Political consultant Bob Shrum brings out the long knives on Edwards in Time this week. I think Shrum is a loser (political advisor to McGovern, Carter, Ted Kennedy), but not sure that makes him a liar.

Shrum worked with Edwards leading up to the 04 campaign. This anecdote, if true, is incredible:

Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he’d never told anyone else—that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he’d do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade’s ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before—and with the same preface, that he’d never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn’t pick Edwards unless he met with him again.

Almost as incredible as the story itself is the fact that Kerry chose Edwards anyway, despite his aggressively lying about an extremely intimate matter for personal gain.

Earlier in the article he recounts the process Edwards went through in voting for the authorization for use of force in Iraq back in 2002.

That fall, as a vote loomed on the resolution giving Bush authority to go to war, Edwards convened a circle of advisers in his family room in Washington to discuss his decision. He was skeptical, even exercised about the idea of voting yes. Elizabeth was a forceful no. She didn’t trust anything the Bush administration was saying. But the consensus view from both the foreign policy experts and the political operatives was that even though Edwards was on the Intelligence Committee, he was too junior in the Senate; he didn’t have the credibility to vote against the resolution. To my continuing regret, I said he had to be for it. As I listened to this, I watched Edwards’s face; he didn’t like where he was being pushed to go. The process violated a principle I’d learned long before—candidates have to trust their own deeply felt instincts. It’s the best way to live with defeat if it comes, and probably the best way to win.

This was around the time Edwards was getting all hawkish on Iraq - using his credentials as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee to make all sorts of assertions about the WMD programs he was sure Saddam had. (He was one of two elected politicians at the time to call Saddam an “imminent threat.”)

What’s remarkable about the passage is no reference to whether or not invading Iraq was a good idea. It was all about political calculation. How would it make him look? Would he disqualify himself from the upcoming political race by appearing too liberal?

I think this was the same calculation Kerry, Clinton, and many other Dems were making back in 2002. Its also the same calculation they are making on Iraq now - not what policy is best for the US or Iraq, but how they can pose to enhance their own power.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly — only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!
- Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Program” 1875

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Fascist ethics begin … with the acknowledgment that it is not the individual who confers a meaning upon society, but it is, instead, the existence of a human society which determines the human character of the individual. According to Fascism, a true, a great spiritual life cannot take place unless the State has risen to a position of pre-eminence in the world of man. The curtailment of liberty thus becomes justified at once, and this need of rising the State to its rightful position.
- Mario Palmieri, “The Philosophy of Fascism” 1936

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It is thus necessary that the individual should come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation;that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole … that above all the unity of a nation’s spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual. …. This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture …. we understand only the individual’s capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow man.
- Adolf Hitler, 1938

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We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society.
- Hillary Clinton, 1993

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It’s time for a new beginning…time to reject the idea of an “on your own” society and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity. I prefer a “we’re all in it together” society.
- Hillary Clinton, 2007

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The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
- Ayn Rand

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When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?
- Henry David Thoreau

Update 6/1/07:

Investor’s Business Daily has an editorial on the same subject. From The Real Hillary’s Raw Socialism:

…Speaking in New Hampshire, Clinton acknowledged that instead of the “ownership society” that George W. Bush has promoted throughout his presidency, she prefers a “we’re all in it together society” where prosperity is “broadly shared.”

This is the sort of “it takes a village” rhetoric that tickles the ears of the left, and which can’t give up its romantic notions of a collectivist utopia.

Dreams of the left, however, always turn out to be nightmares, and the world has seen its share of all-in-it-together societies that have failed. The Soviet Union, East Germany, North Korea and the worker’s paradise/island prison of Cuba enter the mind right away….

…We’re not here to label Hillary Clinton a socialist, but we really don’t have to; she’s done that job for us. The economic proposals she’s lining up behind expose an undeniable affinity for raw socialism.

Promoting a leftist orthodoxy is not some new campaign ploy for Clinton. She’s been at it for some time. At a 2004 fundraiser, she told supporters that “for America to get back on track, we’re probably going to cut that (tax cuts) short and not give it to you. We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”…

From Canada.com:

Last week, the Lebanese army attacked a squalid Palestinian refugee camp that’s become infested with Islamist suicide terrorists and guerilla fighters. On May 20, government troops surrounded the camp, with tanks and artillery pieces shelling it at close range. Army snipers gunned down anything that moved. At least 18 civilians were killed, and dozens more injured. Water and electricity were cut off. By week’s end, much of the camp had been turned into deserted rubble. Thousands of terrified residents fleeing the camp reported harrowing stories of famished, parched families trapped in their basements.

How did the rest of the world react? The Arab League quickly condemned “the criminal and terrorist acts carried out by the terrorist group known as Fatah al-Islam,” and vowed to “give its full support to the efforts of the army and the Lebanese government.” EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana also condemned Fatah al-Islam, and declared Europe’s “support” for Lebanon. And the UN Security Council called the actions of Fatah al-Islam “an unacceptable attack” on Lebanon’s sovereignty. As for the Western media, most outlets ignored the story following the first flurry of news reports.

At this point, please indulge me by re-reading the first paragraph of this column — except this time, substitute the world “Israeli” for “Lebanese” in the first sentence. Let’s imagine what the world’s reaction would be if the ongoing siege were taking place in Gaza or the West Bank instead of the Nahr al Bared refugee camp on the outskirts of Tripoli, Lebanon.

First of all, a flood of foreign journalists would descend on the camp to document Israel’s cruelty and barbarism, and the story would remain front page news to this day. Al-Jazeera would be a 24/7 montage of grieving mothers swearing revenge on the Zionist butchers, and rumours would swirl of mass graves and poison gas. The Arab League, EU and United Nations would condemn Israeli aggression — as would the editorial board of The New York Times. The Independent would dispatch Robert Fisk to embed with Fatah al-Islam. And the newspaper’s cartoonist, Dave Brown, would produce another award-winning rendition of his signature theme: Jews eating Palestinian babies…

…For years, we have been told that Palestinian suffering and “humiliation” is at the root of the Middle East conflict, as well as the Western-Muslim clash of civilizations more generally. This is nonsense: The 200,000-plus Palestinian refugees who live in Lebanese camps are treated worse than dogs — with no access to decent schools or good jobs — and no one in the Arab world cares a whit. In fact, many Arabs seem to embrace the same blind anti-Palestinian hatred of which Israel is typically accused. When Lebanese armoured personnel carriers rolled through Tripoli on May 20, they got a standing ovation from local residents. “We wish the government would destroy the whole camp and the rest of the camps,” one local told The New York Times. “Nothing good comes out of the Palestinians.”

Read the rest here.

From American.com:

Americans are driving more miles, using more energy, and producing more goods and services than ever. But at the same time, the air quality in America’s cities is better than it has been in more than a century—despite the fact that the U.S. population has almost quadrupled and real GDP has risen by a factor of nearly thirty.

But Americans aren’t aware of this good news—or don’t believe it. Polls show the public thinks that air pollution has been steady or even rising over the last few decades, that it will worsen in the future, and that it is still a serious threat to people’s health. They are convinced that pollution is a serious problem throughout the country, that it is a major cause of asthma and other respiratory diseases, and that it shortens the lives of tens of thousands of people.

Much of what Americans think they know about air pollution is false. Through exaggeration and sometimes even outright fabrication, the main purveyors of the story—journalists, government regulators, environmentalists, and even health scientists—have created public fear out of all proportion to the actual risks…

…Between 1980 and 2005, average levels of air pollution fell between 20 percent and 96 percent, depending on the pollutant. For example, sulfur dioxide, which results mainly from the burning of coal and the smelting of some metals, is down 63 percent, while carbon monoxide, the vast majority of which comes from automobiles, is down 74 percent. At the same time, coal usage increased more than 60 percent and miles of driving nearly doubled.

That sulfur dioxide number is particularly important, since that chemical is the primary cause of acid rain. Further reductions will only continue as our coal infrastructure continues to modernize. That is, of course, if some crazy climate change alarmists don’t start deliberately injecting the stuff into the air to save us from global warming.

Read the whole article.

I’m optimistic about Sarko, but Vaclav Klaus remains my favorite Continental head of state. Klaus regularly speaks out on the insanity of EU environmental policy.

He gave a speech on the EU earlier this month:

The past 50 years of the European integration have been usually considered to be a success, even if it is very difficult to statistically measure it or to prove it. We all know that there have been many other unique, unrepeatable historical as well as much more important evolutionary global factors which were influencing the economic (and not only economic) performance of the EU member countries at the same time. This is not very often explicitly discussed and recognized. All progress of that period is usually attributed to the existence of the EU.

What I consider important is the fact that the concept (or model) of European integration has been fundamentally changing over time. With the benefit of hindsight, and with the courage to generalize, I see two different integration models (or methods of integration) in Europe in the last 50 years.

The first one I call the liberalisation model. It was characterised by an inter-European opening-up, by the overall liberalisation of human activities, by the removal of various, in the past created barriers at the borders of countries as regards the movement of goods and services, of labour and capital, as well as of ideas and cultural patterns. Its main feature was the removal of barriers and its basis was intergovernmentalism.

The second one, which I call the interventionist and harmonisation model, is characterised by enormous centralisation of decision-making in Brussels, by far-reaching regulation of human activities, by harmonisation of all kinds of “parameters” of political, economic and social systems, by standardisation and homogenization of human life. The main features of the second model are regulation and harmonisation orchestrated from above, and the birth of supranationalism.

I am frustrated that the people in Europe do not see this fundamental metamorphosis sufficiently clearly and especially do not think about its inevitable consequences. I am angry with politicians and their fellow travellers that they do maximum to hide it and to make it fuzzy.

I am – as it is well known – in favour of the first model, not of the second. I am convinced that the unification of decision-making at the EU level and the overall harmonisation of societal “parameters” went much further than was necessary and than is rational and economically advantageous.

I consider it wrong. I am not satisfied with making only cosmetic changes. I am, therefore, in favour of redefining the whole concept of the European Union.

I suggest going back to the intergovernmental model of European integration. I suggest going back to the original concept of attempting to remove existing barriers among countries. I suggest going back to the consistent liberalisation and opening-up of markets (not only economic ones). I suggest minimising political intervention in human activities. Where this intervention is inevitable, it should be done close to the citizens (which means at the level of municipalities, regions and states), not in Brussels.

To summarize, I want freedom in Europe, not democratic deficit, I want democracy in Europe, not postdemocracy.

From today’s WSJ:

A new study by the Congressional Budget Office says the poor have been getting less poor. On average, CBO found that low-wage households with children had incomes after inflation that were more than one-third higher in 2005 than in 1991.

The CBO results don’t fit the prevailing media stereotype of the U.S. economy as a richer take all affair — which may explain why you haven’t read about them. Among all families with children, the poorest fifth had the fastest overall earnings growth over the 15 years measured. (See the nearby chart.) The poorest even had higher earnings growth than the richest 20%. The earnings of these poor households are about 80% higher today than in the early 1990s.

What happened? CBO says the main causes of this low-income earnings surge have been a combination of welfare reform, expansion of the earned income tax credit and wage gains from a tight labor market, especially in the late stages of the 1990s expansion. Though cash welfare fell as a share of overall income (which includes government benefits), earnings from work climbed sharply as the 1996 welfare reform pushed at least one family breadwinner into the job market…earnings for low-income families have still nearly doubled in the years since welfare reform became law. Some two million welfare mothers have left the dole for jobs since the mid-1990s. Far from being a disaster for the poor, as most on the left claimed when it was debated, welfare reform has proven to be a boon.

Clinton claims welfare reform was one of his greatest accomplishments. He’s sort of right, but it was the GOP, having swept of the House and Senate in 1996, that dragged him to it kicking and screaming. Clinton had vetoed two almost identical welfare reform bills before finally signing in 1997 - and then only when his signature didn’t matter anymore, the bill having passed with a veto-proof majority.

We’ve always known the EU’s interest in getting Wolfowitz out of the World Bank was motivated by their antipathy for his anti-corruption efforts. The whole girlfriend-ethical thing was just a ruse.

But we didn’t expect them to admit as much. From the AP:

Paul Wolfowitz’s shortcomings as an effective manager of the World Bank were the primary reason for his ouster, not the pay hike he approved for his girlfriend, said two Dutch politicians who helped engineer his resignation…

…”If he had otherwise been a good leader, this may not have come so far,” he said…

…”The name of the bank was on the line, and all European countries together make up the largest donor,” he told the Nova television program at the weekend.

“This wasn’t intended as blackmail, but to make it clear that we weren’t just casually raising the matter,” he said…

If Wolfowitz really was so terrible the could have just been honest about it. Instead, they made up a scandal and let the media rip him (and Riza) appart.

And that board statement on Wolfowitz’s resignation, that was made up too.

Wijffels said the board statement saying Wolfowitz “acted ethically and in good faith” was a compromise to save face.

“It’s always the case that a forced departure is dressed up with nice words, definitely if that departure is arranged in political circles,” Wijffels told the paper.

Fascinating that a board member would say as much about a one week old official board statement. It sounds like he’s claiming Wolfowitz did not act “ethically and in good faith.” I wonder how he would describe his own actions in this matter.

That’s from October 2001, seventeen months before Bush’s ‘rush to war’ in Iraq.

Edwards is now claiming ‘the war on terror’ isn’t real. From AP:

Democrat John Edwards Wednesday repudiated the notion that there is a “global war on terror,” calling it an ideological doctrine advanced by the Bush administration that has strained American military resources and emboldened terrorists.

In a defense policy speech he planned to deliver at the Council on Foreign Relations, Edwards called the war on terror a “bumper sticker” slogan Bush had used to justify everything from abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison to the invasion of Iraq.

Edwards is one of only two elected federal officials to have called Saddam Hussein an ‘imminent threat.’ (The other is West Virginia Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller.)

Some choice Edwards quotes:

2/24/02 CNN Late Edition:

SEN. EDWARDS: I think Iraq and Saddam Hussein present the most serious and most imminent threat.

10/7/02 Speech to The Center for Strategic and International Studies:

My position is very clear. The time has come for decisive action to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. I’m a co-sponsor of the bipartisan resolution that is presently under consideration in the Senate. Saddam Hussein’s regime is a grave threat to America and our allies. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons today, that he’s used them in the past, and that he’s doing everything he can to build more. Every day he gets closer to his long-term goal of nuclear capability.

10/10/04 Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT: If you knew today, and you do know, there is—there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, would you still vote to go to war with Iraq?

SEN. EDWARDS: I would have voted for the resolution, knowing what I know today, because it was the right thing to do to give the president the authority to confront Saddam Hussein.

I think Saddam Hussein was a very serious threat. I stand by that, and that’s why we stand behind our vote on the resolution.

2/7/07 Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT: Why were you so wrong (on Iraq)?

SEN. EDWARDS: For the same reason a lot of people were wrong. You know, we—the intelligence information that we got was wrong. I mean, tragically wrong. On top of that I’d—beyond that, I went back to former Clinton administration officials who gave me sort of independent information about what they believed about what was happening with Saddam’s weapon—weapons programs. They were also wrong. And, based on that, I made the wrong judgment…

For a review of what some other prominent Dems have said on the Iraq and terrorism:

From a Bob Kerrey oped in today’s WSJ:

Let me restate the case for this Iraq war from the U.S. point of view. The U.S. led an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein because Iraq was rightly seen as a threat following Sept. 11, 2001. For two decades we had suffered attacks by radical Islamic groups but were lulled into a false sense of complacency because all previous attacks were “over there.” It was our nation and our people who had been identified by Osama bin Laden as the “head of the snake.” But suddenly Middle Eastern radicals had demonstrated extraordinary capacity to reach our shores.

As for Saddam, he had refused to comply with numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions outlining specific requirements related to disclosure of his weapons programs. He could have complied with the Security Council resolutions with the greatest of ease. He chose not to because he was stealing and extorting billions of dollars from the U.N. Oil for Food program…

…Suppose we had not invaded Iraq and Hussein had been overthrown by Shiite and Kurdish insurgents. Suppose al Qaeda then undermined their new democracy and inflamed sectarian tensions to the same level of violence we are seeing today. Wouldn’t you expect the same people who are urging a unilateral and immediate withdrawal to be urging military intervention to end this carnage?…

…American liberals need to face these truths: The demand for self-government was and remains strong in Iraq despite all our mistakes and the violent efforts of al Qaeda, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to disrupt it. Al Qaeda in particular has targeted for abduction and murder those who are essential to a functioning democracy: school teachers, aid workers, private contractors working to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure, police officers and anyone who cooperates with the Iraqi government….

…With these facts on the scales, what does your conscience tell you to do? If the answer is nothing, that it is not our responsibility or that this is all about oil, then no wonder today we Democrats are not trusted with the reins of power. American lawmakers who are watching public opinion tell them to move away from Iraq as quickly as possible should remember this: Concessions will not work with either al Qaeda or other foreign fighters who will not rest until they have killed or driven into exile the last remaining Iraqi who favors democracy.

Kerrey is a former DNC US Senator, but doesn’t fit the typical Washington Dem profile. He was a Navy SEAL in Vietnam and won the Congressional Medal of Honor in an action that cost him part of a leg. As president of NYC’s New School he fought against the UAW’s efforts to unionize the school’s part time workers. He was governor of Nebraska, usually a GOP stronghold (voted Bush over Kerry in ‘04 by 2:1).

Kerrey is no fan of Bush, and has plenty of criticism of our efforts in Iraq. But he is not an insane, illogical leftist. If only more in the DNC were like him.

Via LGF

From today’s NY Observer:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Syria last month, and the related question of whether or not the U.S. should formally re-engage this Baathist republic, remains as controversial a topic on the streets of Damascus as it was in the days afterwards among Beltway bloggers. And, perverse as it may seem to some American liberals, it is the Syrians who are most sympathetic to their progressive values who have been most critical of Ms. Pelosi’s attempts to begin a dialogue with Syria’s government.

Many Syrian dissidents and pro-democracy activists have privately expressed dismay at Ms. Pelosi’s message of friendship to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They say that Ms. Pelosi’s visit, no matter how well-intentioned, has effectively pulled the rug out from under them, critically damaging their efforts to create momentum for reform from within.

“Pelosi’s visit made the regime feel that Americans were divided on how to deal with Syria,” said a Damascus-based women’s-rights activist who, like five other activists interviewed for this article, asked that his name be withheld because he feared punishment. “This sends a message to the regime that the pressure is off, that it can do what it likes.”

It has certainly seemed that way in the weeks since Ms. Pelosi’s departure, during which time the government has imprisoned Kurdish opposition figures while maintaining travel and work bans on political activists.

In the eastern Syrian town of Raqqa, hundreds of people were arrested for protesting rigged parliamentary elections. And over the last month, the Syrian courts have embarked on a veritable spree of sentencing, handing down harsh prison sentences to some of Syria’s most prominent pro-democracy activists.

Last week, the physician and dissident Kamal Labwani was sentenced to 12 years in prison for having met with American officials during a 2005 trip to Washington. This past weekend, the activists Michel Kilo and Mahmoud Issa were sentenced to three years each for having signed the so-called Damascus Declaration, a document petitioning Syria’s government to normalize relations with neighboring Lebanon.

The few Syrian activists who are not presently behind bars say they have all but ceased working.

“Most of us are just sitting and waiting,” said the women’s-rights activist. “It’s too dangerous to try any political activities right now. The regime is making a point, and there’s no telling when the current crackdown will end.”

Even Syrians outside the inner circle of activists seem shaken by the conviction, shortly after Ms. Pelosi’s return to Washington, of Syria’s best-known human-rights lawyer, Anwar al-Bunni. Mr. al-Bunni was convicted of “spreading information that could weaken national morale” and “joining an international organization without proper authorization,” for which he was given a five-year prison sentence.

Mr. al-Bunni is a slight, nervous-looking man, a tireless polymath who, aside from his work defending scores of political prisoners, has helped to found a center offering training in human rights, and has drafted a new constitution for Syria. Last year, he invited a handful of foreign reporters to his home to show them his proposed new constitution, and waved his hands excitedly as he outlined his ideas about what a democratic transition in Syria might look like, how potential power-sharing arguments among Syria’s many ethnic and religious groups could be anticipated and solved.

But Syria’s would-be Thomas Jefferson is in the infamous Adra prison now, and he is known to have been tortured.

“Pelosi’s visit was well-meant, but it’s been bad for everyone, and especially devastating for some of our closest friends in Syria,” an American researcher on Syria said. “The Syrian regime wants to be invited back to the diplomatic table, but at the same time it wants to make the point that none of the concessions that it may make with regard to regional security are connected to the Bush administration’s democracy agenda.”

In an interview last week, Mr. al-Bunni’s brother, Akram, said that he was saddened by Anwar’s sentencing. But even as he offered an explanation of why Syrian dissidents were upset by Ms. Pelosi’s visit, he said that he and his brother hoped at least that such international contacts could prove to have a positive effect in the long run.

“So much of Syria’s opposition was against Pelosi’s visit, against the E.U.’s talks with the regime,” Mr. al-Bunni explained. “They believe that these offers of friendship strengthen the regime and increase its totalitarian tendencies, and they’re angry.

“But perhaps, if the West continues to talk to the regime, our government will wish to improve its image on its own,” he continued. “People who favor this approach point to Turkey. This is a much slower process, but we’ve seen that it can work. The regime would like the world to believe that it doesn’t care about what the world thinks, but we know that’s not true. It will take time, but Syria can be encouraged to cooperate. Now that I’ve seen what happened in Iraq, I fear this is the only way.”

Nice work Dems.

Reminds me of when Kerry issued an off the cuff critique of Bush’s policy towards Haiti. Specifically, Kerry claimed he would have sent troops to reinstall Aristide. Mixed signals from the US resulted in immediate rioting in Port-Au-Prince, leaving 5 dead the next day and ongoing chaos across the country for months. Kerry’s sudden interest in sending troops to Haiti was roughly coincident with the reversal of his decision whether or not sending troops to Iraq was a good idea.

Dead Haitians, dead Iraqis, dead Syrians - whatever. The more chaosthey can cause on Bush’s watch the better.