Archive for January, 2006

Where the WMD Went

Saturday, January 28th, 2006

“Bush lied and people died” is the mindless refrain that substitutes in some quarters for trenchant political analysis. The suggestion is that Bush lied about the presence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to lead us into war in Iraq. Of course, a lie is not simply an error in fact; it is an act whose intent is to deceive. It is truer to say that the assertion that “Bush lied” is itself a lie, or at least an attempt to obscure the truth.

Before the war, there was broad consensus in the American intelligence community that Iraq possessed some significant quantities of chemical or biological agents as part of a weapons of mass destruction program. This was also the consensus of foreign intelligence services.

William Cohen, President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense was “absolutely convinced that there are weapons… I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out.” Even Senator Edward Kennedy argued, “We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.” The list of high officials, including former President Bill Clinton himself, who agreed with this assessment, is long.

That was the pre-war belief. Now we know the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) found only a couple of dozen WMD shells. This is consistent only with the sloppy unaccounted residue of a previous larger WMD program. However, the ISG also concluded that Iraq was biding its time and planned to resume it WMD program as soon as sanctions, atrophying by 2003, were lifted. Specifically they wrote: “There is an extensive, yet fragmentary and circumstantial, body of evidence suggesting that Saddam pursued a strategy to maintain a capability to return to WMD after sanctions were lifted by preserving assets and expertise. In addition to preserved capability, we have clear evidence of his intent to resume WMD as soon as sanctions were lifted.”

However, questions remain. If Saddam had no significant quantities of WMD, why did he behave as if he had WMD by continuing to impede the weapons inspectors? Why did he eventually kick the inspectors out of Iraq? If he had simply complied with the UN’s inspection regime, he would not have suffered billions in lost revenue associated with the sanctions. What happened to the stockpiles of anthrax that Saddam’s regime originally claimed? There was no evidence of its destruction and as inspector Hans Blix argued one does not simply loose track of WMD, “Weapons of mass destruction aren’t like marmalade”

After the liberation of Iraq, there were stories that stockpiles of WMD were sent to Syria before the war. These reports were recently buttressed in the book Saddam’s Secrets by General Georges Sada, a former general of the Iraqi air force . Sada claims the that Iraqi civilian airliners were modified and filled with WMD by members of the Republican National Guard, and flown to Syria under the guise of civilian air traffic. Sada’s source for this report was the pilots who flew the flights.

The explanation that Saddam removed his WMD to Syria is not a pleasant development because it arms a cruel regime with powerful weapons. However, it does have the virtue of closing the logical circle. It resolves the pre-war intelligence about WMD with the lack of stockpiles after the war.

By all accounts, Sada retains considerable credibility and he is soon to be briefing some US Senators. Nonetheless, Sada’s story remains a third party account, rather than eyewitness testimony. While persuasive, it cannot alone be considered definitive. However, it is an important piece of evidence that needs to be evaluated in the context of other clues. This is story that begs for investigative reporting that does not seem to be forth coming. People are just too comfortable with the conventional wisdom that there were never where WMD in Iraq.

It is very possible that the Administration is already convinced that WMD managed to find its way to Syria, but has not publicly made the case. It might prefer to endure the political damage and loss of credibility about pre-war intelligence than be forced at the present time to deal directly with Syria.

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Gore Disappoints Once Again

Sunday, January 22nd, 2006

From a distance it is difficult to understand former Vice-President Al Gore. The old Al Gore of the 1980’s was the essence of a serious, thoughtful Senator who eschewed extreme positions or language. He gave careful thought to policy issues. Though sometimes he displayed an amateurish certitude about environmental issues, he was earnest. On national security, Al Gore was the rare Democrat who was not reflexively anti-military, uncomfortable and embarrassed about American wealth and power. During the first Gulf War, led by the first President George Bush, Gore was one of a minority of Senate Democrats who voted to authorize the use of force by Bush to liberate Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion.

Even during the Clinton years, despite some ethical lapses with regard to campaign fund raising, Gore, in comparison to the often puerile President Bill Clinton, appeared an adult. Gore spent a good fraction of his 2000 presidential campaign against the then Governor George W. Bush desperately seeking to escape the sleazier aspects of the Clinton years.

Something about the drawn-out, heart-breaking, devastatingly close loss to George Bush in the 2000 presidential election altered Al Gore’s public persona. He was no longer a serious person. He morphed into an angry, almost bitter, political hack. It is not just that his positions lurched to the Left. More than Gore’s positions changed. Almost overnight, Gore’s temperament became petulant and boorish.

We cannot ascertain with certainty from afar if the wrenching 2000 election snapped something in Gore. An alternate possibility is that Gore’s underlying personality was revealed once it was unconstrained by the discipline the maintaining political viability. However, it is hard to believe that Gore could have effectively concealed his true temperament and ideology for a long public career before 2000.

Not even Democrats any longer cling to the fiction that Gore is still a serious thinker. Gore’s recent speech at Constitution Hall on January 16 is just one more step in the decline of the former vice-president into irrelevancy.

The central question addressed by Gore’s speech is whether a President has the legal authority, under his powers as Commander in Chief, to eavesdrop on communications between enemies outside the United States when they are communicating to people, perhaps even US citizens, in the United States. It was recently revealed, that President Bush had authorized such surveillance to those communication with Al Qaeda or its associates outside the US.

The issue is a serious one which straddles the borders between executive, legislative, and judicial functions. However, Gore in his speech used the phrase “rule of law” nine times without conceding the uncertainty of the law in this issue. Although the US Supreme Court has not ruled here, a number of lower court decisions concede Presidential authority to conduct wireless searches without a warrant in case of national security.

If he had not been so bent on trying to inflict political damage on the President, Gore could have offered an interesting perspective. After all, he had served in high positions in both the legislative and executive branches. How does Gore square his present conclusion that the Commander in Chief does not have warrantless search authority with the fact that the Clinton Administration used such warrantless searches in prosecuting spy Aldridge Ames? Does Gore agree with Clinton’s former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick that the “Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes.”

Maybe Gore had not considered such issues before, but it would seem incumbent on him to present his current disagreement with President George Bush on these matters in the context of the decisions of his previous Administration.

Though one would hate to depend too much on what is reported on 60 Minutes, Steve Kroft reported there on February 27, 2000 (the last year of the Clinton Administration) that:

“If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there’s a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country’s largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it’s run by the National Security Agency and four English-speaking allies: Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand.”

Does Gore deny what Steve Kroft reported? If not can he explain under what authority the Clinton Administration supported Echelon?

Perhaps most irresponsibly, Gore tried to tie Bush’s national security surveillance of communications with Al Qaeda with FBI wiretaps of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s. That was a case of using wiretapping authority to target domestic political opponents. There is no evidence that this was the use of the present surveillance. To connect the two is a tasteless exploitation of the travails of King during the Civil Rights movement.

Instead of the careful consideration and balancing of the important issues involved, Gore seeks to criminalize Constitutional and legal disagreements by calling for a special prosecutor. An independent legal opinion commissioned by the Justice Department recommended a special prosecutor to investigate Gore’s campaign finance irregularities. Gore escaped this predicament because Attorney General Janet Reno stubbornly refused to appoint one. One might have thought under such circumstances, Gore would shy away from cavalierly recommending a special prosecutor. One might have thought that someone who hid behind the steadfast defense, that there was “no controlling legal authority” would decline to criminalize actions in murky areas of the law. One would have thought that some who once so assiduously sought the respect accorded a serious policy thinker could have used his voice to explore the important legal and Constitutional questions recently raised.

Gore could have become an elder statesman when the Democrats could have used one; instead he has become a clanging cymbal.

Posted in Law | No Comments »

Deficit of Decency

Sunday, January 15th, 2006

The schoolyard teaches most an instinctive distaste for bullies: people who use their position to insult and humiliate others. The person who quietly stands up to a bully, the person who prevails against mean-spirited intimidation, and the person who overcomes a bully at his own game gains a measure of sympathy. Judge Samuel Alito earned such sympathy during last week’s confirmation hearing on his appointment to the US Supreme Court.

Such Senate hearings have long ago ceased their function of gaining important information about nominees. Questions about qualifications, legal temperament, and judicial philosophy can be answered by examination of the public record, the interview of other professionals who know the nominee, and private discussions between Senators and the nominee.

The primary purpose of the hearings has degenerated to preening by Senators for the benefit their respective constituencies. That is why far more than 50% of the time is occupied by Senatorial discourses as opposed to time for answers by the nominee. As a consequence, the hearings have come to reveal for more about the Senators than they do about a prospective Supreme Court justice, what is revealed is not pretty.

We are treated to the comical spectacle of Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) suggesting that perhaps Judge Alito is not sufficiently open-minded when everyone in the hearing room knows that Schumer’s mind is welding shut against Alito’s ascendance to the Supreme Court. From the beginning, Schumer’s mind will not be pried open by the crowbar of evidence to even consider voting for Alito.

While Schumer’s questions may have proved comical, Senator Edward Kennedy’s (D-MA) questioning of Alito during the hearings was transparently hypocritical. Given Kennedy’s rather conspicuous history of inappropriate personal conduct, his questioning of the integrity of others is embarrassing.

Even more shameful is Kennedy’s suggestion that Alito is a racist because in “Alito’s 15 years on the bench, Judge Alito has not written one single opinion on the merits in favor a person of color who alleged race discrimination in the workplace.” This carefully worded accusation is deftly designed to deceive. The record shows that Alito voted in favor of individuals of color, however, on a three-judge panel, he “writes” about one-third of the opinions. Moreover, appeals courts rule on the law and not the merits of a case. Thus, by carefully circumscribing the universe of decisions, Kennedy tried to paint Alito as a racist. Using a similar tactic of dishonesty, one could conjure negative inferences from the fact that Kennedy has never voted for an African-American for the Supreme Court. Of course, his single opportunity to do so came during the nomination of Clarence Thomas by the first President George Bush to the Supreme Court.

Ultimately, though such behavior may endear some Democratic Senators to the hard-Left, it further isolates Democratic Senators as mean-spirited partisans. As Alito quietly and politely addressed the questions posed, this picture of competence was juxtaposed against Senators fumbling case law citations. When finally the camera showed Mrs. Alito, worn out by days of personal smears against her husband, breaking down in tears and excusing herself from the hearing room, the hearings were effectively over. The Democratic Senatorial attack had failed.

Over fifty years ago, Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had bullied others, was asked by attorney Joseph Welch, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” Last week’s hearing revealed that the Senate still retains some who would smear others in pursuit of political advantage. There remains a decency deficit in the Senate.

Posted in Law, Politics, Social Commentary | No Comments »

The Source of Satisfication

Sunday, January 8th, 2006

One delusional deceit of sloppy sociology remains the inference of broad conclusions resting on the flimsiest of proof. Typically, the sought after conclusion is already accepted axiomatically and evidence is culled, trimmed, and pruned until it is fashioned to support the conclusion. Perhaps it is in this vein that we indulge the self-serving assertion that Americans are happier and more satisfied than our European friends and that happiness is a consequence of how we have organized our respective economies.

When asked by the Harris Polling Corporation, 58% of Americans claim that they are very satisfied with their lives. This compares with 31% of Europeans who are similarly pleased with their lives. However, Europe is even more diverse than the United States and results vary tremendously between countries. Nearly two-thirds, 64%, of Danes are very satisfied with their lives, whereas only 3% of the Portuguese make the same claim.

Now there are many non-economic cultural factors, which may affect happiness. The quality of family life or the role of religion and spirituality will certainly influence happiness. Nonetheless, we can search economic factors for clues to happiness. While economic well-being may not be sufficient for happiness, economic stress will certainly make life more difficult. If happiness is linked to the choices we make in our lives, then an increase in the scope of choices possible by more economic resources should be reflected in happiness statistics.

Americans and European have differing economic philosophies. Americans enjoy a less regulated and less taxed economy. The consequences are high levels of growth, employment, and inequality. Europeans enjoy a narrower income distribution, but many European economies suffer from high unemployment rates and low growth. Which approach is more correlated with happiness? Which is more important to happiness income, employment or income equality?

Using data from 16 European countries and the United States, we correlated income, unemployment, and income equality with happiness. We used per capita Price Purchasing Parity (PPP), a measure of how much people can buy in their local economies, as a proxy for income. Unemployment is measured by the traditional unemployment rate. Inequality is measured by the Gini index, where the value100 corresponds to perfect income inequality where one individual receives all the income of a society. The value 0 corresponds to perfect income equality, where everyone has an equal income.

As expected, the higher per capita purchasing power, the lower the unemployment rate, and the greater the economic equality, the more satisfied people claim to be. PPP, unemployment rate, and the Gini index are not sufficient to explain, by themselves, personal satisfaction, but some patterns emerge. The square of the correlation coefficient measures the fraction of the country-by-country variation in self-professed satisfaction that is linearly related to PPP, unemployment, and income equally. The data, such as they are, reveal that 34% of the variations in happiness can be accounted for by per capita purchasing power, 19% by employment, and less that 1% by inequality. It would seem then that personal satisfaction is related to how much we have to spend, whether we have the dignity of a job and very little on how much more our neighbors might earn.

Too much should not be made of the rather cavalierly gathered statistics presented above. However, it is part of the American intuition that we are better served by a robust, less encumbered economy and this seems to be born out. Americans seem to be less upset that there are rich people around; perhaps because they aspire to be rich themselves one day.

Posted in Economics, Social Commentary | No Comments »

US Outpaces EU Productivity

Sunday, January 1st, 2006

One delusional deceit of sloppy sociology remains the inference of broad conclusions resting on the flimsiest of proof. Typically, the sought after conclusion is already accepted axiomatically and evidence is culled, trimmed, and pruned until it is fashioned to support the conclusion. Perhaps it is in this vein that we indulge the self-serving assertion that Americans are happier and more satisfied than our European friends and that happiness is a consequence of how we have organized our respective economies.

When asked by the Harris Polling Corporation, 58% of Americans claim that they are very satisfied with their lives. This compares with 31% of Europeans who are similarly pleased with their lives. However, Europe is even more diverse than the United States and results vary tremendously between countries. Nearly two-thirds, 64%, of Danes are very satisfied with their lives, whereas only 3% of the Portuguese make the same claim.

Now there are many non-economic cultural factors, which may affect happiness. The quality of family life or the role of religion and spirituality will certainly influence happiness. Nonetheless, we can search economic factors for clues to happiness. While economic well-being may not be sufficient for happiness, economic stress will certainly make life more difficult. If happiness is linked to the choices we make in our lives, then an increase in the scope of choices possible by more economic resources should be reflected in happiness statistics.

Americans and European have differing economic philosophies. Americans enjoy a less regulated and less taxed economy. The consequences are high levels of growth, employment, and inequality. Europeans enjoy a narrower income distribution, but many European economies suffer from high unemployment rates and low growth. Which approach is more correlated with happiness? Which is more important to happiness income, employment or income equality?

Using data from 16 European countries and the United States, we correlated income, unemployment, and income equality with happiness. We used per capita Price Purchasing Parity (PPP), a measure of how much people can buy in their local economies, as a proxy for income. Unemployment is measured by the traditional unemployment rate. Inequality is measured by the Gini index, where the value100 corresponds to perfect income inequality where one individual receives all the income of a society. The value 0 corresponds to perfect income equality, where everyone has an equal income.

As expected, the higher per capita purchasing power, the lower the unemployment rate, and the greater the economic equality, the more satisfied people claim to be. PPP, unemployment rate, and the Gini index are not sufficient to explain, by themselves, personal satisfaction, but some patterns emerge. The square of the correlation coefficient measures the fraction of the country-by-country variation in self-professed satisfaction that is linearly related to PPP, unemployment, and income equally. The data, such as they are, reveal that 34% of the variations in happiness can be accounted for by per capita purchasing power, 19% by employment, and less that 1% by inequality. It would seem then that personal satisfaction is related to how much we have to spend, whether we have the dignity of a job and very little on how much more our neighbors might earn.

Too much should not be made of the rather cavalierly gathered statistics presented above. However, it is part of the American intuition that we are better served by a robust, less encumbered economy and this seems to be born out. Americans seem to be less upset that there are rich people around; perhaps because they aspire to be rich themselves one day.

Posted in Economics, Social Commentary | No Comments »