An outstanding article on A.Q. Khan and his proliferation network appears in today's LA Times. Interesting points -- U.S. intelligence let his network continue proliferation for fear of compromising their sources and methods

Some officials said that even as the picture of the threat posed by Khan's operation got clearer and bigger in 2000 and 2001, the intelligence was too limited to act on.

Other officials said the CIA and the National Security Agency, which eavesdropped on Khan's communications, were so addicted to gathering information and so worried about compromising their electronic sources that they rebuffed efforts to roll up the operation for years.

And also check out the WaPo's story on an alleged meeting between Khan associates and Iran 18 years ago.

What a hack job this Time Magazine story is on North Korea's nuclear program. Check out this paragraph

For more than a decade, the U.S. and its allies have insisted that they would not allow Kim to acquire nuclear weapons, out of fear that he would sell nukes to anyone willing to pay for them and set off an Asian arms race. Pyongyang's declaration, while impossible to confirm, means Kim has probably realized his quest. A nuclear-armed North Korea means that President Bush's multilateral strategy for preventing Pyongyang from acquiring nukes has failed just as dramatically as Clinton's policy of direct engagement did a decade ago. It means that even when they are united, Beijing, Moscow, Tokyo, Seoul and Washington haven't found the right combination of levers to halt nuclear proliferation by a rogue state. And it probably means that even if the U.S. and its allies can coax Pyongyang back into negotiations--a big if--their hand is weakened by what the declaration described as Kim's "arsenal." At a time when the Bush Administration is trying to increase pressure on Iran over its purported ambitions to obtain the bomb, Washington confronts a more immediate crisis with a country that claims to have it already.

Let's take those three in order. First, this line about realizing his quest leaves the impression that this is the culmination -- North Korea now has nuclear weapons. Experts have long agreed that it does; the question was how many. The next paragraph acknowledges that. So why this line is included I don't know.

The second point is the most egregious and is up there with Al Gore inventing the Internet and the Dean scream -- Bill Clinton failed too. No he didn't. When Clinton left office, North Korea was a member of the NPT, its reactor at Yongbyong was under IAEA inspection complete with monitoring cameras, and the thousands of spent fuel rods there were under lock and key. Was the arrangement perfect? No. But does not constitute a failed policy. The alternative was what we have now -- no idea where those fuel rods are. The NSC assess that they've been reprocessed into weapons grade plutonium. I don't remember that happening under the Clinton administration, mainly because the fuel rods were locked up.

Lastly, this article implies that the solution to this problem is elusive. No, the solution is obvious; the Bush people just don't like it. Those are two different things.

This is a mainstream magazine meant to educate the general public. It's failing miserably.

Check out the boots and this bizarre WaPo article.

And speaking of gay British sailors...

We do not negotiate with these terrorist-killers. Oh, wait.

The Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control recently convened a roundtable on prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons. The panel consisted of various experts with experience in arms control and according to the Wisconsin Project experience with Iran (the short bios from the roundtable summary don't readily show anyone with a specific background on Iran). The panelists included Rolf Ekeus, former chairman of UNSCOM. The findings can be added the chorus of "the only options are diplomatic and the U.S. has to be involved. Here are the broad strokes of their conclusions

1. The best chance of convincing Iran to reconsider its commitment to a nuclear weapon program is to engage the Iranian regime in an iterative process of negotiation, setting out potential economic, political and security benefits, while at the same time threatening punitive measures in the event of non-cooperation.

2. It will be impossible to verify that Iran is not secretly making nuclear weapons under any deal that allows Iran to keep its fuel cycle facilities.

3. Short of an international embargo against Iran, which would be difficult to achieve, sanctions are not likely to work.

4. There is no favorable military option for stopping Iran’s nuclear progress.

Jon Stewart is right about Robert Novak. On Friday's Crossfire, Novak continued to earn the accolade the Daily Show has bestowed on him.

NOVAK: Did I, did I, did I miss something or did Bill Clinton, did his last failed attempt to get peace result in the second intifada and all the bloodshed that we have had? Am I wrong? Did I miss something?

KLAIN: Well, I think what you might have missed, Bob, was when this president took his eye off the ball of the Middle East for the first year of his presidency, the situation got worse, that we're still digging out from that hole.

NOVAK: He didn't inherent the second intifada? [I watched the show and don't think the word Novak used here was inherent]

Yes, Bob you are wrong and you missed a lot, mainly because you're and idiot and live and an alternate world in which logic does not exist. Novak trotted out the same bogus and amazingly stupid and nonsensical accusation that Bill Clinton's peace efforts caused the intifada. Ari Fleischer tried this back in 2002 and quickly got the wrath of former Clinton officials and was forced to retract the idiotic assertion. But that doesn't stop Novak from trying again two years later. Yes, Douchebag of Liberty.

Former Lebanon Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed by a car bomb yesterday. The Bush people are all over this what with that democracy promotions/Syria get out of Lebanon mantra their always ranting about. But if you want good coverage and background, head across the pond. Click here for the BBC's great coverage.

Buried deep on page 21 of today's NYT is a short piece on the consistent decline in the number of gay servicemembers dismissed from the U.S. armed services.

The Defense Department said Friday that it discharged 653 service members last year for being gay, down 15 percent from 2003. Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the rate of discharges has dropped nearly 50 percent.

The number of men and women discharged from the military because they were discovered to be gay, or because they revealed their sexuality, has fallen three years in a row, the Pentagon's statistics show. The Pentagon started keeping track of the figures in 1997.

You know where I'm going with this. What's glaringly missing from the article is any mention of the percentage of gays dismissed that possess critical skills -- e.g. Arabic language proficiency -- especially those trained by the U.S. military itself. This story pops up from time to time, most recently in January when it was reported the number of Arabic linguists dismissed for being gay was higher than previously reported. An egregious omission by the NYT.

So Vicente Fox is having to purge the infiltrators from drug cartels from his inner circle and American's venturing across the border are disappearing at an alarming rate. The Bush people are all over this right? And we can expect one of those four-page, in-depth "Drug Lords Taking over Mexico" pieces in the Times next Sunday right?

There is a nice essay in the current NY Review of Books by Christopher de Bellaigue in which he is critical of Ken Pollack's book The Persian Puzzle. It is deals very nicely with Iranian thinking and policy options for the U.S. with regards to Iran's nuclear program.

Iran's nuclear programs, and whether they are pursued, have become central to the Islamic Republic's wider ambition in foreign affairs. It is unlikely that [Seymor] Hersh's report will shake the belief of most Iranian officials that the Israelis or the US do not intend to launch an attack on their nuclear installations.7 But they, and the Europeans, know that the November 2004 agreement will amount to little unless the Americans join the negotiations, offering advantages such as security guarantees, a deal on Iranian assets in the US, and the prospect of normal economic relations. The Americans are wary of committing themselves to such policies unless the Europeans and others, especially Russia and China, consent to taking punitive action if Iran progresses further toward a fuel cycle that could produce nuclear weapons. What is needed to deal with Iran and its nuclear ambitions is the formation of an international coalition including the US, and that is not George Bush's strong point.

A good friend and former colleague and Korea expert put recent developments better than I ever could in an email to me yesterday: "Condi Rice quotes the president as saying 'we have no intention of attacking North Korea.' Two years ago Pyongyang said they'd give up their nuke program for negative security assurances. Now Kim Jong Il has nukes and security assurances." [all profanity deleted]

Richard Clarke has a new column in the New York Times Magazine. In today's installment he argues that the spread of democracy will not as a rule curb terrorism

Even without jihadists, Western democracies have hardly been immune to terrorism. The Irish Republican Army, the Baader-Meinhof gang of Germany and the Red Brigades of Italy all developed in democracies. Indeed, in the United States, the largest terrorist attack before Sept. 11 was conducted in Oklahoma by fully enfranchised American citizens.

Thus, it is not the lack of democracy that produced jihadist movements, nor will the creation of democracies quell them. To the extent that President Bush's new policy is turned into action, the jihadists may well take it as further provocative American meddling, similar to the reaction to the president's earlier attempt at reform in the region, the Greater Middle East Initiative, which was dead on arrival.

President Bush's democracy-promotion policy will be appropriate and laudable at the right time in the right nations, but it is not the cure for terrorism and may divert us from efforts needed to rout Al Qaeda and reduce our vulnerabilities at home.

In today's WaPo, Jim Hoagland offers a zinger on the Bush administration's Iran policy review

The Bush administration is conducting a "policy review" toward Iran that is provoking a swirl of questions in the capital's national security wonkdom. Here's mine: How do you review something that does not exist?

I was going to suggest again that Bush people take a look at the Council on Foreign Relation's recommendations in their report from last year titled "Iran: Time for a New Approach." The report offers five recommendations:

1. Offer Iran a direct dialogue on specific issues of regional stabilization to "encourage constructive Iranian involvement in the process of consolidating authority within the central governments of both Iraq and Afghanistan and in rebuilding their economies."

2. Press Iran to clarify the status of al-Qaeda operatives detained by Tehran and "make clear that a security dialogue will be conditional on assurances that [Iran] is not facilitating violence against the new Iraqi and Afghan governments or the coalition forces that are assisting them."

3. Together with its European allies and Russia, implement a more focused strategy to deal with Iran's nuclear program.

4. Resume a genuinely active involvement in the Middle East peace process and press Arab states to do the same.

5. Adopt measures to broaden the political, cultural, and economic linkages between the Iranian population and the wider world.

But when you look at these recommendations, what leaps out at you is that they all require something this administration is loath to do -- engage. As Condi Rice demonstrated at the outset of her current trip abroad, the Bush people prefer tough-sounding rhetoric to meaningful engagement. It hasn't worked with North Korea; why should it work with Iran?

In today's WaPo, Jim Hoagland offers a zinger on the Bush administration's Iran policy review

The Bush administration is conducting a "policy review" toward Iran that is provoking a swirl of questions in the capital's national security wonkdom. Here's mine: How do you review something that does not exist?

I was going to suggest again that Bush people take a look at the Council on Foreign Relation's recommendations in their report from last year titled "Iran: Time for a New Approach." The report offers five recommendations:

1. Offer Iran a direct dialogue on specific issues of regional stabilization to "encourage constructive Iranian involvement in the process of consolidating authority within the central governments of both Iraq and Afghanistan and in rebuilding their economies."

2. Press Iran to clarify the status of al-Qaeda operatives detained by Tehran and "make clear that a security dialogue will be conditional on assurances that [Iran] is not facilitating violence against the new Iraqi and Afghan governments or the coalition forces that are assisting them."

3. Together with its European allies and Russia, implement a more focused strategy to deal with Iran's nuclear program.

4. Resume a genuinely active involvement in the Middle East peace process and press Arab states to do the same.

5. Adopt measures to broaden the political, cultural, and economic linkages between the Iranian population and the wider world.

But when you look at these recommendations, what leaps out at you is that they all require something this administration is loath to do -- engage. As Condi Rice demonstrated at the outset of her current trip abroad, the Bush people prefer tough-sounding rhetoric to meaningful engagement. It hasn't worked with North Korea; why should it work with Iran?

An number of news sources, including the NYT have noted the discrepancy between what President Bush said in the SOTU address about Iran and what Condoleezza Rice said at the outset of her current trip abroad

Less than a day after President Bush declared he was "working with European allies" to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear program, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States would continue to rebuff European requests to participate directly in offering incentives for Iran to drop what is suspected of being a nuclear arms program.

...

Ms. Rice made her remarks as the Iranians, the Europeans and many in Washington were dissecting Mr. Bush's comments about Iran - and far gentler words about Saudi Arabia and Egypt - in his State of the Union address on Wednesday night. In the address, Mr. Bush seemed to invite the people of Iran to liberate themselves from their clerical rulers, for the first time matching a specific nation to his Inauguration Day call for an end to tyranny around the world.

But he also sounded willing to support the Europeans in their initiative to negotiate an end to a key part of Iran's nuclear program.

I have a different interpretation. There is no discrepancy between the two and the hardline approach is the rule for a simple but quirky reason. President Bush uses the phrase "work with" like some people say "umm." If we consider him sincere in his desire to "work with" all the countries and entities that he says he is eager to, he would go down in history as the most liberal internationalist president ever. We all know that pigs will fly that day too. But I relate this story. I have considered this for some time -- the president's penchant for that phrase. It's boilerplate. And over the past two years I have intended to write something about it. The last time was during the 2004 campaign. Curiously though every time I tried to search the phrases "work with" or "working with" at the White House website, funny things happened. Sometimes simply no results were returned. Sometimes recent speeches given by the president in which he used the phrase wouldn't show up in the search even though finding the speech via another route on the White House website clearly showed the phrase was used. I gave up rather than look elsewhere for a searchable archive of Bush statements (yes, I'm that lazy).

Anyway, that "problem" seems to be fixed now. I'm not conspiracy minded but I don't think it too far fetched that White House staff manipulate the website to cut down on its use for making the president look stupid or at least inarticulate. After all they've done it before (scroll down to "White House Alters Website...").

A preemptive strike -- from the Senate

The Senate Intelligence Committee has launched what its chairman called a "preemptive" examination of U.S. intelligence on Iran as part of an effort to avoid the problems that plagued America's prewar assessments on Iraq.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said in an interview Friday that he had sought the unusual review because the erroneous prewar claims about Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction had made lawmakers wary of the CIA's current assessments on Iran.

Here are two "Not so fast" posts/articles on the election in Iraq. Fareed Zakaria's article aptly titled "Elections are Not Democracy" laments that the Bush administration has (reluctantly as the second link reminds) pushed for elections while ignoring other areas crucial for solidifying liberal democracy

First, you need to avoid major ethnic or religious strife. In almost any "divided" society, elections can exacerbate group tensions unless there is a strong effort to make a deal between the groups, getting all to buy into the new order.

...

Second, create a non-oil-based economy and government. When a government has easy access to money, it doesn't need to create a real economy. In fact, it doesn't need its citizens because it doesn't tax them. The result is a royal court, distant and detached from its society.

...

The rule of law is the final, crucial condition. Without it, little else can work. Paul Bremer did an extremely good job building institutional safeguards for the new Iraq, creating a public-integrity commission, an election commission, a human-rights commission, inspectors general in each bureaucratic government department. Some of these have survived, but most have been shelved, corrupted, or marginalized. The courts are in better shape but could well follow the same sad fate of these other building blocks of liberal democracy. Iraq's police are routinely accused of torture and abuse of authority.

...

The United States has essentially stopped trying to build a democratic order in Iraq and is simply trying to fight the insurgency and gain some stability and legitimacy.

And Juan Cole won't let the Bush people bask in all the glory since they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into this election in the first place

[T]he Bush administration opposed one-person, one-vote elections of this sort. First they were going to turn Iraq over to Chalabi within six months. Then Bremer was going to be MacArthur in Baghdad for years. Then on November 15, 2003, Bremer announced a plan to have council-based elections in May of 2004. The US and the UK had somehow massaged into being provincial and municipal governing councils, the members of which were pro-American. Bremer was going to restrict the electorate to this small, elite group.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani immediately gave a fatwa denouncing this plan and demanding free elections mandated by a UN Security Council resolution. Bush was reportedly "extremely offended" at these two demands and opposed Sistani. Bremer got his appointed Interim Governing Council to go along in fighting Sistani. Sistani then brought thousands of protesters into the streets in January of 2004, demanding free elections. Soon thereafter, Bush caved and gave the ayatollah everything he demanded. Except that he was apparently afraid that open, non-manipulated elections in Iraq might become a factor in the US presidential campaign, so he got the elections postponed to January 2005. This enormous delay allowed the country to fall into much worse chaos, and Sistani is still bitter that the Americans didn't hold the elections last May. The US objected that they couldn't use UN food ration cards for registration, as Sistani suggested. But in the end that is exactly what they did.

So if it had been up to Bush, Iraq would have been a soft dictatorship under Chalabi, or would have had stage-managed elections with an electorate consisting of a handful of pro-American notables. It was Sistani and the major Shiite parties that demanded free and open elections and a UNSC resolution. They did their job and got what they wanted. But the Americans have been unable to provide them the requisite security for truly aboveboard democratic elections.

Cynics.

Genocide, schmenocide

To human rights activists, the question before U.S. President George W. Bush this week is, which is the higher priority: undermining the new International Criminal Court (ICC) or bringing to justice the perpetrators of what Bush himself has called "genocide" in Darfur, Sudan?

To their dismay, the answer, so far at least, is he would rather discredit the ICC.

A long-awaited report by a special UN commission released Monday has concluded that "serious violations" of international humanitarian law have taken place in Darfur and that they should be referred by the UN Security Council to the ICC for investigation and prosecution.

While Washington's European and Canadian allies, among others, strongly support the recommendation, however, the Bush administration--which ironically has led efforts in the Security Council to hold Khartoum accountable for the abuses that have taken place in Darfur--is resisting the recommendation.

Instead, it is calling for the Security Council to set up a new ad hoc tribunal for Darfur, using the facilities of the international court in Tanzania that is currently prosecuting the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Creating a new court will cost much more money and involve lengthy delays in order to recruit and train personnel and elect judges.

"We will not support efforts by the international community to use the Security Council as a way of legitimizing the ICC," according to Bush's war crimes ambassador, Pierre Prosper.

Washington's position has exasperated much of the human rights community and even some of Bush's supporters who have opposed the ICC in the past.

The ICC is already up and running and fully staffed. Moreover, according its advocates, launching proceedings immediately could help deter further attacks by government and Arab forces against the African population in Darfur. According to recent estimates, more than 300,000 Africans have died as a result of the violence over the last two years.

"The delay involved in setting up a new tribunal would only lead to the loss of more innocent lives in Darfur," said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice program at Human Rights Watch who noted that fighting appears to have intensified in December and January. "The Bush administration seems willing to sacrifice Darfur's victims to its ideological campaign against the Court."