2012 Presidential Election

Now that Christine O’Donnell and other insurgents have won their respective primaries with upset victories in Delaware and elsewhere, it’s absolutely fascinating to watch the dinosaur media’s antics as they drink from the same vat of Kool-Aid and form what’s almost an identical narrative: “Hooray! The GOP just lost its chances to take the Senate.” “This proves that moderates have no home in the GOP.” “Even real Republicans ( whom we normally despise) are joining in characterizing this as an extreme movement.” Even more interesting was the response of the GOP establishment and the way it played in the media. Karl Rove, for instance didn’t even bother congratulating O’Donnell but spent most of his time last night on Hannity bashing her and repeating Mike Castle’s talking points about her “character” and “attitude” claiming she had ignored the questions about her financial problems…when in fact, she did. Expect the usual suspects to highlight Rove’s remarks no end today. John Cornyn, head of the Republican National Senatorial Committee was even quoted as trashing O’Donnell’s chances to win and as saying that he and the rest of the committee are going to “have a little pow-wow” over whether to commit any money to the Delaware race. What we’re seeing here, of course, is the reaction of the Old Guard – both the GOP and the media  -  to a revolution in the making. And they don’t like it. While O’Donnell does indeed have some baggage, the choice was between her and a couple of politicians who were essentially votes for the Obama agenda.. Once people figured that out they simply asked themselves how much, in the end, did it really matter whether there was a ‘R’ or a ‘D’  behind their name if it was just going to be business as usual with the same old faces? Most of the media has yet to grasp the fact that people are increasingly asking themselves that question. And the GOP will survive only to the extent it recognizes that reality. Otherwise, we’re talking about a reprise of the Whigs here. One more thought… conspicuously absent has been more than passing references to Sarah Palin, who once again seems to have powerful coattails. That’s something that apparently bothers the political establishment as well as the media; apparently they would just as soon let that little factoid pass.

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In Wake of Primaries, Clueless MSM Suffering from Shock and Awe

Groan. I know we’re going to have a dozen e-mails about this in an hour if we don’t post it right now, so here you go. Hot Air: All Delaware, all the time! Cornyn, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, refused to discuss whether his organization would support Tea Party-backed Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell Read this post

Scott Today is the publication date of This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive , by James Robbins. Jim is an editorial writer for the Washington Times on defense policy. He also teaches International Relations at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. He is a former Special Assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and a frequent commentator on national security issues for The Wall Street Journal, National Review and other publications. I vividly remember following news of the Tet offensive in 1968 and subsequently fell for virtually every element of the myth of Tet that Robbins exposes in this lucid, important book. The book thus rings a bell with me, as I suspect it will for many readers of this site. Robbins argues that the myth of Tet has lived on to do much damage. As soon as I read the book in galley proof, I invited Jim to write something that would allow us to draw it to the attention of our readers. He writes: The 1968 Tet Offensive is remembered as a surprise attack by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces on symbolic targets in South Vietnam that turned American public opinion against the war and drove President Lyndon Johnson to the bargaining table. It is heralded as the turning point in the Vietnam War that ultimately led to the American withdrawal and victory of the communist forces. For over forty years the myth of Tet has inspired America’s adversaries as a model for achieving low-cost strategic victories, and has provided American commentators with a shorthand means of conjuring the specter of inevitable U.S. defeat. Whenever terrorists or insurgents lash out in dramatic fashion, regardless of how swiftly they are crushed, the Tet analogy is sure to follow. Whether it was the fighting in Fallujah, scattered Taliban attacks in Kabul, or Wikileaks’ publication of 91,000 classified documents on the Afghan War, the American pundits’ Tet reflex hands the enemy a roadmap to a low-cost route to victory. Tet provides a ready story line to journalists and terrorists alike; but the problem is that it is not true. The Tet Offensive Was Not a Surprise Attack When the main Tet attacks kicked off on January 31, 1968, the Tet Offensive was quickly dubbed a “surprise” by the home front press who dogged the Johnson administration with questions about “intelligence failure.” But Tet was not a surprise. Documents captured the previous November outlined the overall scheme of the attack, and the enemy plan had been briefed to journalists at the U.S. Embassy the first week in January. Three weeks before Tet kicked off, Army Lieutenant General Frederick C. Weyand, who commanded the forces around Saigon, received permission from MACV Commander General William Westmoreland to deploy his troops to meet the expected enemy action. The South Vietnamese government shortened the traditional Tet holiday furlough, and U.S. forces across Vietnam readied for the coming battle. Even the press understood something was about to happen. “For months any journalist with decent sources was expecting something big at Tet,” wrote Don North of ABC News. General Weyand gave off-the-record briefings detailing his preparations for the attacks. Three days before the Tet Offensive began the Washington Post noted that “the Communists appear to be preparing for a major push in their winter-spring offensive.” And due to a command and control error that launched a number of enemy attacks a day early, all U.S. forces were already on alert status by the time the main thrust arrived. If anyone should have been surprised it was the Viet Cong. The Communists Wanted to Win Not “Send a Message” The Tet Offensive involved attacks on over 100 cities and towns by up to 84,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars. That fact alone makes comparisons to the odd multiple car-bomb attack or firefight at an obscure outpost seem misplaced. But the Tet analogy is usually applied on the symbolic level, where the scope of the attacks are irrelevant. The most potent symbol of Tet was the failed assault by 19 Viet Cong sappers on the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon. While fighting raged across the country, the embassy attack was given a disproportionate amount of press coverage. It seemed as though the enemy had mounted a suicide strike at a symbol of American power to send a message that the VC could hit the U.S. even in its most secure sanctuaries. But just because the embassy attack turned out to be suicidal did not mean it was a suicide mission. The VC strike force was ordered to seize and hold the embassy until reinforcements arrived from the expected South Vietnamese revolt. This was a microcosm of the overall communist plan, known as the General Offensive/General Uprising. The strategists in Hanoi, beguiled by American press reports, believed that their tripwire attacks would foment a mass, spontaneous revolution of the South Vietnamese people against the “corrupt” Saigon regime and the American “imperialist occupiers.” But when the people refused to rally to the communist cause, the VC attackers were left exposed, outnumbered and outgunned. Rather than achieving total victory they suffered a humiliating, historic defeat. The communists never intended any of their Tet attacks to be purely symbolic. But because their plan was so severely flawed and had no chance of succeeding, a snap analysis by the CIA concluded that the enemy must have been trying simply to “send a message.” This analysis was inserted into talking points used by President Johnson and Defense Secretary McNamara, and the press obligingly picked up the story line. By unilaterally redefining enemy objectives down to that which they actually achieved, the United States gave the communists credit for a strategic impact they never sought. Tet Did Not Turn the American Public Against the Vietnam War The public response to Tet is the least understood, most misrepresented aspect of the offensive. According to Gallup, in the week after Tet began 54% of Americans disapproved of Johnson’s conduct of the war, a seven percent increase since early January 1968, but still six points below the 60% disapproval he had charted five months earlier. Proponents of the Tet myth read disapproval of Johnson’s policies as indicating sentiment for peace, but this is not the case. The same Gallup poll that showed public disaffection with Johnson’s limited war approach to Vietnam indicated that only 24% of Americans identified themselves as anti-war “doves,” a number which had declined 11% since December, with 4% of the drop coming after Tet kicked off. But in the same poll 60% of Americans declared themselves pro-war “hawks,” whose numbers had increased eight percent since December and four percent since the Tet Offensive began. And by the end of February the number of “doves” in the country was two percent lower than the number of Americans who thought the U.S. should “win a military victory in Vietnam using atom bombs.” So rather than engendering a sense of futility and swelling the ranks of the peace movement, the Tet Offensive made Americans more bellicose. The communists had deliberately violated a truce to mount a large-scale attack which had been decisively thwarted. The time was ripe for a massive counter-stroke that would destroy what remained of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces and end the war in allied victory. LBJ Wanted Negotiations All Along The turning point in the Tet myth is the “Walter Cronkite Moment,” when the veteran newscaster took an editorial stand against the war and called for a negotiated peace. “If I’ve lost Cronkite,” Johnson allegedly said, “I’ve lost middle America.” The power that has been attributed to that moment has become legendary–the honest newsman as a bellwether of a nation, inducing despair in a President who understands that he had finally reached the end of the road. Middle America had not actually rallied to Cronkite’s defeatist posture, but Johnson did not need to be driven the peace table. He had always sought a negotiated end to the conflict in Vietnam. Between 1964 and 1968 the United States proffered 70 separate peace initiatives attempting to draw the communists into negotiations. Hanoi had rejected every one. When the president called for talks on March 31, 1968 it was just the latest offer. The difference was that this time the communists were so weakened after their failure during Tet that they saw negotiations as their best chance of survival. The North Vietnamese were the ones who had been driven to negotiate; Johnson had been waiting at the table from the start. Tet’s Legacy In late 1968, Jack Fern, an NBC field producer, suggested that the network produce a program “showing that Tet had indeed been a decisive victory for America.” Senior producer Robert Northshield vetoed the idea, explaining that Tet was “established in the public’s mind as a defeat, and therefore it was an American defeat.” But as former South Vietnamese Ambassador to the United States said, “history is written by the victors but eventually the truth comes out.”

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This Time We Win: A word from James Robbins

Republican strategist Ron Christie on Monday demonstrated why Keith Olbermann is smart to not have conservatives on his program, for most MSNBC hosts are just not up to the challenge. Appearing on the “Ed Show” to address some comments Newt Gingrich recently made about President Obama, Christie refuted former Air America host Jack Rice’s contention that Gingrich was being racist. “I disagree with what he had to say this past weekend, but to suggest that the former Speaker of the House is trying to say, ‘Oh the President of the United States is black and and I’m white’ I think is so far out of bounds and so untrue,” scolded Christie. “This has to stop.”  Minutes later, when the host asked his Republican guest what the “con” was that Gingrich accused Obama of perpetrating on the American people, Christie hit the ball so far out of the park that by the end of the segment, his liberal antagonists were left laughing in astonishment (video follows with transcript and commentary):   JACK RICE, FORMER AIR AMERICA HOST: You don`t have to be a racist and disagree with this president, but when you start bringing up the question of him being born in Mombassa, Kenya, again and again and again, when all of the facts are clear, it seems to me, there`s only one reason that you would do that, it`s synonymous with racism, it just is. RON CHRISTIE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: I totally disagree with you. Look, I`ve known Speaker Gingrich for almost 20 years now. I know him to be a man of character and principle. I disagreed with what he say this past weekend, but to suggest that the former Speaker of the House is trying to say, oh the President of the United States is black and I’m white, I think is so far out of bounds and so untrue. This has to stop. You could disagree with the man on policy. (CROSSTALK) ED SCHULTZ, HOST: I`m curious. CHRISTIE: But has to stop. SCHULTZ: Gentlemen, I`m curious, Newt Gingrich calls President Obama a conman in an interview with “The National Review.” He says, “This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result, which he is now president.” What con? What are we talking about — what`s he talking about here, Ron? CHRISTIE: Well, the President of the United States said that he was going to change the tone of Washington and he was going to bring civility back. We’re at the most polarized I think we`ve been in the country. The President said that his stimulus package. SCHULTZ: That`s his fault? That`s President Obama`s fault. CHRISTIE: Yes, actually, I do think that it`s President Obama`s fault. SCHULTZ: Is that before or after the health care meeting? Come on now, Ron, you`re being a little tough on the president. He has reached out time and time again. CHRISTIE: Let me answer your question, Ed. SCHULTZ: All right, all right. CHRISTIE: The fact of the matter is a President of the United States can change the tone, the way that leaders on both sides of the aisle deal with civic disagreements. I think if you look at President Bush and what we did with No Child Left Behind, he brought Ted Kennedy, a very liberal former senator. He brought George Miller, a former liberal congressman. (CROSSTALK) SCHULTZ: I got what you`re saying. So, how should President Obama have responded to Senator DeMint`s comment over a year ago that if this is his waterloo, if we could break him? How was the president supposed to — he should have cut off all of the olive branches right there and he didn`t, you know. CHRISTIE: I would have ignored it. SCHULTZ: You would have ignored it but it was said on the right, Ron. It was said on the right, no doubt about it. CHRISTIE: So what, Ed? So, what? SCHULTZ: Are you talking about a dialogue in Washington? I want to know, where is the con? Where was the con? What was the big con that was committed by President Obama?  And you`re saying. CHRISTIE: The big con was perpetuated — Jack, let me say one thing. RICE: Yes. CHRISTIE: The big con that was perpetuated was this President and his economic team, unemployment when he came on office was 6.7 percent. He said, if he spent nearly a trillion dollars, he`ll keep it beneath eight percent, now it`s at 9.6 percent. That is a con, that`s disingenuous. SCHULTZ: That`s not a con. That`s a mis-projection. And the Bush people did it all of the time and you know it. Jack, you got final comment. RICE: Yes, you`re absolutely right. At the end of the day, you turned around and blame President Obama for this. Was it his fault too that people were marching up and down in Washington with pictures of President Obama, with mustaches? That was his problem too, that was his fault? CHRISTIE: They did it to Bush. RICE: Yes, he is the one who changed all this. CHRISTIE: Well, all I have to say is both sides need to cut it out. He`s an American citizen. Let`s finally get to work for the American people. That`s what we elected these people to do. SCHULTZ: All right. Let`s talk about the Pelosi ad. Here it is, this is her opponent putting up an ad claiming that she`s a wicked witch. Here it is. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ANNOUNCER: I wish there was a political party they could vote for with a. UNIDENTIFIED MAN: More courage. UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: I don`t care about political parties. I just want a home that isn`t blown away by debt. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Hello, my pretty. I will say you from those evil republicans. But first, pay $18,000 for my downtown office and go into massive debt. The Wall Street bailouts and here are my monkeys to make you pay for it all. UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Step back, everyone. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Oh, I`m melting. UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: Thank you for saving us, who are you? UNIDENTIFIED MAN: I`m John Dennis, I`m running for Congress. (END VIDEO CLIP) SCHULTZ: Jack Rice, your thoughts on that. RICE: Thank you for saving us. Yes that`s right, it was President Obama`s fault that he didn`t change the tone in Washington. Yes, this is reminiscent of what we have seen in the past. Again, this is that standard personality attack, a character attack that we`ve seen, rather than saying OK, let`s dig down to the facts. Now if that`s what we`re talking about, notice that this ad does none of that. Instead, it goes back to the things we heard before and I guess they`re pulling them out again because the midterms are here and that`s what they do. SCHULTZ: Ron is that ad demeaning to women? CHRISTIE: Oh, I don`t think that ad is demeaning to women. I just think it`s kind of dumb. I mean, it`s funny but I think that you should be campaigning for what you are for rather for what you`re against. You should be laying out a positive vision. SCHULTZ: Wait a second. That`s what the republicans have been doing for the last three years is basically saying no. CHRISTIE: Give me a break. I`m so tired of all the effigies that President Bush that were burned. That we never heard about anything from the left. They did it to Dick Cheney, they did it to Dr. Condoleezza Rice. I`m saying, the president of the United States needs to lead by example. His going around in Ohio and saying, people threat him like a dog. That`s not presidential. People want to hear the president talk in very confident tones and he sounds like a very thin-skinned individual. SCHULTZ: Ron, you`re amazing, sir. CHRISTIE: I`m sorry. He is. (LAUGHTER) SCHULTZ: You definitely got it down, Ron. I`ll give you credit.   Marvelously played, Mr. Christie. In fairness to Schultz, unlike the cowardly Olbermann, he does bring on conservative guests. Christie is a frequent contributor to the “Ed Show,” and is normally an oasis in the middle of a liberal desert.  Maybe if all the MSNBC hosts were required to have at least one conservative guest on each evening, the network’s ratings would improve. On the other hand, as Christie demonstrated, all it takes is one intelligent, right-thinking person on the set to expose the fallacies being conveyed by most of the anchors on this pathetic network. 

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GOP Strategist Schools Ed Schultz and Former Air America Host

Paul Earlier this week, Mark Levin responded to one of my posts about the Delaware Senate primary. In that post , I noted that, in 2006, leftist activists supported less than reliably liberal Democratic candidates like Ben Nelson and were rewarded for their flexibility with the passage of Obamacare. I then argued that, by supporting Christine O’Donnell in the Delaware Senate primary despite the likelihood (demonstrated by polls) that she would lose the general election, whereas her centrist opponent in the primary would likely win, certain Republican activists are being less astute than leftists like Markos Moulitsas were in 2006. Levin’s response consists mostly of a series of misstatements about me and misrepresentations of what I argued. The misstatements undermine his ad hominem arguments. The use of straw men undermines his more substantive ones. The misstatements begin in the first paragraph, where Levin erroneously says I once was a lawyer from Minnesota. They end, less trivially, in a brief update where he purports to explain my anti-O’Donnell position by claiming that Power Line supported Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey. In fact, we have been Toomey supporters dating back to 2004 when I wrote a few days before the Republican primary: My reason for favoring Toomey is [that] Specter is simply too liberal to support when there is a decent conservative alternative. . . The time to consider a pragmatic vote for Specter will be in November, if he survives his race with Toomey (he is still ahead, though Toomey is said to be gaining). Next Tuesday, the choice for mainstream Republicans should be obvious — Pat Toomey. Toomey is a proven vote-getter. O’Donnell was routed when she ran for office in the past and currently is well behind the presumptive Democratic nominee in the polls. That, not some prejudice in favor of incumbents when they run against more conservative Republicans, explains my position in the Delaware primary. In the same paragraph, Levin says we supported the nomination of Harriet Miers. I did at first, but changed my position after facts about her past positions came to light. So we can give Levin credit for a half truth on this one. Levin doesn’t just misstate my prior positions; he fails throughout his post accurately to represent the argument he’s attacking. He writes: Mirengoff starts from the proposition that long-time Republican officials deserve re-election. There may be occasions when a decent conservative can be supported over an establishment Republican. But those occasions are few and far between. And the conservative challenger must be as close to a sure thing in the general election as possible, otherwise it’s not worth the effort. Not only do these statements not appear in my post, they are directly contrary to what I wrote. My argument expressly started from William Buckley’s proposition (which I called wise) that conservatives should support the most conservative (or least liberal) electable candidate. I then argued that although Tea Party activists have generally followed this approach in 2010, they are not following it in Delaware, where polls, coupled with the state’s recent electoral history and O’Donnell’s prior poor showings, provide strong evidence that the O’Donnell is unlikely to win in November. Levin never engages these matters. Rather he avoids the issue by erroneously implying that my opposition to O’Donnell stems from the fact that she is not “close to a sure thing.” Neither was Toomey in 2004 (or even in 2010), but I supported him. Levin also declines to address specific problems with O’Donnell as a candidate that have come to light. Unfortunately, the voters of Delaware will almost surely be less forgiving. This willingness to glide past O’Donnell’s various weaknesses is one reason to fear that the left was more astute in 2006 than some of our activists are this year. Levin also claims that I’ve been “talking up” Mike Castle’s voting record. In fact, I have expressed my unhappiness with it, and have made clear that I would support a more conservative option if one appeared to have a decent chance of winning. Indeed, my posts about the Delaware primary didn’t take a position adverse to O’Donnell until polls began to show her trailing the Democrat by double digits. I have noted that Castle votes conservative about half of the time. I based this claim on the fact that his ACU rating is 52 percent. Levin claims that Castle votes the wrong way most of the time, but is unable to cite any quantitative analysis (e.g., some other credible index) that supports this assertion. Instead, he simply lists votes Castle has made over the years that were not conservative. The less than analytical nature of this approach is another reason to fear that the left was more astute in 2006 than some of our activists are this year. My favorite Levin error is his claim that Lindsey Graham is “my brand of Republican.” In fact, I’ve been a persistent and bitter critic of Graham (“the Arlen Specter of the South” as I call him) since the early days of our blog. Several years ago, with Graham’s bid for re-election in mind, I tried to promote an anti-Graham website in South Carolina. More recently, I expressed my hope that the Tea Party movement will target Graham in 2014. My criticism of Graham has not gone unnoticed by his office. A year or two ago, I had a pointed exchange of emails with one of his top staff members. The tip of that iceberg is here . Levin commits other errors as well, but let’s focus now on what he got right: (1) Levin doesn’t know me and (2) Scott Johnson is a “nice guy” and is smarter than I am.

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Are their activists smarter than our activists? A reply to Mark Levin

Are you ready for some football (entire schedule follows, chat about other sports also welcomed)? SUN, SEP 12 TIME (ET) TV RESOURCES LOCATION Carolina at NY Giants 1:00 PM FOX Tickets | Travel New Meadowlands Stadium Atlanta at Pittsburgh 1:00 PM FOX Tickets | Travel Heinz Field Cleveland at Tampa Bay 1:00 PM CBS Tickets | Travel Raymond James Stadium Denver at Jacksonville 1:00 PM CBS Tickets | Travel EverBank Field Indianapolis at Houston 1:00 PM CBS Tickets | Travel Reliant Stadium Miami at Buffalo 1:00 PM CBS Tickets | Travel Ralph Wilson Stadium Detroit at Chicago 1:00 PM FOX Tickets | Travel Soldier Field Oakland at Tennessee 1:00 PM CBS Tickets | Travel LP Field Cincinnati at New England 1:00 PM CBS Tickets | Travel Gillette Stadium Arizona at St. Louis 4:15 PM FOX Tickets | Travel Edward Jones Dome San Francisco at Seattle 4:15 PM FOX Tickets | Travel Qwest Field Green Bay at Philadelphia 4:15 PM FOX Tickets | Travel Lincoln Financial Field Dallas at Washington 8:20 PM NBC Tickets | Travel FedEx Field 

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NFL Opening Sunday Open Thread

While Al-Qaeda plans its next attack the left is busy Unremembering 9-11 . TIME Magazine asks, “Nine Years After 9/11, Is Al-Qaeda’s Threat Overrated?” Is the threat overrated? …It depends on if you are willing to sacrifice another 3,000 innocent Americans or not. Top liberal reporter Ted Koppel added yesterday, America overreacted . Flashback 2007: Barack Obama, Joe Biden and democrats vote to defund the troops at war. Flashback 2007: Barack Obama says genocide is no reason to keep our troops fighting the terrorists in Iraq. You get the picture.

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9-11-2001 – The Left Forgot

Not so much . Unless by “respect” you mean “fear” it. As in the way a Sicilian “respects” the local Don. I’ve seen many of the quotes before and knew the Founding Father’s weren’t fans of Islam or Muhammad, but I was under the impression that the first Islamic holiday celebrated at the White House was held by Thomas Jefferson. It wasn’t. Which just goes to show that telling a lie over and over again is often enough for people to believe it. Here’s what I learned from this post: During the Barbary Wars, in 1805, the bey (i.e., monarch) of Tunis threatened war with the United States after the U.S. had been successful in capturing some Tunisian pirate ships. The bey sent an envoy to the United States to negotiate for the return of the ships. This envoy stayed in Washington for six months, during which the month of Ramadan passed. One of Thomas Jefferson’s many invitations extended to this envoy to meet with him at the White House was during the month of Ramadan. To accommodate the envoy’s religious obligation, Jefferson changed the time of dinner from the usual “half after three” to “precisely at sunset.” Jefferson was being polite — not celebrating the first White House iftaar, as Akbar Ahmed suggests. So, the next time someone makes this claim, kindly inform them of the facts. The whole thing is worth a read . Laura Rubenfeld uses this Wiki to back up her claim about Jefferson’s meeting with the Barbary envoy. I thought this was the funniest part: Mellimelli’s request for “concubines” as a part of his accommodations was left to Secretary of State James Madison. Apparently the predilections of Middle East ambassadors hasn’t change in 200 years! I wonder if securing concubines is one of Hillary’s duties or if she gets Bill to do it for her?

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Did the Founding Father’s Respect Islam?

Paul I wrote here about Robert O’Neill, President Obama’s nominee to be U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida. I pointed to the strong criticism O’Neill received from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia over his conduct in the prosecution of Deborah Gore Dean. I also noted, based on the reporting of my friend Jim Scanlan, that O’Neill appears to have provided inaccurate and misleading statements on his application for the U.S. Attorney job regarding complaints arising from the prosecution of Ms. Dean. O’Neill stated: “After her conviction on all counts, Ms. Dean filed a bar complaint alleging a number of instances of prosecutorial misconduct during the trial.” But according to Jim, Dean did not file a bar complaint and, in fact, there was already an ongoing investigation by Bar Counsel prior to the time when Jim and counsel for Dean filed their complaint. Jim thus raises the question of whether “O’Neill deliberately misstated the origin of the investigation because he believed that a complaint filed by a convicted defendant would raise fewer concerns with the Florida Nominating Commission than an investigation initiated by the person or entity that actually initiated it.” Jim has more to say about this issue here . Jim has also raised another concern . It seems that O’Neill is embroiled in a nasty dispute with former Assistant United States Attorney Jeffrey Del Fuoco, who was once his colleague. Del Fuoco has sued O’Neill on a number of matters, including defamation for statements O’Neill made about him in the Nominating Commission application. One of Del Fuoco’s allegations is that O’Neill threatened bodily injury to Del Fuoco in statements made in the U.S. Attorney’s office to three AUSA’s. According to Jim, Del Fuoco identifies all three by name. Del Fuoco has set forth deposition testimony in which O’Neill acknowledges that he may have made statements along the lines described by Del Fuoco, but denies that he made such statements in the workplace. Del Fuoco maintains that this denial constitutes perjury by O’Neill. I have no idea who is telling the truth here – O’Neill or Del Fuoco. But since Del Fuoco says he has three witnesses, this would not appear to be a case of “he says, he says.” And since perjury by a nominee for a U.S. Attorney position should clearly be disqualifying, this matter (as well as the matter of O’Neill’s misstatement about who filed the bar complaint regarding his handling of the Dean case) calls for a full investigation. Yet Jim says that, neither in the vetting process for the U.S. Attorney nomination nor at any other time, has a Department representative asked the AUSAs whether Del Fuoco’s allegations concerning O’Neill’s perjury in the earlier case are true. It seems to me that there are questions that need to be explored before O’Neill is confirmed (or not).

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A nomination that should be scrutinized closely, Part Two

Paul As Scott noted this morning , Feisal Abdul Rauf has taken to the opinion pages of the New York Times to reiterate his intent to build the Ground Zero mosque. Rauf is no stranger to those pages. On February 27, 1979, the Times published Rauf’s letter to the editor in which he criticized American for failing to apologize to Iran for past misdeeds. Rauf added that “the revolution in Iran was inspired by the very principles of individual rights and freedom that Americans ardently believe in.” When it reported on this letter, the Wall Street Journal, trying to be fair to Rauf, wrote that at the time of his letter, “Iran’s revolution hadn’t revealed all of its violent, messianic character.” But a closer analysis of the timing of Rauf’s letter undercuts this excuse and casts the imam in a worse light than the Journal supposes. For, as Barry Rubin , has pointed out, Rauf’s public cheering of the revolution came just weeks after the Ayatollah Khomeini returned triumphantly to Iran. To be precise, the Ayatollah returned on February 1, 1979. Welcomed back by a crowd of several million, he immediately became the undisputed leader of the revolution. On the very day of his return, Khomeini appointed a new prime minister, Mehdi Bazargan, and told his followers it was their duty to God to obey him. Here are his words : I hereby pronounce Bazargan as the Ruler, and since I have appointed him, he must be obeyed. The nation must obey him. This is not an ordinary government. It is a government based on the sharia. Opposing this government means opposing the sharia of Islam … Revolt against God’s government is a revolt against God. Revolt against God is blasphemy. Rubin is thus correct in observing that Rauf’s expression of support came at the precise moment when the revolution’s extremism had become clear. Read in this context, Rauf “wasn’t endorsing the overthrow of the shah or the emergence of democracy but the triumph of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and everything that entailed.” The distinction here, as Rubin has also said, is like the difference between extolling the Russian Revolution while Kerensky was in power and endorsing it after Lenin had taken over. Rauf wasn’t moved to defend the Iranian Revolution in the pages of the Times until its Lenin was in control. To be sure, Rauf’s letter in praise of Khomeini’s revolution was written more than 30 years ago. But even today, he will not say, as he might have, that while he endorsed the Iranian revolution at first, he has come to realize that it is far too extreme and repressive, and that he does not favor an Islamist theocratic form of government. Instead he stands by what he wrote in 1979, claiming that the letter expresses his longstanding and ongoing concern for the humane treatment of Iran. But anyone concerned about humane treatment of Iranians would long ago have denounced Khomeini and his successors. Therefore, let us not be under any illusions as to whose side Rauf is on, or what the real meaning of the Ground Zero Mosque is. Rauf may be urbane, but he is not moderate. One cannot be both an apologist for Iran’s theocratic regime and a proponent of interfaith understanding.

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Feisal Abdul Rauf then and now — positively the same guy