The NYT continues to make its unintended case for an American Official Secrets Act.
This time it is a secret pitch about a captured notebook computer with information that even France and Germany agree confirms the Iranian mullahs desire to play with nuclear fire.
The computer contained studies for crucial features of a nuclear warhead, said European and American officials who had examined the material, including a telltale sphere of detonators to trigger an atomic explosion. The documents specified a blast roughly 2,000 feet above a target - considered a prime altitude for a nuclear detonation.
Nonetheless, doubts about the intelligence persist among some foreign analysts. In part, that is because American officials, citing the need to protect their source, have largely refused to provide details of the origins of the laptop computer beyond saying that they obtained it in mid-2004 from a longtime contact in Iran.
Wonder if the source is dead now, or still in place, or evacuated with the evidence? Is this an official leak intended by the President to put further pressure on the Iranians and obstructionists both foreign and domestic? If not, refer back to the opening sentence, if so then consider the complexity of the government sometimes using and sometimes objecting to leaks of classified material.
From the
Washington Post
President Bush and leading congressional Democrats lobbed angry charges at each other Friday in an increasingly personal battle over the origins of the Iraq war.
Increasingly? Personal? So the president finally started standing up for the troops and the mission, never mind his own reputation. If you take the position that you can’t really “support the troops” while trashing the mission on the way to trashing the commander-in-chief, then the reverse must also obtain. Failing to defend the mission is failing to support the troops. I’m thankful the president has taken a first step, and look forward to at least weekly equally forceful, blunt follow-ups by him and his top officials. The troops deserve it and the nation, the world, needs it.
The Republicans might just survive the next election cycle by being less
incompetent than the Democrats:
The Democratic National Committee under Howard Dean is losing the fundraising race against Republicans by nearly 2 to 1, a slow start that is stirring concern among strategists who worry that a cash shortage could hinder the party’s competitiveness in next year’s midterm elections.
C|Net asks
Will’s Sony’s DRM nightmare affect future policies? This provides a useful chronology with links.
Sony BMG Music Entertainment said Friday that it will suspend production of CDs with copy-protection technology that has been exploited by virus writers to try to hide their malicious code on PCs.
The decision by the music label comes after 10 days of controversy around the technology, which is designed to limit the number of copies that can be made of the CD and to prevent a computer user from making unprotected MP3s of the music.
10 days! An eternity in the 24/7 new media cycle. Especially check out this very cool web tool connecting players, topics, and stories in a clickable diagram.
Finally, a bit on energy policy as national security policy:
I see a bit in Wired on biodiesel as a replacement/suppliment for fuel oil. The article is
realistic:
But he points out that if biodiesel catches on as predicted, the waste vegetable oil that individuals like Parris are using could become a commodity, and it would no longer be easily obtained for free. And there’s another problem. “We probably won’t be able to replace more than 10 percent to 15 percent of our current petrodiesel usage with biodiesel,” he says. “Ultimately, the answer is relying on a broad range of renewable-energy strategies including biofuels of all types.”
OK. Still makes sense to dispose of used oil by consuming it rather than puting it into the ground or water. While I share Hugh Hewitt’s frustration with R’s that won’t risk their r’s to increase energy independence with drilling in ANWR, I also know that the Bush administration, and so the president, helped create the problem of schizophrenic policy with the rejection of Kyoto/ acceptance of the Kyoto premise in pushing replacement of coal with natural gas in power generation. Major competition with all the old folks in the Northeast.
Oh, read
Ralph Peters on the French Intifata.
