Puntin' Putin
May 24, 2006 09:39 AM
The GUAM summit closes in Kiev with more interesting developments:
KIEV, May 23 - Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldova at a summit on Tuesday decided to strengthen their alliance that is expected to play a key role in establishing alternative energy supplies to the European Union.The alliance, previously known as GUAM, obtained the status of a full-fledged international bloc to be headquartered in Kiev and will be called the Organization for Democracy and Economic Development GUAM.
The bloc will focus on “forming a democratic space, security, humanitarian and social development, European and Euro-Atlantic integration,” President Viktor Yushchenko said after the summit.
The creation of the bloc is a bold step in promoting energy supply routes linking the Caspian Sea basin and consumers in the E.U. allowing to reduce heavy dependence on Russian energy.
One of the main projects to be promoted is launching supplies of Caspian Sea crude oil from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan via Georgian and Ukrainian pipelines to markets in Europe.
Democratic rights? Shared security? Euro-Atlantic integration? Alternatives to Russian energy? World Statesman Vladimir Putin must grow in confidence by the day!
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Conyers: Paradise Postponed
May 18, 2006 07:50 AM
Being in the House minority has been good for John Conyers. Bewildered but powerless, he is free to howl impotently into the cosmic void about all and sundry Bush administration malfeasances, without any danger of being taken seriously. It's been a good bargain for Democrats, too. Conyers provides them with valuable outreach to the nuttier segments of the party base, while colleagues are never forced to acknowledge that he's a nitwit.
Trouble is, Conyers and the Democrats may not remain in the minority much longer, if the polls are to be believed. And while the specter of Conyers as Judiciary chairman may not be enough to rouse the GOP's disenchanted base, the specter of Conyers beginning impeachment proceedings following a Democratic takeover probably would. Although I personally would get a real kick out of these Conyers-chaired hearings, the Democratic leadership in the House is probably wise to suspect that the Republican base would feel otherwise. So, undoubtedly with some prodding from the higher-ups, Conyers today placed an op-ed in the Post disavowing any plan to "immediately" start the impeachment process. Where would anyone have gotten the idea that he might? Perhaps from the mock impeachment proceedings that Conyers has hosted in the Capitol basement, featuring the usual assortment of muttering cultists and conspirators.
Now, though, Conyers says he can't start "immediately," because lawmakers won't know enough about the seriousness of their own charges until the Bush administration starts answering questions.
Fair enough -- Congressional Republicans have been shamefully indulgent on matters of oversight. Bringing a few checks and balances back to Capitol Hill is not a bad reason to back the Democrats this November. (Though if Nancy Pelosi continues to mistake the Supreme Court for God, one imagines oversight in the House may continue to lag.) So fine, then. What does Conyers have in mind?
For example, to know whether intelligence was mistaken or manipulated in the run-up to the Iraq war, we need to know what information was made available to -- and actually read by -- decision makers and how views contradicting the case for war were treated.We need to know the extent to which high-ranking officials approved of the use of torture and other cruel and inhumane treatment inflicted upon detainees. We need to know whether the leaking of the name of a covert CIA operative was deliberate or accidental, as well as the identity of those responsible.
Now, I know what you're thinking: Isn't most of this stuff dealt with in the reports from the Robb-Silberman commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into pre-war intelligence on Saddam's WMD programs? Yes. But who really takes that kind of stuff seriously? Or has the time to read it? Or -- you know -- whatever.
It was House Republicans who took power in 1995 with immediate plans to undermine President Bill Clinton by any means necessary, and they did so in the most autocratic, partisan and destructive ways imaginable. If there is any lesson from those "revolutionaries," it is that partisan vendettas ultimately provoke a public backlash and are never viewed as legitimate.So, rather than seeking impeachment, I have chosen to propose comprehensive oversight of these alleged abuses. The oversight I have suggested would be performed by a select committee made up equally of Democrats and Republicans and chosen by the House speaker and the minority leader.
Wait -- did he say comprehensive oversight? My God, this man is drunk with power and malice!
The committee's job would be to obtain answers -- finally. At the end of the process, if -- and only if -- the select committee, acting on a bipartisan basis, finds evidence of potentially impeachable offenses, it would forward that information to the Judiciary Committee. This threshold of bipartisanship is appropriate, I believe, when dealing with an issue of this magnitude.
Yeah, I see his point. Why have independent commissions deal with this kind of stuff when you could have the full complement of preening lawmakers exchanging inanities and making Congress look ridiculous?
One-party rule has dug our nation into a deep hole over the past six years. The Judiciary Committee needs to fully implement the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, strengthen laws against wartime fraud, ban trade with state sponsors of terrorism, increase funding for community policing and protect government whistle-blowers. Most important, before we have another presidential election, I believe we need to pass laws protecting the integrity of our electoral system -- the very foundation of our democracy.
Oh well, I guess we won't get to read the rest of the op-ed, as Conyers seems to have trailed off into some other business about community policing and the Electoral System (peace be upon it).
But, based on what I read, I think he's probably allayed some of his leadership's concerns. Now if only they can fit "Vote Democrat for a full, bipartisan inquiry and potential impeachment referral over the Iraq War and Valerie Plame who was a covert CIA operative you better believe it" on a bumper sticker....
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Sober Business Dealings
May 17, 2006 09:17 AM
From a guide to "Business Meetings and Negotiations in Ukraine" ($24.95, www.worldbiz.com):
If you are concerned about being forced to drink too much, which is often not a groundless concern, you may get around it by slowing [sic] sipping your drink. You may find the other people at the table downing the whole drink with a flourish. For Americans who are not used to drinking in this fashion, you can just sip with a flourish, so that in the next round there is not much to pour into your glass. If you are out in Siberia, where bottoms up is the law of the table, that is not going to work. But in Ukraine you can get away with it. It would be offensive to say "I have to go back to work. I really can't drink." One excuse not to drink is to tell your host that you are driving. That is the perfect excuse, because there is zero tolerance of drinking and driving in Ukraine. Another other [sic] excuse which works well is to say that you are on medication, or you are allergic.
Not listed as a suitable excuse: "I don't drink."
Covert Auction
May 14, 2006 08:56 AM
Better question: Did she ever shut up? From the Sunday Washington Post story on former CIA official Mary McCarthy:
McCarthy became convinced that "CIA people had lied" in that briefing, as one of her friends said later....
McCarthy became disenchanted, three of her friends say....
In addition to CIA misrepresentations at the session last summer, McCarthy told the friends....
McCarthy also told others she was offended that the CIA's general counsel....
She dissented from Bush administration policy, and she let others know....
McCarthy, in e-mails to friends, has denied leaking anything classified....
She has not denied [in e-mails to friends] speaking to Priest but....
It left her frustrated, and in articles published [by McCarthy] in a small-circulation intelligence journal....
The exchanges...helped harden McCarthy's view that "the CIA is just very insular," a former colleague said....
McCarthy...felt "underutilized," according to one friend....
McCarthy "was seeing things in some of the investigations that troubled her," said one of her friends....
"She had the impression that this stuff has been pretty well buried," another friend said....
In McCarthy's view and that of many colleagues, two friends say, torture was not only wrong....
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Statesmanship for Dummies
May 12, 2006 03:14 PM
Anatole Lieven finds that Vladimir Putin in Dick Cheney are similar in so many ways. And isn't it obvious? One's busily turning Russia back into a dictatorship, where political opponents are jailed, the media are kept on a short leash and international groups are presumed agents of foreign powers if they press Russia on human rights and democracy -- and the other guy is Vice President of the United States. So the similarities are readily apparent. But wait:
But to judge by their records, and especially their speeches of the past week, there is also an important difference between them. Putin is a statesman, and Cheney is not.
Uh, how's that?
Cheney's tub-thumping speech in Vilnius, Lithuania, attacking Russia for lack of democracy and energy "blackmail," coupled with his attempts to create an energy alliance against Russia, invited a blistering response from the Russian president. With perfect fairness, and with the approval - in this case - of most of humanity, Putin could have torn Cheney's speech apart on a whole range of issues.
Among that segment of humanity that wouldn't tear apart the speech: Cheney's audience of leaders from the former Soviet republics, to whom the speech was directed. I guess they consider Putin's statesmanship to be overrated.
These include the hypocrisy of denouncing Russia over democracy and going straight on to lavish praise on the oil- rich dictators of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan; the general weirdness of Cheney talking about human rights at all; the insolence of an administration with the Bush-Cheney team's record in the Middle East daring to demand automatic Russian support against Iran in the name of "the international community," and so on.
Of course we all giggle when Cheney mentions human rights. It's so weird. But someone will have to clue me in on what "record in the Middle East" precludes the Bush administration from worrying about Iranian nukes and the help provided to the program by Russia.
And of course we're hypocrites. We have nukes and we don't want Iran to have them. Putin might just as well have pointed that out, too.
If Putin had issued such a response in his state of the union address on Wednesday, he would have had the approval of the overwhelming majority of Russians - while of course doing still further damage to U.S.-Russian relations.It is hard to imagine a U.S. president turning down a domestic political opportunity like this, whatever the likely effect on his country's interests. But apart from a couple of mild and indirect comments, Putin said none of these things. Instead, he focused on the issue that is indeed the greatest threat to the Russian nation, namely demographic decline.
Oh please. Putin left the demagoguery to the Kremlin-controlled media. Dictatorship has those kinds of advantages.
Putin's calm response to Cheney may be rooted partly in a new confidence in Russia's strength, especially when it comes to influence within the former Soviet Union. One of the marks of Putin's statesmanship is that with some exceptions (mainly with regard to Ukraine, about which Russians tend to be irrational) he has displayed an accurate feel for Russia's real strengths and weaknesses.
Yeah, that Ukraine thing was a doozy. But of course we all remember Bush campaigning for a favored candidate in Mexico, poisoning his opponent with Dioxin and shutting off the country's access to a critical natural resource when he didn't get his way. Statesmen behave that way sometimes.
To give one example, Putin last year withdrew the remaining Russian military bases from Georgia proper, where they were provocative and vulnerable, while continuing the Russian military presence in the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where it enjoys overwhelming local support.
Gosh. If getting kicked out of Georgia gives Putin such confidence, imagine how great he'll feel when Georgia and Ukraine abandon the Commonwealth of Independent States and join NATO....
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Learning to Love the Bomb
May 11, 2006 06:18 AM
While the regime in Iran openly flouts the Anti-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, to which it is a signatory, and flirts with the destruction of Israel, the Beeb wonders: "Would An Attack on Iran Be Legal?"
Probably not, I'd say. Expect us to be arrested and thrown in jail, where we'll spend our days pacing the cell murmuring about "loose nukes" and posting urgent manifestos to European media. Occasionally the lone guard posted outside will grow tired of listening, and will enter and beat us until, bloody and whimpering, we will once more forswear any further mention of weapons or ayatollahs or world destruction. Shamed, disfigured and ignored, we will gradually lose our faith in humanity or justice, until one day we meet this nun from Singapore who will devote her remaining days to winning our freedom. As trust grows between us, we will reveal to her our willingness to be redeemed, and she will teach us to "heal." Working in tandem, our international legal team will make a plausible human rights case from the fact that our prison is within "blast distance" of Tel Aviv and will likely be incinerated in a nuclear exchange. The matter will be taken up by a crusading Spanish judge who believes that "even the world's worst terrorist" (us) should be treated humanely. Eventually a European court will agree to move the prison 20 kilometers West, just outside the blast zone, where radiation from the subsequent detonation will hit the cheek like the warm breath from a toaster oven and the view of the mushroom cloud will be marvelous.
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The Wages of Fear
May 8, 2006 05:26 AM
UPDATE 5/11: Reference to Georgia clarified from original post.
The Vilnius Summit is turning into a potential watershed in East-West relations. Last week, VP Cheney chided Russia for its backsliding on democracy and human rights. Georgia is poised to leave the Russia-led Commonwealth of Independent States. And now Ukraine looks poised to follow, reports the AP:
The press service of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko organized a special briefing on the future of the CIS by the head of the foreign relations service of the president's secretariat Konstantin Timoshenko. Mr. Timoshenko reported that the Ukrainian leadership is not satisfied with the effectiveness of the organization's functioning and that the president is seriously considering Ukraine's withdrawal from it.“Unless something changes, the question of Ukraine's withdrawal from the CIS will become a practical plan, if not tomorrow, then in the near future,” Timoshenko said.
The presidential adviser's appearance was the apotheosis of a series of anti-CIS moves by Ukrainian authorities. For a week, various officials have been harshly criticizing the CIS. Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Ogryzko set the tone when he stated during a visit to Moscow that Kiev is disappointed the CIS has turned from an organization of action to an organization of conversation.
He said that Ukraine has repeatedly made specific proposals within the CIS and none of them were developed by the organization.
Ogryzko cited the example of President Yushchenko's proposal to set up common border protection for the CIS countries, which was ignored. “Will there be any desire to make new proposals after that? The question arises as to why we need that shell? For business or as a club?”
The Ukrainian Security Council followed the Foreign Ministry. Its secretary Anatoly Kinakh hit at a sore spot when he said that the CIS has lost its economic meaning. “Hundreds of documents have been passed by the CIS, but they are not implemented. The procedure for creating a free trade zone between member states has not been completed,” he recalled.
Yushchenko did not touch on the topic of the CIS directly at the Vilnius summit. But it was clear from his speech at the forum that the CIS is not the future Kiev has in mind. Yushchenko called maximum closeness to NATO and the European Union the main goals of his presidency. “It will be a great honor for me to solve those problems,” he said.
No the honor's ours, Vik. Meanwhile, top Bush administration officials are working on oil agreements with countries like Azerbaijan and Equatorial Guinea -- presumably in an effort to lessen reliance on Russian oil. There's a chill in the air, no?
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Oh, the Humanity
May 5, 2006 12:25 PM
What does Hell look like?
There'll be no contact [for Moussaoui] with some of his notorious prison-mates, including the Unabomber, shoe-bomber Richard Reid and Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The tiny black-and-white TV in his cell will show only classes on subjects like anger management. [Emphasis mine]
Throw in a Tony Robbins infomercial and we'll be forced to consult the Geneva Conventions.
The Apple Falls on the Tree
May 5, 2006 06:21 AM
It's May. The flowers are blooming, the birds are singing, and a Kennedy is capturing the attention of law enforcement.
Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy crashed his car into a security barrier near the Capitol early yesterday, and officers at the scene suspected that he might have been intoxicated, a police union official said.Kennedy (D-R.I.) issued a statement late last night -- his second in several hours -- saying he had been disoriented after taking prescription drugs: Phenergan for gastroenteritis, an inflammation of the stomach and intestines, and Ambien, a sleeping medication....
"The timeliness of the statement says everything," [a police union official] said. "It took up to 10 o clock," or 19 hours after the 2:50 a.m. incident, to offer the expanded explanation.
I sure could have used that kind of time in high school.
Note to Patrick: The story is headlined, "Rep. Kennedy's Car Crashes Near Capitol." There's an alibi in there if you've got the nerve to seize it....
Jesus, it's cold here in Kyiv. Confined more than usual to my apartment, I've been checking in with the journalists at the BBC. And I have an observation. If BBC producers would just instruct the reporters to end every field segment with the words, "But what does this mean for global warming?" they would be able to slip seamlessly into the next report - and maybe save a few quid on staffing the presenter desk. A modest proposal.
February 22, 2007 11:19 AM · 
A middle-aged Ukrainian woman told me last night about her experiences as a member of the Komsomol, the Communist Youth organization during the Soviet era. On Christmas and Easter, she and other members of the group were ordered to the local churches, where they were instructed to form two concentric rings around the buildings by locking arms. These rings were intended as a defense perimeter that would keep people from going to church on religious occasions. This peculiar Soviet abhorrence of religion is one reason that in Ukraine gifts are not exchanged on Christmas, but rather (last night) on New Year's Eve. In 2007, let's all of us, and especially us Americans, make a little more effort to keep in perspective our astonishing good fortune, and be grateful for what some sacrifice to preserve it. America may not be perfect, but it's the closest thing we've got.
January 1, 2007 06:51 AM ·
Kofi Annan has stepped down at the U.N. - at least a decade too late. I predict future historians will find it difficult to judge whether this ineffectual dupe was the puppet of genocidal regimes and autocrats or just their indispensable enabler. It is tough to fully enumerate the sins and consequences of this repugnant figure, but this WSJ editorial begins the grim task.
December 17, 2006 05:59 AM ·
