dov Weisglass during a White House meeting that the attack was "stupid and counterproductive," according to a former U.S. official present during the exchange.

"Israel has had no better friend than this administration, and no better friend in this administration than me," Rice said, the official recalled. But, she said, "if you have the same conversation with me a week from now, you will have a serious problem in this building and you will have it with me."

This NYT editorial sounds a bit shocked that we're back to business as usual between the Israelis and Palestinians.

The honeymoon didn't last very long. Less than a week after Palestinians elected Mahmoud Abbas as Yasir Arafat's successor and the relatively dovish Labor Party joined Israel's cabinet, hopes for an early return to diplomatic dialogue have been abruptly crushed by the familiar one-two combination of a deadly Palestinian terrorist attack and a precipitous Israeli overreaction.

I don't know why this is surprising. Even when it clearly would be in the interest of peace to show restraint in the face of terrorist attacks, Ariel Sharon has often been heavy handed and set back any positive gains. That is certainly his and Israel's right. It doesn't make particular sense though if one is truly interested in moving the peace process forward. It allows a small faction to hold the entire process hostage. Certainly Sharon knows this. The NYT lets him off the hook though: "In choosing to respond by cutting off all Israeli contacts with the Palestinian Authority, Mr. Sharon has become their [militants'] unwitting ally." [emphasis added] Ariel Sharon is not that dumb.

I've written before about Arabic linguists being dismissed from the U.S. armed forces because they were gay. It goes without saying that this seems at odds with a win the war on terror at any cost mentality this administration has. Here's an update from the Associated Press

The number of Arabic linguists discharged from the military for violating its "don't ask, don't tell" policy is higher than previously reported, according to records obtained by a research group.


The group contends the records show that the military ? at a time when it and U.S. intelligence agencies don't have enough Arabic speakers ? is putting its anti-gay stance ahead of national security.


Between 1998 and 2004, the military discharged 20 Arabic and six Farsi speakers, according to Department of Defense data obtained by the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military under a Freedom of Information Act request.

...

"The military is placing homophobia well ahead of national security," said Steve Ralls, spokesman for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a nonprofit group that advocates for the rights of gay military members. "It's rather appalling that in the weeks leading up to 9/11 messages were coming in, waiting to be translated ... and at the same time they were firing people who could've done that job."

Well said. The Fields Report world headquarters was formerly in Monterey, California, home of the Defense Language Institute where a number of these linguists trained. Since ousting gay linguists at this critical time seems to be a priority, the powers that be ought to spend a lot more time hanging around there. I've run into a number of openly gay servicemembers in my time there. Shock horror. If this is U.S. policy, let's get serious about it. Who cares about those insignificant little matters like untranslated documents crucial to national security (not to mention nondiscrimination, thanks Colin). I can suggest places to look.

Read the rest here.

Again the Financial Times has a great story we probably won't see much of in the U.S. media

For months, the US Congress has been investigating activities that violated the United Nations oil-for-food programme and helped Saddam Hussein build secret funds to acquire arms and buy influence.

...

But a joint investigation by the Financial Times and Il Sole 24 Ore, the Italian business daily, shows that the single-largest and boldest smuggling operation in the oil-for-food programme was conducted with the knowledge of the US government.

“Although the financial beneficiaries were Iraqis and Jordanians, the fact remains that the US government participated in a major conspiracy that violated sanctions and enriched Saddam's cronies,” a former UN official said. “That is exactly what many in the US are now accusing other countries of having done. I think it's pretty ironic.”

Overall, the operation involved 14 tankers engaged by a Jordanian entity to load at least 7m barrels of oil for a total of no less than $150m (€113m) of illegal profits. About another $50m went to Mr Hussein's cronies.

In February 2003, when US media first published reports of this smuggling effort, then attributed exclusively to the Iraqis, the US mission to the UN condemned it as “immoral”.

However, FT/Il Sole have evidence that US and UK missions to the UN were informed of the smuggling while it was happening and that they reported it to their respective governments, to no avail.

I've been writing about how quickly media attention can vanish from devastating natural disasters like it did only about two weeks after the December 2003 earthquake in Iran. This article in tomorrow's (today for you East Coast types) NYT says that when media coverage goes, reconstruction aid tends to go with it.

Soon after [hurricane Mitch], the international community pledged about $9 billion to help rebuild Central America. Today, experts at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University say most of that money never materialized. Half of what did was offered as loans, Honduran officials said.

Tucker Carlson is gone from Crossfire (and supposedly the show is near-finished also). Good riddance. He's shallow, disingenous, and lacks the ability to argue any point on the facts. When he is presented with inconvenient facts that contradict his skewed viewpoint, he resorts to distortion, personal attacks, and sheer stupidity (telling James Carville he ran a bad campaign in 1992 still tops the list). He should fit right in at MSNBC.

On a related note, here is the perfect example what Crossfire has become. On Friday, one of the guests was the always interesting Michael Newdow, best known for taking his case against God in the Pledge of Allegiance all the way to the Supreme Court. I've seen him interviewed before on these types of shows and inevitably self-righteous hosts take him by resorting to holier-than-thou personal attacks. And inevitably they end up looking stupid because Newdow is not a nut-case. He's a lawyer in firm command of the facts and his argument (something generally lacking from the right on Crossfire). And so here's how it went Friday with Newdow's latest campaign to have prayer removed from the presidential inauguration

[Robert] NOVAK: Mr. Newdow, thanks for being with us. Since you lost in the Supreme Court in this other battle, is this just another -- going up against the president's oath, I've found no particular academic or popular interest in it. Is this just another way to get attention on yourself?

MICHAEL NEWDOW, ATTORNEY/ACTIVIST: I don't think so. I'm trying to uphold the Constitution. If -- you can impugn my character, but the fact is that it's a violation. The man is about to take an oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and as he's doing it, he's violating its principals, it seems to me, sir.

...

NOVAK: Mr. Newdow, let me read from Chief Justice Burger's Marsh vs. Chambers decision, July 5, 1983: "In light of the unambiguous and unbroken history of more then 200 years, there can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society. To invoke divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making laws is not, in these circumstances, an establishment or a step toward establishment. It is simply a tolerable acknowledgement of beliefs widely held among the people of this country."

That's the chief justice speaking.

NEWDOW: That's the chief justice speaking.

NOVAK: This is something you disagree with?

[let the Novak beating commence]

NEWDOW: Well, yes. James Madison disagreed with it. He said it was violation of the Constitution and the pure principle of religious freedom.

And you can bring some other things that the justices have said, like Justice Scalia, who said that giving sectarian religious speech preferential access to a forum close to the seat of government would violate the establishment clause.

Or a Santa Fe case in 2000, where they said that the religious liberty protected by the Constitution is abridged when the state affirmatively sponsors the particular religious practice of prayer. These are clear violations. If you look at any of the principled statements of the Supreme Court, which you will find none in Marsh v. Chambers -- as a matter of fact, in Marsh v. Chambers, in the majority opinion, there's not a single statement about what the establishment clause means, because you know that, if you talked about what the establishment clause means, having legislative body start off their sessions with prayer is clearly in violation, as James Madison said.

So I'm sure Novak can come back at that since he always does his homework.

NOVAK: Mr. Newdow, thank you very much. We appreciate your time.

Faced with someone who obviously knew a lot more than he did, Novak folded. This was an arugument Novak was bound to lose (note that right off the bat he went for a personal shot and got his clock cleaned by Newdow). He obviously had no grasp of the law and was being set up to look even more foollish than usual. Maybe it's wise he shut up and went commericial. Too bad that's usually not the norm for him and his buddy Tucker.

Peter Bergen, whom I like a lot, has an op-ed in today's NYT echoing criticism of Muslim countries for not giving more aid to the South Asia tsunami effort.

AROUND the Islamic world it is common currency that Muslims are perpetual victims of Western and Zionist conspiracies. The bill of particulars includes the handling of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Israel's inequitable treatment of the Palestinians, and the deaths of thousands of civilians in Iraq - as a result first of United Nations sanctions after the Persian Gulf war, and more recently of the American occupation. The most articulate spokesman of such views is, of course, Osama bin Laden.

Yet when Muslims are suffering, it is usually the West, and often the United States, that takes the lead in helping. For instance, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Washington mounted its largest covert aid program since Vietnam to help the Afghan resistance; when Somalis were starving in the early 1990's, President George H. W. Bush sent 25,000 American troops to help relief efforts; when Serbs were massacring Bosnian Muslims in the mid-1990's President Bill Clinton (belatedly) directed the United States Air Force to bomb Serbian positions, which led to the Dayton accords.

I'm tired of this tack. It's disingenuous. Because Muslim countries use the banner of Islam in certain circumstance shouldn't open them up to this type of criticism. This amounts to observers deciding what these countries' priorities should be. Don't get me wrong, the oil-rich predominately Muslim countries could give more. But I think that's a criticism that should be made without resort to this solidarity argument. Using the same logic, the all the Muslim countries should rally even more around the Palestinian cause -- no sneaking around and making peace with Israel.

Just as domestic politics influences U.S. foreign policy, obviously the same is true for every other country. The U.S. is just as inconsistent in its foreign policy when it wants it to serve its own interests. Look no further than promotion of democracy. That's why the U.S. is in Iraq, right? Look no further than the same region to see U.S. support for a host of authoritarian regimes such as number two U.S. aid recipient, Egypt. Why aren't Muslim countries allowed to be as inconsistent, self-interested, and disingenuous as the U.S.?

In this article on why the U.S. wants IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei out, the AP report can't bring himself to acknowledge reality.

ElBaradei has challenged those views — particularly over prewar Iraq and Iran, both labeled part of an "axis of evil" with North Korea by President Bush.


He first disputed U.S. assertions that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons program — claims that remain unproven. He then refused to endorse assertions by Washington that Iran was working to make nuclear weapons. Tehran says its nuclear program is for generating electricity.

Claims that remain unproven?!? How about claims that have been found to be inflated and bogus. Call a spade a spade.

Powell Avoids Question on Sudan Genocide. How quickly things change.

I wrote immediately after the first reports of the tsunami in South Asia that the media would soon move on to another story, displaying its usual attention deficit disorder. I was wrong. There death toll kept climbing and there is still substantial news coverage both in print and on television. I specifically mentioned how quickly the earthquake in Bam, Iran was forgotten. Over 25,000 people were killed in that earthquake. Looking back on how wrong I was about tsunami coverage though makes the Bam coverage stand out even more. The Bam earthquake was on December 26, 2003 -- just a little over a year ago. While the death toll there pales in comparison to the tsunami, it still was staggering. Yet my quick look at the stories done by the NYT in the aftermath finds that there were no substantive stories done about it after January 9 -- two weeks later. I don't know if this supports my ADD theory, or if other stories in Iraq took precedence or what. But I think that massive loss of life is always an important story as we're seeing with the tsunami. Iran shouldn't have been any different.

When considering Middle East politics and security, especially from the American perspective, I often write that American analysts are reluctant to address the 8,000 pound elephant in the room – Israel. In this month’s Foreign Policy, Josef Joffe wants to consider an Israel-free Middle East

Imagine that Israel never existed. Would the economic malaise and political repression that drive angry young men to become suicide bombers vanish? Would the Palestinians have an independent state? Would the United States, freed of its burdensome ally, suddenly find itself beloved throughout the Muslim world? Wishful thinking. Far from creating tensions, Israel actually contains more antagonisms than it causes.

This is a great premise, but Joffe doesn’t deliver the goods. There is a fair amount of straw manning and very weak counterfactual arguments. Here’s an example of Joffe’s weak argumentation

If one believes former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, the Arab-Islamic quest for weapons of mass destruction, and by extension the war against Iraq, are also Made in Israel. “[A]s long as Israel has nuclear weapons,” Ritter opines, “it has chosen to take a path that is inherently confrontational.…Now the Arab countries, the Muslim world, is not about to sit back and let this happen, so they will seek their own deterrent. We saw this in Iraq, not only with a nuclear deterrent but also with a biological weapons deterrent…that the Iraqis were developing to offset the Israeli nuclear superiority.”

This theory would be engaging if it did not collide with some inconvenient facts. Iraqis didn’t use their weapons of mass destruction against the Israeli usurper but against fellow Muslims during the Iran-Iraq War, and against fellow Iraqis in the poison-gas attack against Kurds in Halabja in 1988—neither of whom were brandishing any nuclear weapons. As for the Iraqi nuclear program, we now have the “Duelfer Report,” based on the debriefing of Iraqi regime loyalists, which concluded: “Iran was the pre-eminent motivator of this policy. All senior-level Iraqi officials considered Iran to be Iraq’s principal enemy in the region. The wish to balance Israel and acquire status and influence in the Arab world were also considerations, but secondary.”

Secondary considerations do not mean non-existent. And the gas attack on the Kurds is a ridiculous example. Iraq can’t have enmity toward Israel and the Kurds? Poison gas has nothing to do with nuclear weapons anyway and I would argue that classifying it as a weapon of mass destruction is incorrect in the first place.

Here’s another example

Those who think that the Middle East conflict is a “Muslim-Jewish thing” had better take a closer look at the score card: 14 years of sectarian bloodshed in Lebanon; Saddam’s campaign of extinction against the Shia in the aftermath of the first Gulf War; Syria’s massacre of 20,000 people in the Muslim Brotherhood stronghold of Hama in 1982; and terrorist violence against Egyptian Christians in the 1990s. Add to this tally intraconfessional oppression, such as in Saudi Arabia, where the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect wields the truncheon of state power to inflict its dour lifestyle on the less devout.

This a good example of Joffe’s straw men. No one is arguing that the Middle East or Arab governments would be completely pacific given the absence of Israel. The argument is that Israel is just one (major) variable in Middle East politics. This argument is prominent because people see it as one that is existential because of U.S. support for Israel and perceived injustice toward the Palestinians. It’s silly to try to reduce Middle East politics to a “Muslim-Jewish thing” which is what Joffe wants us to believe a majority is doing.

Joffe continues in this vein

The existence of Israel cannot explain the breadth and depth of the Mukhabarat states (secret police states) throughout the Middle East. With the exceptions of Jordan, Morocco, and the Gulf sheikdoms, which gingerly practice an enlightened monarchism, all Arab countries (plus Iran and Pakistan) are but variations of despotism—from the dynastic dictatorship of Syria to the authoritarianism of Egypt.

…

Again, it would take a florid imagination to surmise that factoring Israel out of the Middle East equation would produce liberal democracy in the region. It might be plausible to argue that the dialectic of enmity somehow favors dictatorship in “frontline states” such as Egypt and Syria—governments that invoke the proximity of the “Zionist threat” as a pretext to suppress dissent. But how then to explain the mayhem in faraway Algeria, the bizarre cult-of-personality regime in Libya, the pious kleptocracy of Saudi Arabia, the clerical despotism of Iran, or democracy’s enduring failure to take root in Pakistan? Did Israel somehow cause the various putsches that produced the republic of fear in Iraq? If Jordan, the state sharing the longest border with Israel, can experiment with constitutional monarchy, why not Syria?

Again, I would ask, who is it that is blaming Israel for the status quo? Arab or Persian enmity toward Israel is separate from the reality of every day politics. What analysts are drawing a direct link between Qaddafi’s regime and the existence of Israel? Perhaps I’m ignorant on this, but this is where Joffe’s counterfactual arguments are essentially nonexistent to show the logic.

Here’s a final egregious bit of argumentation

Finally, the most popular what-if issue of them all: Would the Islamic world hate the United States less if Israel vanished? Like all what-if queries, this one, too, admits only suggestive evidence. To begin, the notion that 5 million Jews are solely responsible for the rage of 1 billion or so Muslims cannot carry the weight assigned to it. Second, Arab-Islamic hatreds of the United States preceded the conquest of the West Bank and Gaza. Recall the loathing left behind by the U.S.-managed coup that restored the shah’s rule in Tehran in 1953, or the U.S. intervention in Lebanon in 1958. As soon as Britain and France left the Middle East, the United States became the dominant power and the No. 1 target. Another bit of suggestive evidence is that the fiercest (unofficial) anti-Americanism emanates from Washington’s self-styled allies in the Arab Middle East, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Is this situation because of Israel—or because it is so convenient for these regimes to “busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels” (as Shakespeare’s Henry IV put it) to distract their populations from their dependence on the “Great Satan”?

This again supposes that observers are reducing all Arab hostilities to opposition to Israel. No one is doing that. Who could reasonably argue that Iran’s poor relations with the U.S. are related to Israel? I don’t think anyone is making that argument.

A great opportunity is missed in this article to truly examine Israel’s role in creating tension in the Middle East. But Joffe has an agenda and it prevents him from making a sound case. I for one think especially with regards to security, Israel does and has played a significant role in shaping the situation in the Middle East. After all the 1967 and 1973 wars involved Israel. If it didn’t exist, the wars couldn’t have happened. That’s simplistic counterfactual reasoning. The questions Joffe proffers at the outset require much more complex analysis than he engages in. But read and decide for yourself.

And Kofi Annan takes the message to heart.

From the NYT today

The meeting of veteran foreign policy experts in a Manhattan apartment one recent Sunday was held in strict secrecy. The guest of honor arrived without his usual retinue of aides.

The mission, in the words of one participant, was clear: "to save Kofi and rescue the U.N."

At the gathering, Secretary General Kofi Annan listened quietly to three and a half hours of bluntly worded counsel from a group united in its personal regard for him and support for the United Nations. The group's concern was that lapses in his leadership during the past two years had eclipsed the accomplishments of his first four-year term in office and were threatening to undermine the two years remaining in his final term.

...

The meeting was held in the apartment of Richard C. Holbrooke, a United States ambassador to the United Nations under President Clinton.

Others in attendance were John G. Ruggie, assistant secretary general for strategic planning from 1997 to 2001 and now a professor of international relations at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; Leslie H. Gelb, a former president of the Council on Foreign Relations; Timothy E. Wirth, the president of the United Nations Foundation, based in Washington; Kathy Bushkin, the foundation's executive vice president; Nader Mousavizadeh, a former special assistant to Mr. Annan who left in 2003 to work at Goldman Sachs; and Robert C. Orr, the assistant secretary general for strategic planning. Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's ambassador to the United Nations from 1998 to 2003, was invited but could not attend.

It certainly is refreshing to see a group of Americans show support for the UN, which so many find fashionable to bash in the throw the baby out with the bathwater vein. And as John Ruggie points out in the article, perhaps if the UN had been more forceful in responding to the Oil-for-Food scandal and the distortions that some (FOX news) have presented as fact, morale at the UN would improve.

Haiti's democratic future doesn't look bright. We're all about democracy though. Right? I'm sure the Bush people are all over this.