A gem from President Bush's press conference today

In terms of the detainees, we've had thousands of people detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble [it's not a typo, he actually said it] -- that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report. It just is. And, you know -- yes, sir.

Thanks for clearing that up. All this time I though it meant to, you know, take my mountain bike apart.

This episode is particularly hilarious, because the president has the annoying habit of speaking very s l o w l y and annunciating at times over very simple points (in the same way you explain to your 5 year old how the garbage gets picked up twice a week) as if its everyone else who really doesn't understand or realize that he's lying or dissembling.

The Washington Post has a big problem with Amnesty International's secretary general, Irene Khan calling Guantanamo Bay the "gulag of our times." The WaPo writes that

Like Amnesty, we, too, have written extensively about U.S. prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay, in Afghanistan and in Iraq. We have done so not only because the phenomenon is disturbing in its own right but also because it gives undemocratic regimes around the world an excuse to justify their own use of torture and indefinite detention and because it damages the U.S. government's ability to promote human rights.

But we draw the line at the use of the word "gulag" or at the implication that the United States has somehow become the modern equivalent of Stalin's Soviet Union.

...

Worrying about the use of a word may seem like mere semantics, but it is not. Turning a report on prisoner detention into another excuse for Bush-bashing or America-bashing undermines Amnesty's legitimate criticisms of U.S. policies and weakens the force of its investigations of prison systems in closed societies. It also gives the administration another excuse to dismiss valid objections to its policies as "hysterical."

Vice president Cheney and his "boss" are upset too. Cheney on Larry King

KING: Amnesty International condemns the United States. How do you react?

D. CHENEY: I don't take them seriously?

KING: Not at all?

D. CHENEY: No. I -- frankly, I was offended by it. I think the fact of the matter is, the United States has done more to advance the cause of freedom, has liberated more people from tyranny over the course of the 20th century and up to the present day than any other nation in the history of the world. Think about what we did in World War I, World War II, throughout the Cold War. Just in this administration, we've liberated 50 million people from the Taliban in Afghanistan and from Saddam Hussein in Iraq, two terribly oppressive regimes that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of their own people. For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights, I frankly just don't take them seriously.

KING: They specifically said, though, it was Guantanamo. They compared it to a gulag.

D. CHENEY: Not true. Guantanamo's been operated, I think, in a very sane and sound fashion by the U.S. military. Remember who's down there. These are people that were picked up off the battlefield in Afghanistan and other places in the global war on terror. These are individuals who have been actively involved as the enemy, if you will, trying to kill Americans. That we need to have a place where we can keep them. In a sense, when you're at war, you keep prisoners of war until the war is over with.

We've also been able to derive significant amounts of intelligence from them that helped us understand better the organization and the adversary we face and helped us gather the kind of information that makes it possible for us to defend the United States against further attacks. And what we're doing down there has, I think, been done perfectly appropriately. I think these people have been well treated, treated humanely and decently.

Occasionally there are allegations of mistreatment. But if you trace those back, in nearly every case, it turns out to come from somebody who had been inside and been released by to their home country and now are peddling lies about how they were treated.

Bush is his "press conference" this morning said that the characterization was absurd. "It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world." This is classic Bush White House. Just change the story. Alter reality. If their quibble, like the WaPo, is with the word "gulag" which was not used in the actual report then they should say so. But instead they bring out their mysteriously successful Jedi mind trick defense -- black is white, night is day. Their response is: What abuse? This is absurd. Where is Amnesty getting this from? Must be the detainees. The U.S. never mistreats is detainees, at Guantanomo or elswhere. Now if there were photographic evidence, or say a detainee had been beaten to death, well that might be another story. Otherwise, "For Amnesty International to suggest that somehow the United States is a violator of human rights, I frankly just don't take them seriously."

CNN is reporting that W. Mark Felt has revealed to Vanity Fair that he is Deep Throat.

I have to come up with a term for the phenomenon of news outlets reporting on the news rather than reporting it, which would include explaining the significance of an event or issue as well providing a some background information. This phenomenon has become rampant in reporting on event from the Middle East and Central Asia. The Newsweek Koran abuse story was a good example. In the early days of protests in Afghanistan, most news outlets reported on the protests. It seemed rather obvious that the larger story was the actual Koran descration. But news sources opted to report on the "smaller" story for several days until other forces shifted the focus back to where it should have been in the first place.

The latest version of this is France's rejection of the EU constitution. I don't follow EU matters very closely, so I was keen to get some insight into the why's and significance of this. But the media wasn't eager to help me. I heard and read again lots of what happened -- France rejected it by a 55% to 45%; Chirac's political legacy is now in jeopardy -- and little why. The questions I had began with what does the constitution do in the first place. But from NPR to the NYT to the WaPo, there was little help in answering the most basic questions. Just lots of hyperbole about how significant the rejection was and even some reports of the irrationality of French voters. But little in terms of explaining what made the vote irrational and what the constitution actually would provide for. The exception was the LA Times which did a pretty decent job of providing some background and more in-depth reporting on why French voters voted the way they did.

Many times news source completely blow the analysis of complex news stories, especially ones about international politics. But this new trend of not even attempting to explain and neglecting any facts and historical background is not surprising, but disturbing annoying nonetheless.

Ruth Wedgewood and Mortin Halperin debate the John Bolton nomination. Halperin clearly wins. Here are some nuggets

A Plain-Spoken Man at the Right Time
By Ruth Wedgwood
For the United Nations to be taken seriously in Washington, and for Secretary-General Kofi Annan to have a partner in reform, there has to be a real U.S. presence in New York. John Bolton’s nomination comes after a decade in which we’ve had moral heartbreaks in Bosnia and Rwanda, for which there was an inadequate response by the United Nations. In Iraq, the United Nations did not take the security problems on the ground seriously, and, alas, the Oil for Food program failed to create an effective humanitarian exception to economic sanctions.

This is one of my favorite misuses of history to bash the UN. John Bolton want the U.S. to run the Security Council. Yet in the cases mentioned above, if you're going to cite UN failure then that points right back to the U.S. Rwanda?!? The U.S. so didn't want any involvement there that the State Department was desperately trying to avoid using the word genocide, after it was clear that that's what it was. And however much moneny was skimmed from Oil-for-Food, it had to be done. And the Iraqi people benefitted from it, even if their plight was brought about by Saddam Hussein. What was the alternative? People forget that for almost four years, Saddam rebuffed the program and the humanitarian situation on the ground was terrible. I digress.

Bolton Cannot Be Effective
By Morton Halperin
We’ve already heard the case against Bolton’s nomination. All the attributes Professor Wedgwood has said the position requires describe someone other than Bolton. She’s already made the case for me about the United Nations’ importance for U.S. security interests. We need someone who can work effectively with other governments and who can come back to Washington and keep congress supportive of the United Nations. That’s exactly the opposite of what John Bolton is.

Why do I think that John Bolton cannot do the job Professor Wedgwood and I agree needs to be done? Not because of his temperament, but because of the views he has expressed over the course of his career. During his confirmation hearings, he had what’s called in Washington a “confirmation conversion,” in which he suddenly discovered the importance of the United Nations. But he can’t walk away from what he’s already said.

We’ve all heard his quotes about how knocking off 10 stories of the U.N. headquarters wouldn’t matter, and that the U.N. Security Council should only have one permanent member: the United States. Bolton has shown no understanding of the importance of the United Nations and has said many times that the global body is not an institution central to U.S. security. He’s also said essentially that there’s no such thing as international law, and that the United States should not be bound by it...

Don’t Underestimate Bolton
Ruth Wedgwood responds
High-level U.N. officials I’ve spoken to don’t share such shock and chagrin about Bolton. They know him, they know what he’s said, and they’ve read his op-eds.

...

What about the “10 stories” quote? Most U.N. insiders say that they can think of at least 10 superfluous floors and believe that, overall, a quarter of U.N. staff and resources could be better used. Three quarters of the U.N. regular budget goes to social and economic commissions and studies, which certainly could be reduced. Only a quarter of the budget goes to political affairs, peacekeeping, Security Council, or secretary-general affairs. United Nations assistance to democratic elections in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, and Liberia is limited to 10 headquarters staff. The U.N. inspector general’s office has only 12 investigators.

Does He, or Doesn’t He?
Morton Halperin responds
Part of the problem is that we’re told that Bolton doesn’t believe what he said previously, or that he was previously using hyperbole. I believe that Bolton believes what he’s said.

I agree that we need coalitions of the willing, legal authority for what we do, and the willingness to do it, because the United Nations is not capable of carrying out actual military operations. But that is the very formulation that Bolton attacked in a 1999 Weekly Standard article called, “Kofi Annan’s UN Power Grab.” In it, he states explicitly that the United States doesn’t require the permission of the U.N. Security Council. He said we needed to struggle against Annan’s position that the Security Council must be restored to a preeminent position as the sole source of legitimacy on the use of force. Annan said unless that was true we were on a dangerous path to anarchy.

That’s not only true, but it is embodied in the U.N. Charter, a treaty the United States ratified and that most Americans think we should therefore obey. Mr. Bolton says we only have to obey the charter domestically, not internationally, because international treaties have no force. That’s certainly not the view of the United Nations.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t circumstances in which the United States cannot act without Security Council approval. I believed it was correct to do so in the case of Kosovo, although Bolton did not. He actually argued with Bill O’Reilly, who tried to persuade him that we had an obligation to intervene. But the basic principle is that the legitimacy for the use of force comes from the Security Council, except in extraordinary situations when you cannot get the Security Council’s approval. But Bolton believes that the entire doctrine is wrong, because it inhibits the United States’ ability to use force whenever it wants to—and for that matter, anyone else’s right to use force.

In other words, the core of what he believes totally repudiates the notion that the basic objective of U.S. policy should be to build international institutions and international law that, over time, make the United States and the world more secure. He believes that idea is fundamentally misguided. It’s a legitimate intellectual position, but a person holding that view cannot be an effective U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Don’t Reduce Bolton to Sound Bites
Ruth Wedgwood responds
The relationship between U.S. foreign policy choices and Security Council votes is a complicated one. Ironically, sometimes the possibility of unilateral action is needed to push the Security Council to act; sometimes not...

If Only Bolton Agreed
Morton Halperin responds
Again, I agree with Professor Wedgwood. The problem is that John Bolton does not.

The United States can’t absolutely bind itself to the Security Council. When I was in government, I fought very hard for intervention in Kosovo, and I think we did the right thing. But it was a struggle, because I thought—as I think now President Bush does, because he’s learned over the last four years—that it is preferable to rely and build upon the international institutions and legal structures that exist. Bolton says they’re all nonsense. Bolton says the International Court of Justice is a sham court. The Bush administration is now implementing a decision of that court at the same time that it is limiting Americans’ willingness to accept its jurisdiction...

There's more. Read the whole thing here.

Remember back during the 2004 election campaign when Howard Dean delivered a speech before the Pacific Council and said that the U.S. wasn't any safer despite the recent capture of Saddam Hussein? He was roundly vilified by conservatives and even Democrats weren't so eager to embrace what he said. I wrote Dean was speaking the obvious truth and that terrorism experts seemed to agree with him. How far we've come since then. Iraq isn't even safer with Saddam in custody.

Washington is far behind in plans to pump $21 billion into Iraq's reconstruction, bogged down by an insurgency that has killed hundreds of contractors and diverted funds to security, a U.S. official said on Saturday.

"There is a long way to go. We recognize a lot of work needs to be done," said William Taylor, the U.S. official overseeing American rebuilding work in Iraq.

He told reporters it was still too early to predict when Iraqis will enjoy adequate electricity and other essential services — more than two years after the U.S.-led invasion.

Relentless guerrilla attacks have killed a 295 contractors for U.S. projects alone since reconstruction began, said Theresa Shope, spokeswoman for the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office.

Violence has forced foreign governments and companies to pump money into security, draining budgets and delaying rebuilding ventures after years of wars, United Nations trade sanctions and a state stranglehold on the economy.

Boosting the national electricity grid would help raise the spirits of Iraqis who have spent three straight summers battling stifling heat with erratic power for air conditioners.

But bloodshed has put a U.S. plan to improve the electricity grid on hold, Taylor said.

...

The chaos has worsened since a new government promising stability was announced last month.

Insurgents have killed more than 500 people with suicide bombings and other attacks, raising fears that the violence will erupt into a sectarian civil war.

Iraq's Interior Minister Bayan Jabor shed light on the security crisis in Iraq during a news conference on Saturday.

He said Iraqi forces had recently discovered a bomb-making factory where it only took an hour for insurgents to fit explosives in a car.

The U.S. can't placate would-be insurgents by repairing infrastructure (luxuries like electricity) because of actual insurgents who might have been placated if luxuries like electricity had been provided in a timely manner after the initial invasion.

American people to Bush: you suck pretty much at every aspect of your job

Americans are critical of President Bush's job performance in many policy areas, but negative opinions of his handling of the economy and Iraq are doing the most damage to his overall approval rating, which now stands at 43%. Just 35% approve of the president's handling of the economy, down from 43% in February and 45% in January.

With the level of violence rising in Iraq, Bush's ratings also have slipped on that issue ­ from 45% in January, to 40% in February, and 37% currently. Over the same period, positive opinions of his handling of foreign policy have fallen 10 points, to 38%. There has been greater stability in Bush's marks on energy policy and Social Security, but he gets positive ratings of only about 30% on both issues (energy policy 31%, Social Security 29%).

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted May 11-15 among 1,502 Americans, shows that Bush gets positive marks from a majority of the public on just one issue,­ his handling of terrorist threats. Currently, 57% approve of his job performance in that area.

I am not making this up.

Some watchers of the Koran story say that Newsweek doesn't deserve all the blame. They point out that allegations of abusive handling of the Koran's of detainees in Guantanamo had already been reported by other news outlets. This is definitely a point in Newsweek's favor. I wrote a couple of days ago that Newsweek should have recognized what an explosive charge this was and gone to extraordinary measures to be certain that it was true. Judging from this story in today's NYT, it seems that neither was true -- that is Michael Isikoff doesn't mention that he felt less compelled to take really hard look at the allegations because they had already been made by others and he drops this gem on not recognizing that potential for outrage

Whenever something like this happens, you've got to take stock and review what you did - how the story was handled. The big point that leaps out is the cultural one. Neither Newsweek nor the Pentagon foresaw that a reference to the desecration of the Koran was going to create the kind of response that it did.

I don't understand this thinking. We have the Salman Rushdie episode as a guide. You open yourself up to things like this is if you say try to draw conclusions based on past reactions or non-reactions. Don't offend cultural sensibilities and religious traditions and you won't have to worry about these things.

Here's an interesting story that's flying under the radar. Mexican president Vicente Fox has gotten himself in some hot water over remarks he made about immigrant workers in the U.S.

President Vicente Fox reversed course Monday and apologized for saying that Mexicans in the United States do the work that blacks won't.

...

Fox made the comment Friday during a public appearance in Puerto Vallarta, saying: "There's no doubt that Mexican men and women _ full of dignity, willpower and a capacity for work _ are doing the work that not even blacks want to do in the United States." [It takes the AP writer 12 (albeit short) paragraphs to get to what Fox actually said]

I thought about this and originally blew it off as much ado about nothing. Fox said he was misinterpreted. He probably meant misunderstood. I looked at the original Spanish and he wasn't misinterpreted or taken out of context. And after thinking about for more than a minute, I thought he does have something to answer for. This is a racist statement (apperently all is well now that he's answered to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton).

That's one debate. The other is sadly, why is this getting so little coverage?

On a related note, the link is to an AP story via the WaPo. The writer makes much of the fact that "many [in Mexico] people hand out nicknames based on skin color." In fact she mentions this twice, as bad AP writing frequently does. The author also mentions some other racially charged episodes in Mexico. But the skin color reference doesn't particulary strike me as racist. It's pretty common in much of Latin America and seems to me to be just a way of referring to people with no motive behind it other than to describe someone. People of the same color refer to the shade of another's skin tone even at the level of light or dark brown -- as a descriptor not an insult. The same is also done referring to someone's weight (which we would never do here in the states) -- referring publicly to someone a flaco (skinny) or gordo (fat). I'm no expert, that's just been my experience. And this is not at all to suggest that there aren't racial problems throughout Latin American, jus that it's more complex than the AP author writes.

Just a couple of days ago I started writing about this Newsweek Koran desecration story. But I was critical of media outlets reporting on the ensuing violence and neglecting the allegations of putting the Koran in a toilet at Guantanamo. Now, belatedly, and only because the White House has called out Newsweek, the mainstream media are all over it. So let me go one step further in the vein of my original comments. Why isn't this the springboard for renewed reporting on what the hell is going on down there. Remember the original Periscope item in Newsweek also alleged other abuses, some which have been also reported before

An Army spokesman confirms that 10 Gitmo interrogators have already been disciplined for mistreating prisoners, including one woman who took off her top, rubbed her finger through a detainee's hair and sat on the detainee's lap. (New details of sexual abuse—including an instance in which a female interrogator allegedly wiped her red-stained hand on a detainee's face, telling him it was her menstrual blood—are also in a new book to be published this week by a former Gitmo translator.)

So however the Koran desecration issue plays out, if it turns out to be wrong, it still seems to me a case of the U.S. government saying "Hey you're accusing me of hitting the suspect with a closed fist. I never hit him with a closed hand. Get your story straight."

On one hand, you certainly don't want the U.S. to get a black eye for something as heinous as what Newsweek reported if it's not true. But at the same time, one has to say that when you go down the road the U.S. has with the whole Guantanamo episode, what do you expect?

The hypocrcisy is staggering. Here's Scott McClellan this morning on the Koran story

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I find it puzzling that Newsweek now acknowledges that the facts were wrong, and they refuse to offer a retraction. There is a certain journalistic standard that should be met, and in this case it was not met. The report was not accurate, and it was based on a single anonymous source who cannot personally substantiate the report, so the -- so they cannot verify the accuracy of the report.

I find it puzzling that the president for whom Mr. McClellan works, took a country to war in which 1,600 servicemembers and thousands of Iraqis have been killed, delcared major combat operations over over a year ago -- since such time more people have died than before, blamed everyone else for his mission accomplished photo op, failed to find any weapons of mass destruction, shifted the rationale for war, and hoped no one would notice. Yet that president couldn't seem to recall any mistakes that he'd made when asked. That Scott McClellan would stand in front of journalists and demand a retractration from Newsweek is puzzling, not to mention the height of arrogance.

Juan Cole, writing on the Koran desecration scandal, quotes a former U.S. military official (writing to him) as saying he's not suprised. As a participant in Search, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape school, during mock POW training, the Bible was kicked around. Scroll down for the full account. Yes this violates my self-imposed rule against linking to other blog stories.

There are many problems in international politics that I feel have obvious and simple if politically untenable solutions. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a good example. The U.S. has the power and leverage to force an equitable solution on both parties. What it lacks is the political will. Tom Friedman thinks the same is true of the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea--easy and obvious solutions exist to keep these countries free of nuclear weapons.

North Korea's nuclear program could be stopped tomorrow by the country that provides roughly half of North Korea's energy and one-third of its food supplies - and that is China.

All China has to say to Kim Jong Il is: "You will shut down your nuclear weapons program and put all your reactors under international inspection, or we will turn off your lights, cut off your heat and put your whole country on a diet. Have we made ourselves clear?" One thing we know about China - it knows how to play hardball when it wants to, and if China played hardball that way with North Korea, the proliferation threat from Pyongyang would be over.

The only problem with this scenario is a big one. If it were that simple China would have done so already. Why would China want a nuclear North Korea anyway? But here’s another question: Why would North Korea want to look weak in the face of Chinese pressure? I think the answer to that question is they wouldn’t want to and they’d likely hedge. If China followed through on the threat, it would risk the collapse of the North Korean state and a flood of refugees, something it’s keen to avoid. So I think this scenario is a whole lot more complex than Friedman makes it out to be. On the other hand, if you want a simple solution, how about the U.S. negotiating unilaterally with North Korea as they’ve been asking. The obstacles to this aren’t any pragmatic realities, only superficial concerns that it would send the wrong message and the U.S. would look weak.

Then there’s Iran. Here’s Friedman’s take

If the European Union said to the Iranians: "You will shut down your nuclear weapons program and put all your reactors and related facilities under international inspection or you will face a total economic boycott from Europe. Which part of this sentence don't you understand?" Trust me, that is the kind of explicit threat that would get Tehran's attention. Short of that, the Iranians will dicker over their nuclear carpets forever.

This is probably closer to reality than his North Korea solution. But it doesn’t get at the problem. All of Iran’s reactors and related facilities are under international inspection. That’s not the problem. The problem is those facilities can just as easily be used for civilian purposes one day and weapons the next. Hence the term “dual-use.” That’s why this has been such a difficult situation to resolve.

Friedman tells us in this article that he “rarely write[s] about nuclear proliferation. It is not because I am not interested. I am. It is not because I think it isn't a grave danger. It is. The reason I don't write about it much is because the solution is so ridiculously obvious there isn't much to say.” Okay Tom, go ahead and delude yourself. Just so long as you only write about this subject once a year. Stick to what you know the rest of the time.

Newsweek: Oops, we got it wrong, but it's not really our fault.

So it turns out that the Newsweek can't verify its Koran desecration story now.

Late last week Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita told NEWSWEEK that its original story was wrong. The brief PERISCOPE item ("SouthCom Showdown") had reported on the expected results of an upcoming U.S. Southern Command investigation into the abuse of prisoners at Gitmo. According to NEWSWEEK, SouthCom investigators found that Gitmo interrogators had flushed a Qur'an down a toilet in an attempt to rattle detainees. While various released detainees have made allegations about Qur'an desecration, the Pentagon has, according to DiRita, found no credible evidence to support them.

The article then spends ten or so more paragraphs explaining what happened and making excuses for why Newsweek can't really be faulted.

Given all that has been reported about the treatment of detainees?including allegations that a female interrogator pretended to wipe her own menstrual blood on one prisoner?the reports of Qur'an desecration seemed shocking but not incredible.

Seemed plausible, so we didn't bother ask probing questions.

NEWSWEEK was not the first to report allegations of desecrating the Qur'an. As early as last spring and summer, similar reports from released detainees started surfacing in British and Russian news reports, and in the Arab news agency Al-Jazeera; claims by other released detainees have been covered in other media since then. But the NEWSWEEK report arrived at a particularly delicate moment in Afghan politics. Opponents of the Karzai government, including remnants of the deposed Taliban regime, have been looking for ways to exploit public discontent.

Everyone was doing it. We just wanted to be like them. And as for the subsequent violence, we were victims of bad timing.

Newsweek deserves credit for reporting this, but the whole article has a tone that smacks of "hey this investigative reporting stuff is hard work. Cut us some slack." Not in this case. The article quotes a Pakistani saying "insulting the Qur'an is like deliberately torturing all Muslims. This we cannot tolerate." Newsweek should have known that and gone the extra 10 miles to make sure the story was accurate.

This weekend I read this hilarious review of Tom Friedman’s new book The World Is Flat. Here are some of my favorite bits from it

Thomas Friedman does not get these things right even by accident. It's not that he occasionally screws up and fails to make his metaphors and images agree. It's that he always screws it up. He has an anti-ear, and it's absolutely infallible; he is a Joyce or a Flaubert in reverse, incapable of rendering even the smallest details without genius. The difference between Friedman and an ordinary bad writer is that an ordinary bad writer will, say, call some businessman a shark and have him say some tired, uninspired piece of dialogue: Friedman will have him spout it. And that's guaranteed, every single time. He never misses.

Okay slightly nitpicky, Friedman’s not a novelist, but definitely true.

On an ideological level, Friedman's new book is the worst, most boring kind of middlebrow horseshit. If its literary peculiarities could somehow be removed from the equation, The World Is Flat would appear as no more than an unusually long pamphlet replete with the kind of plug-filled, free-trader leg-humping that passes for thought in this country. It is a tale of a man who walks 10 feet in front of his house armed with a late-model Blackberry and comes back home five minutes later to gush to his wife that hospitals now use the internet to outsource the reading of CAT scans. Man flies on planes, observes the wonders of capitalism, says we're not in Kansas anymore. (He actually says we're not in Kansas anymore.) That's the whole plot right there. If the underlying message is all that interests you, read no further, because that's all there is.

…

Friedman, imagining himself Columbus, journeys toward India. Columbus, he notes, traveled in three ships; Friedman "had Lufthansa business class." When he reaches India—Bangalore to be specific—he immediately plays golf. His caddy, he notes with interest, wears a cap with the 3M logo. Surrounding the golf course are billboards for Texas Instruments and Pizza Hut. The Pizza Hut billboard reads: "Gigabites of Taste." Because he sees a Pizza Hut ad on the way to a golf course, something that could never happen in America, Friedman concludes: "No, this definitely wasn't Kansas."

I haven’t read the book and I don’t really have an interest in all the “world is smaller” literature, but I do have an interest in Tom Friedman. He’s an astute observer of the Middle East. But he does write some nonsensical things pretty often. When I first started this weblog, I intermittently commented on his Sunday columns, which always seemed to be a lot wackier than his weekday column.

This review though convinced me to revive the “What is Friedman talking about?” segment. I see now though that his columns are on Wednesdays and Fridays – I always suspected that the weekend had something to do with some of his stranger assessment. So, I’ll look at both weekday columns and see what I can find.

I’ll start later today with this column from Tuesday in which Friedman solves the nuclear proliferation problems in Iran and North Korea. Stay tuned.

Another day of protests against the U.S. for the Koran desecration incident. This isn't helping the U.S. image in the Muslim world too much. If only we had a designated person to help burnish the American image abroad and tell would-be interrogators that this sort of thing is, well, not good, not to mention disrepectful. Oh yeah, we do -- Karen Hughes. So I'm sure with her extensive experience on matters like this, everything will be fine.

Easing my way back into posting. News outlets are reporting on the violence surrounding protests in Afghanistan over reports in Newsweek that "interrogators [at Guantanamo Bay], in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down toilet." Here's a crazy idea. In addition reporting on the violence (I know, if it bleeds...), how about reporting on the actual charges that Newsweek reported as well. Are the allegations true? Why would interrogators not know how provocative, stupid, and explosive such an act would be. Never heard of Salman Rushdie? And why do I have to ask these questions instead of people paid to do that sort of thing?

Update: Leave it to a foreign news wire to do what domestic ones won't.