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The polling is now open.

Thanks to everyone for participating in the Photoshop contest. As of now, there's well over 200 entries, and they're still coming in. Here's how we're going to sort them out. All of us here at Team Hewitt have narrowed down the finalists to twenty. You can see them at the top of this page. Vote for as many as you want. The top five vote getters by Monday at Noon Pacific will qualify for the final poll next week. If you are one of the top 20, start stuffing the ballot box.

Posted at 3:32PM PST

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Thursday, March 30

Dan Alon, the sole survivor of the Israel Olympic squad from Munich in 1972.

03-30alon.mp3

Mr. Alon is going to appear at Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center on Friday, March 31st, at 4:30PM EST, sponsored by Chabad at Dartmouth.

HH: I'm joined now by a man who on September 5th, 1972, chose the right exit, and as a result, Dan Alon is alive to tell us about the terror at the Olympics of that year. He was an Israeli athlete, a fencer when it happened. Yesterday, on the campus of Yale for the first time ever, he addressed an American audience about what happened that night. Dan Alon, welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show.

DA: Good evening.

HH: Mr. Alon, can you for the benefit of audience, especially young audience, tell us briefly what happened in September of 1972?

DA: Well, it's a big story, but on the 5th of September, in the morning, at half past Four in the morning, we were all sleeping in our buildings of the Israeli delegation. And we heard some explosions and gunshots. We didn't know exactly what really it was. I woke up together with my partner in my room, another fencer, who was fencing, and we looked at one another. And he asked me, the guy, what can it be? And I said I don't know. Maybe some other delegation are celebrating some medal or something. We went back to sleep. And fifteen minutes later, we heard, really, machine guns. So we knew exactly that something was wrong. Two minutes later, from the other room in my apartment, came two shooters, Israeli shooters in the Olympics, and they told us look, we've got a problem. There is terrorists standing outside the door of our entrance, and they're talking to the German police. That's what's happened. And what he said that really described everything you want to know, that he said we are a group of September, Black September. We attacked the Israeli delegation buildings. We killed two Israelis in the attack, and we have at our place, holding nine others. Please, he told them, please contact the German authorities, and tell them to demand from Israel to release 200 Palestinian prisoners from the prisons. If not, we're going to kill all the Israelis until 12:00 Noon. And that was really the story, but how I escaped and everything, it's a long story. But in the end, what happened was a big negotiation between the terrorists and the Germans and the Israelis, and they came to some decision that they will go out of the village, and will fly with three helicopters to a airport field not far from Munich. They will go in a civilian aircraft, and fly to Libya. And the Germans did it because they tried to make some attack during the time they were landing with the helicopters. And they did something, but they failed to release the Israelis. They killed five terrorists, they kept three terrorists, but the three terrorists panicked, and they decided to kill all the Israelis when they were sitting in the helicopter. So they killed all the nine, and they blew up the helicopter. That was the real story.

HH: Your coach was killed, Mr. Alon? Your fencing coach was killed, a very close friend of yours, correct?

DA: Yes, Andre Spitzer. He was not only a coach of mine, he was my best friend, because we were the same age, 27 at that time.

HH: Now Mr. Alon, today is a day when Jill Carroll, an American journalist, is, thank God, released from the hands of terrorists. And you escaped terrorists, but you also had friends killed by terrorists, and you've lived in Israel for 33 years, where many people have not escaped it. And this is also the year of Munich, a film by Steven Spielberg, which purports to, in some way, chronicle the events of September, 1972, and their aftermath. What did you make of the movie?

DA: What did I think about the movie?

HH: Yes.

DA: Well, I think that Steven Spielberg did a beautiful job. Really. I saw the movie in Israel two months ago. The movie is divided in two parts. One part is, he shows the, really the attack, what really happened in the village, the Olympic village, and the attack on the Israeli delegation. The second part is what they did after Munich, the revenge of the Israeli government by the Mossad. The first part, I can tell you, it's done very good. Steven Spielberg did a very beautiful job, and I really felt like a deja vu when I saw the movie. And it was very touching. The second part, about the Mossad, I can't tell you, because I don't have any details, and I wasn't involved in this. But the movie itself is beautiful, and I think the end of the movie, the last scene when you see on the screen the New York City with the Twin Towers, the scene is following until the end of the movie, that you can see the message, I think so, that Steven Spielberg gave. It's bloodshed brings more bloodshed, and we have to prevent it. And I think that's a very good message, that it's...we have to stop this.

HH: How do you react to yesterday's elections in Israel?

DA: I was not in Israel. I'm here in the States, so I couldn't vote. And I'm not so involved in the politics, really. Believe me.

HH: Okay. Well, I'm wondering if you think the terrorism problem, which shattered your life at 27, has gotten...spread beyond the Palestinians who were Black September, obviously to the terrorists who attack Israel on a daily basis. But do you think it's the same enemy that now took down the Towers, and blows up innocents in Iraq?

DA: Yeah. I think it's all the same. It didn't change, unfortunately.

HH: How do you beat it?

DA: How you beat it?

HH: Yeah.

DA: Well, well, well. I'm against, really, I'm against bloodshed, really.

HH: Well, so am I, but how do you deter it?

DA: Well, you have to ask some professional people who deal with it. I am really not a politician, and I'm not really a specialist in those kind of things. But I think they have to find some solution like economics, boycotts, or something like this to stop those people, not by killing them, maybe.

HH: When I read the Yale Daily News account of your first-ever in the United States talk, I asked myself why now? Why did you come and give this speech now, after having not done so ever in the United States, and only twice ever in Israel?

DA: Well, I didn't talk about it for 33 years, because...two reasons. First of all, I was really emotionally very upset, and touched about what happened, and I was fencing...two months later after Munich, I quit fencing. But the second reason that...naturally, the media, after Munich until now, they were concentrated in what's happened to the athletes, and what's happened to the families, and what's happened to the terrorists, and what's really happened. But they didn't ask about us, about the survivors, what we feel, what we felt. Nothing, really. We were completely ignored, and I couldn't go out in the street and shout look, I'm a survivor. Please ask me questions, you know? And now, two months ago, when the movie appeared all over the world, suddenly people started to ask me questions. And the first telephone I got from Chabad from Oxford, at Oxford in England, and he suddenly called me and told me look, Danni. Please, if you can come and talk about it to our students, and tell them. I was really hesitant, and I didn't want to do it in the beginning, but he convinced me, and I came there, and I, really, the first time in public, stood there and I gave the story. And emotionally, I'm telling you, it was really hard for me. I had to stop a few times in my speech. But now, when I came to the States after this, and I was talking now twice, I feel much better, more relaxed, and I can talk about it better now.

HH: Danni Alon, survivor of Munich, 1972, how often do you think, is it every day, of the events of September, 1972?

DA: It's very often. Very often. You know, wherever I go, people say oh, you were in Munich. So please...and they remind me all the time, you know? You can't forget things like this.

HH: And so, will Jill Carroll, even though she survived as you did, be spending the rest of her life sort of stuck on the last few months of her captivity?

DA: Yeah, I think so. She will have some problems, I'm sure. You will never forget it so easily.

HH: Well, Danni Alon, welcome to the United States. Thank you for sharing your story at Yale, and spending some time with us tonight. I think it's wonderful that you're doing it.

DA: Thank you. Thank you for you, and I appreciate you Americans, what you're doing all over the world to stop the terror. And please continue doing it.

HH: I'm sure...well, this administration is committed to that, Mr. Alon. Thank you.

End of interview.

James Lileks sitting in a chair and saying, "Moo."

HH: Joined now by James Lileks of Lileks.com, Star Tribune columnist, that's the Minneapolis Star Tribune, also Newhouse columnist, also Newhouse columist, also proprietor of Lileks.com. James, you are a veteran of book tours.

JL: Yes, sir.

HH: How much do you love them?

JL: I hate them. Absolutely. When you have to go places to do things, you're just a piece of dead meat propped up in a chair and asked to say, "Moo."

HH: (laughing)

JL: And if it's one of those things where you're staring into the blank eye of a camera in some little, small satellite studio, you don't really get the eye contact and the give and take that you like. So if they sent me on a 40 city tour, I'd jump on it in a second. But the idea of doing it from my kitchen in my shorts is perfectly fine, because if the interview's going poorly, and you've got 40 minutes left to go with somebody who's doing a duck hunting show, who for some reason has signed your book, like happened to me the last time, you can just pretend that the phone goes dead.

HH: You did a duck hunting show?

JL: Yeah, it had been a duck hunting show, I think, the week before. Then they changed formats to duck hunting and novel and writers, and they shoved me on. Couldn't have been more disinterested, that guy.

HH: Well, he might not really care to talk about anything except ducks, but that's a...

JL: I know, well, some consultant came through and said duck hunting is great, but we really need more books about how to raise children according to 40's instructional manuals. I did get your book today, though. Your crack production/promotion team sent it to me, and I was alarmed to see on the cover, for those who haven't seen it, it's a wonderful picture of the United States, with an elephant bestriding the Plains, and he's got a paint roller clutched in his trunk.

HH: I love the cover.

JL: It's a great cover, but his left foot is crushing South Minnesota.

HH: Oh, it does?

JL: And this is the part of the state that's purple. It could actually swing the state.

HH: I thought it was DFL land.

JL: Well, not necessarily. So if the state doesn't swing red, that's why. Your elephant killed them all. They're just jam on the foot of that guy now.

HH: Now let's get to the serious stuff. I did Laura Ingraham's show this morning, and I did Chris Matthews' show tonight. Both of them could talk of nothing except immigration. Now I have a chapter on immigration policy in Painting the Map Red, and it anticipated this.

JL: Right.

HH: It warned of the civil war that loomed out there. But Laura was not for calm conversation about how a fence needed to be first, although she agrees with that. And Chris Matthews wanted to paint all Republicans as bigots.

JL: Yes.

HH: Not a surprise there.

JL: No.

HH: What do you make of this?

JL: It's a little bigger in Washington and talk radio than it is out here, I think. And what people do generally in this situation, and immigration may be the worst of all, they tend to project to their own feelings on the subject for the rest of the country at large, i.e. everybody is completely upset about illegal immigration. And you know, not necessarily so. When you live up here, and it doesn't have the impact that it does in the Southwest, it's not that high on your radar. I think you could get national consensus on a fence first, with security, and then some sort of whatever, some sort of greasy, mealie whatever, as long as we don't call it amnesty, later. But it is not, I don't think, as big an issue as it is for some people, for the people for whom it really counts. And I understand exactly why it counts so much to people, and I'm in agreement with a majority of their sentiments. But at the same token, if you read The Corner earlier in the week, Jonah Goldberg, and a writer that I greatly admire and like, was confessing that he simply could not muster the ire for the issue that a lot of people on his side had. And I sort of feel the same thing. It's just not at the top of my list, so I'm not going to project what I feel about it onto the rest of the country. Consequently, take it for what you're worth, I don't think it is necessarily the doom issue that some people do. What I find tiresome is what you went through with Matthews, of course, is that your objection to this is simply people who had a duskier he than you, and I...

HH: That...I don't know if you saw that segment. It was really quite odd. He has a vision of California being nativist, and upset that the California of 1940 has been destroyed. Well, the California of 1940 was still having people picking the crops in the Central Valley.

JL: That's right.

HH: And when I point out to him that Santa Ana may be the most Mexican place, in fact, it is the most Mexican place outside of Mexico, but that I live five miles from it doesn't bother me in the least, he just doesn't want to buy that. I do think there are two issues here. One is fear of a dirty nuke, fear of the border. And the other is fear of crime, and that is a manageable fear, if it's articulated.

JL: Right. And for me, because while I of course fear the dirty nuke, don't have the crime problem here that other places do. And interestingly enough, some smaller cities in Minnesota do, because they do have higher proportions of immigrant labor. For me, it's more of an issue of American culture. And I think one of the things that was a fatal mistake for the pro-immigration people the last week was to waive the Mexican flags, was to put it above the American flag, and turn the American flag upside down, because what that does to people who are casually observing this, they shrug their shoulders and really begin to feel a sort of calloused indifference to the whole subject, and to what happens to the people who get caught in the middle. That was the stupidest thing I can possibly imagine for them to do, but it's extemely telling of how the debate really isn't just about immigration and jobs and economy. It is about cultural identity, and that is an issue that goes beyond immigration.

HH: But you know why they did that? They were waiving a red flag in front of the Republicans. That's all it was. It was designed to bring the Minutemen out of their closet with their guns going, proverbially, they don't have guns. It was designed to send Laura and other talk show hosts into orbit, and it did. It was designed to get exactly this sort of meltdown, but I'll tell you, I think the meltdown, in the final analysis, because it focuses on security, is going to help Republicans again.

JL: I think so, too, because what that does is the people in the middle see this, and it doesn't just waive a red flag to Republicans. It waives a red flag to the people in the middle who don't necessarily have party affiliation, who just don't like that. Just do not like seeing that stuff.

HH: Okay. My summary, and I want to...

JL: ...because the sense of ingratitude that you get is...we demand that we be able to come here, speak the language, use all of your facilities, pay no taxes, and also, we want the country back. After that, we can talk.

HH: Democrats see illegals, and they see votes.

JL: Yeah.

HH: Some Republicans see illegals, and they see labor. A lot of Americans, left, right and center, see illegals, and they see security threat.

JL: Yup.

HH: So how does this debate play out, Lileks?

JL: (laughing) With the usual, messy, inconclusive result. I mean, at the end of this, do I think we're going to have a big wall? Do I think we're going to have increased security that makes everybody happy? Do I think we're going to have a path to legitimacy that takes tens of millions of illegal immigrants, and has them queue up to get their cards? No, I don't.

HH: All right. Now James, let me ask you. Did you listen to the Ware interview?

JL: I did. It was fascinating.

HH: What did you think?

JL: Well, the part that was godsmacking was the bit that he couldn't really tell you whether or not things under Krushchev were better than things under Stalin, because that really is the heart of it here, isn't it?

HH: Yup.

JL: I mean, it's messy now, it's going to be messy for a while. But the point is, there are degrees of awfulness here. And if you're not concentrating on the degree of awfulness that Saddam's regime represented, and would have represented in the future if it had remained in power, then you don't have the...you're not presenting the context in which these things are happening, and the context of what success means. I found that...and again, the brave man, and I can get away from the whole chicken hawk thing, but you know, here I am, chicken journalist. I'm not over there doing what he's doing, but that bothered me. That inability to say what exactly needs to be done, I found a bit distressing.

HH: Always a pleasure, Lileks. www.lileks.com, America.

End of interview.

Posted at 10:30PM PST

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Wednesday, March 29

Mark Steyn, a legal immigrant, on the issue of illegal immigration.

03-29steyn.mp3

HH: And joining us on Wednesday as opposed to his normal date on Thursday because of my travel schedule, columnist to the world, Mark Steyn. Mark, welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show.

MS: Good to be with you, Hugh.

HH: Mark, let's start with the issue that is raging in Washington, D.C., the McCain-Kennedy bill, the immigration issue, and the meltdown among Republican over it. What's your assessment of what's going on there?

MS: Well, you know, I think there is a big problem with immigration. I'm personally always reluctant to speak about it, because I belong to that very, very tiny, tiny, tiny demographic of documented immigrants. And judging from that parade in Los Angeles the other day, there's far fewer of us than there are of the other kind.

HH: Yes, that's true.

MS: And if you talk to legal immigrants, they're the ones who are the most resentful of this whole illegal business, because we're the ones, we pay the huge fees to immigration lawyers, we filled in all the paperwork. I've stood in line at these dreary government offices to get these stupid cards and these stupid government numbers, to go through the whole process officially. And everyone whose done that is resentful to the idea that somehow if you just make it across the border, and you get here, you can stay here, and half the state governments in this country will do what they can to make your situation as painless as possible, and the public schools...I'll give you a small example of schools. If you're a legal immigrant, and you enroll your children in a local grade school, they want to know whether they've had all the shots, you know, for this and that.

HH: Sure. Vaccinations.

MS: If you're a legal immigrant, you have to then, you're faced with then getting the documentation out of whatever country you happen to have come from. And sometimes, that can be difficult, because they give them different things at different times, and the school nurse will give you a lot of harrassment. If you actually just say okay, scrub that, they're not legal immigrants, I want them redesignated as illegal immigrants, then you won't be asked for any paperwork. It's a lot easier. The problem at the moment is that it's a rational decision, coming into this country, to be an illegal immigrant. And that is the problem.

HH: Mark Steyn, I don't know what year you emigrated, but you ought to go back and get a refund if this thing passes, that's for sure. My question is, though, we've got 11 to 15 million illegals. It's a complicated problem. We're not going to throw them out of the country. But given that, is the first thing we should do secure the border? Or is the first thing we should do legalize or regularize, or use any euphemismize that you want, the 11 to 15 million?

MS: Well, no. I think if you're going...as you say, there is a problem. You've got a population that is basically four times the size of the average European Union nation...

HH: Right.

MS: ...living in the United States illegally. Four times the size of the population of Ireland, say. Two or three times the size of the population of Denmark or Norway. So I think the first thing you have to do is say well, that is a problem, but before we deal with that, before we come up with some way of finessing that, we will secure our borders. I mean, I do think this is a national security issue, because when I hear this sort of pseudo-isolationist talk that comes out from many people on the right particularly, I say well look. You've got a country here that can't even secure its borders against two relatively benign states, yet now you're saying you'll be able to tell the whole world to go to hell, and that Iran and Iraq and Afghanistan doesn't matter, and the whole place can go to hell. You can't even enforce your border against some sleepy Mexicans and wily Canadians. And America has to be able to demonstrate...sovereignty begins at the border. You don't have a nation if the nation doesn't have borders.

HH: Now Mark Steyn, I understand why Ted Kennedy and liberal Democrats want to naturalize and legalize, and then get voting, the 11 to 15 million whom they perceive as their voters. I understand that. They might be as wrong as Gladstone was about the enfranchisement of the late 1870's, but I do not understand why John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Arlen Specter, and Mike DeWine want to go out of order, leaving the border unsecure, but getting to naturalization or amnesty first. How do you explain McCain?

MS: Well, I think a lot of Republicans on this issue have, are operating between what they see as two pincers. One is that if you come out strongly against immigration, illegal immigration, you're seen as somehow being quasi-racist by the media. So you lose a lot of your good...if you're an anti-immigration Republican, you lose a lot of whatever good press you won. And we've seen, particularly in the case of Lindsey Graham, that that's very important to him. And at the same time, there is no doubt that there is a constituency in the Republican Party that thinks that somehow the economy is dependent on this huge flow of illegal immigrants. Again, that's something that is, i think, repugnant to legal immigrants, because if it's an economic issue, then certainly this country should be capable of devising swift, efficient, safe, secure legal immigration to get them in here. But the idea that somehow letting people annex different industries, stage by stage, in order to artificially depress the cost of operating those industries as a conservative position, I think is ludicrous.

HH: But I go back to McCain, Mark Steyn, because first, there was McCain-Feingold, then there was the Gang of 14, and now we have McCain-Kennedy. And it seems he will never not subjugate the interest of his party to his own perception of political self-interest. Is that fair? Or do you think he's just trying to do the best he can?

MS: No, I don't think that. I mean, my observation of John McCain, and I understand he's very popular with a lot of people in the United States. My observation of him during the 2000 campaign, the 2000 New Hampshire primary season, is that he is one of the most incredible narcissists on the political scene. And that basically, John McCain is very good at talking himself into believing that whatever position he adopts is, by virtue of the fact that he's adopted it, the sensible, sane position. That's certainly true of McCain-Feingold, and I think he'll do a similar job talking himself into it with this view of him on immigration.

HH: Narcissism is a word that came up much in my e-mail overnight in connection with a lengthy interview I did yesterday with Michael Ware, Time Magazine Baghdad bureau chief. Did you have a chance to see that, Mark?

MS: Yes, I did, and I thought it was an incredible interview. And in a way, incredible because I would imagine that nobody, no foreign correspondent for a major Western news organization would regard it as unusual. And that's what's so depressing. The bit where he was talking about yes, he's got contacts in Zarqawi's organization, and he's been taken on these privileged little trips to meet with them and all the rest of it, that's the complete opposite of...I don't know how you feel, Hugh. You probably feel the same way. But I felt gradually exhausted since September 11th, 2001, that it's very dispiriting trying to keep going in this phase of what is a very long conflict. And the reason I do it is because I want us to win. I don't particularly like journalism. I don't particularly like writing newspaper columns. I'm sick of having to make what I think should be an obvious case again and again and again. And I'd much rather pack it in and sit on my porch in New Hampshire and enjoy the view of the mountains. But I do it because I want us to win. And the idea that he has, this diseased sense that somehow just the story, the story is somehow how you demonstrate your journalistic integrity and purity, and might get you nominated for some prize that nobody cares about somewhere down the line, that's not what it's about. I mean, why does he want to be a journalist, if it's not to be on the right side of history. This is ridiculous.

HH: That's...there was a moral vacuum there, and the left is mocking the interview, suggesing that I was arguing that we are front line troops in the information war. I wasn't. I was suggesting that every civilian is invested in this, because of a hole in the ground three miles from here.

MS: Exactly, and that's where your left-wing detractors are missing the point, is that we're all, in a sense, we're all conscripted in this war. Those 3,000 people who died on September 11th, they weren't serving forces, they were just fellows who got up in the morning and went to work, or went to Logan Airport and got on a plane. And that's the thing. We're all conscripted in this war, whether we know it or not.

HH: I think you would rather be writing things like obituaries. I have to get to this obituary of this Telegraph columnist about whom I had never heard, but I read laughing out loud on the airplane East this week. It's in the Atlantic Monthly. People should run out and get it. Tell people about this guy. What an idiosyncratic writer.

MS: Well, Michael Wharton, who was a colleague of mine at the Telegraph in London, and he died in his 90's a few weeks ago, and he basically wrote this satirical column for fifty years in the Telegraph, in which gradually all the things that he satirized about eventually came true. You know, a lot of things we take for granted now, like bishops who believe, trendy bishops who believe in nothing, insane environmentalists, social workers who say we're all guilty. In a sense, he developed a lot of these features in the modern world as sort of satirical things in the early 60's, and then had the horror, as great satirists often do, of finding that they all came true.

HH: Yeah, he thought be was a humorist, but he turned out to be a prophet. It's a wonderful tribute to your colleague. I hope people pick up the Atlantic Monthly. Mark Steyn, columnist to the world, always a pleasure. www.steynonline.com.

End of interview.

Posted at 3:34PM PST

Senator Jon Kyl on the immigration debate.

HH: Joined now by Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, who is on the Judiciary Committee. I think he voted against the bill that passed out of Judiciary earlier this week. Senator Kyl, welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show.

JK: Thank you, Hugh. Great to be with you and your great listeners.

HH: Am I correct about your vote this week?

JK: Absolutely. There were six Republicans that voted against the bill, ten Republicans and all of the Democrats who voted for it.

HH: Now tell me a little bit about your thought process.

JK: Excuse me. Four Republicans and the Democrats who voted for it. I'm sorry.

HH: Did Sam Brownback vote for it, Senator Kyl?

JK: Yes, he did.

HH: Okay. Did Senator DeWine?

JK: Yes.

HH: Okay. I'm just so troubled by this, but tell me...

JK: Lindsey Graham and Arlen Specter were the other two.

HH: What was your thinking? Why could you not support McCain-Kennedy?

JK: First, the enforcement provisions were largely lifted from our bill. So they were fine. What was not fine were parts of the temporary worker program, and the way to deal with the illegal immigrants, both of which, instead of dealing in a temporary way, treated these folks as permanent legal residents, and put them on a path to citizenship. That's both unnecessary, and unwise in my view. And that's why I voted against it.

HH: All right. Now what do you think about fencing, Senator Kyl?

JK: Fencing works. It has certainly worked in California in the San Diego. It works in the urban areas, and one of the amendments that I got adopted was in the State of Arizona, to increase the amount of fencing that we have, primarily in the urban areas. There are three primary urban areas, and then to replace some of the existing fences...the fencing that exists, and to put in vehicle bollards in areas out in the middle of the desert where it's flat, and they run a lot of cars across there, so they can't get across with cars. Even though you wouldn't put a fence out there necessarily, but you sure want to keep vehicles from coming across.

HH: Now in that amendment, was that an amendment to McCain-Kennedy itself? Or is that an amendment that's been offered today?

JK: No, the underlying bill was a Specter bill. We did a lot of amending of that, primarily dealing with enforcement. This amendment that I just talked to you about was my amendment that was adopted onto that bill. Eventually, we came to the temporary worker sections, and how to deal with illegal immigrants already here. Those were dealt with by a substitution of the...or an addition of the Kennedy-McCain bill, which was adopted by the Committee, and then became the temporary worker and illegal immigrant sections of the bill. The part that dealt with enforcement remained intact.

HH: Now Senator Kyl, do you expect enforcement then to be a part of anything that gets through the Senate?

JK: Yes, I do. But we're only talking about one half of the enforcement. We're talking about enforcing the border. And I think those provisions will be pretty good. The part that...we don't have yet is the part that deals with interior enforcement, at the workplace, primarily. Those provisions have been written, but they are not inserted in the bill yet, because they were written by a different committee. I think they're going to be okay, but they're still a bit of a work in progress, and they are every bit as important as the enforcement at the border, because once you get sixty miles north of the border, you are home free. There were only three cases brought last year against employers who allegedly hired illegal immigrants. So you've got to have, for any system to work, regardless of what kind of temporary worker program you have, if you don't have good employer verification of eligibility for employees, you don't have anything.

HH: Now Senator Kyl, some people say the bill on the floor, which I'm calling McCain-Kennedy for want of a better term...

JK: It's McCain-Kennedy with stronger enforcement.

HH: Okay, well that's better.

JK: At the border, yeah.

HH: That's a step in the right direction.

JK: Yeah, at the border.

HH: Is it an amnesty bill?

JK: You know, I made a little speech today to our Republican colleagues. I said look, all of us are using rhetoric, and what we need to do is have a calm debate that doesn't characterize things, but describes them. I said you know, some things are bad enough if you just describe them. And so I'm not going to characterize. Others can draw their conclusions. I will say that I don't think it is fair for American workers to create a situation in which instead of bringing people here temporarily when you need them, and then not giving out temporary visas when the jobs aren't here, that that's not fair. It's not fair to immigrants like my grandparents, who waited a long time to come here, when they're waiting patiently in line, and in their case, it was Holland, but let's say Mexico or France or China or wherever it might be, for illegal immigrants to be able to get legal permanent residence, and be put on a path to citizenship. They do not go to the back of the line, contrary to what some folks said. The line is in Mexico, or El Salvador, or Holland, or wherever it might be. The line is not in the United States. So they're not going to the back of the line, they're staying right here in the United States. I don't think that's fair. And I don't think it's necessary, at least not for all of the people, because most of the people who came here didn't come here to be citizens. They came here to work. And I say as long as we have a job for them, that's fine. But make it a temporary work program, not a permanent legal residence.

HH: How long is that line in Mexico, Senator Kyl?

JK: It's about, and it varies with different countries as you know, it's about a five year wait right now. But another feature of McCain-Kennedy is to add dramatically to the quota of green cards, so that that backlog would disappear pretty quickly, or you'd use it up with illegal immigrants who are here already.

HH: Now one of the things I don't understand, just as a common sense approach to this, if you allow people to legalize in place, you'll never get them to leave even temporarily to register the correct way. But if you did, say, okay, if you're back in Mexico, and you apply within six months, we will pretty much guarantee you'll get a green card within two years, they would leave, wouldn't they, Senator?

JK: I think so. Again, I don't think that everybody who came here, came here to be here permanently. The Mexican government will tell you that they favor circularity, where people can come here, work for a while, and then return home. And a lot of the illegal immigrants surveyed, tell you that's exactly what they intend. So it's a mistake to assume that everybody that came to this country needs to become a citizen. Many do not, and they didn't come here for that reason, and they would be happy with a temporary work permit. Why not provide that for them?

HH: Now I've also received the objection that any fine that will be leveled will simply be paid by, or lent to the illegal by their employer, in order to keep them in place. In other words, that there will be no penalty for breaking the law.

JK: I think it is likely that in most cases, the penalty will be paid by the employer who needs the employee here. And it's no penalty to keep working. I mean, they say and the individual will have to continue to work for five years. Well, why did they come here in the first place, but to work. So it's not really a penalty. All it does is allow them to be in the United States while they're waiting the five years, rather than waiting for it in their home country. But again, that's on the assumption the individual wants to become a legal permanent resident. And I really think that a temporary work permit would be better, because it can fluctuate depending upon the economic circumstances here. If there are no jobs for people, then you don't want to issue more permits. If there are, maybe you want to issue more.

HH: Senator Kyl, we've got less than a minute. This seems to me to be like taking the helm of the Titanic and aiming for the iceberg, politically. I can't understand Senator DeWine. I'm hoping he gets re-elected in Ohio. I'm working for it. But I think they're really hurting the party. Is that awareness dawning?

JK: Everybody has to look at it through their own lens. The majority of Americans do not want to grant citizenship to people who came here illegally. They would prefer that these people return home, but they're willing to have a temporary worker program. And I think we can accommodate that with our bill. I think we do it the wrong way with the bill that passed out of the Committee.

HH: Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, good luck in your efforts to rally the majority of the Senate, and to get a bill passed. We need it, and yours makes sense.

End of interview.

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Tuesday, March 28

Time Magazine's Michael Ware from Baghdad.

03-28ware.mp3

HH: Joining me now live from Baghdad is Michael Ware, bureau chief for Time Magazine. Michael, welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show.

MW: Thanks, Hugh.

HH: Michael, we met each other courtesy of CNN on a couple of editions of Anderson Cooper's program last week. And I was intrigued as I read up on you, our acquaintance, Tim Blair, a mutual acquaintance, speaks very, very highly of you. Of course, that stands you in great regard in the American blogosphere, as Blair is much loved there. Can you give us a little bit of...

MW: Yeah, well Tim's a great guy. He's a good journalist.

HH: Yes, he is. Can you give us a little bit of your background, how you ended up in Baghdad, so people can get you focused on where you're from? Because you're Australian, and that obviously comes through in your voice. But let's get you to Time Magazine. Where were you before then?

MW: I'm actually a lawyer or an attorney by training. But after graduating law school, I only stayed in practice for one year after working in our court of appeal, then fell into journalism, working for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation newspapers in Australia, where I eventually covered the conflict in East Timor. After that, I took a job with Time Magazine in Australia, and then after September 11, I was sent to Afghanistan, where I stayed for over a year. And then as the war in Iraq approached, I entered Iraq through Iran, into the Kurdish North, where I hooked up with U.S. Special Forces, and the Peshmerga militia, and covered the Northern front line. Ever since then, I have essentially been living in Baghdad.

HH: So you are a long traveled war correspondent, having covered Afghanistan, Iraq, before that East Timor. And I think you were at the encirclement of Osama bin Laden, were you not? I think I read some of your dispatches from that as well.

MW: Well, I was in the Battle of Shah-i-Kot, the Operation Anaconda, which was fought in March, 2002. So I was in many of the engagements involving al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan. And in some of them later in Iraq.

HH: So Michael Ware, what do you think...and you've spent time with insurgents, too. That's very controversial reporting that I've read. Explain to the audience how you connected up with them, and how much time you spent with them in Iraq.

MW: Well, in the course of the past three years, I've had ongoing contact with different elements of the insurgency. It all began immediately after the fall of Saddam's regime in the early months of the occupation. I was doing a story which was looking at the invasion. I was trying to find out from the Iraqi commanders themselves what had happened on their side, what was the chaos like, what was it like as a dictatorship deteriorated, and dissolved before their eyes in the midst of this American attack. Now at that time, I met these men. They were Republican Guard commanders, members of the secret police, the intelligence service, the secret service, all manner of agencies, asking them what had happened to them during the war. Then as time went by, these men started to feel more and more disenchanted, more and more dishonored. And one by one, they started picking up arms, and in a very ad hoc fashion, started attacking passing American vehicles and so on. Then over time, they started to evolve. And I got to watch that with my own eyes, as they did take shape as the insurgency we've ultimately come to see today.

HH: Does that insurgency, in your opinion, have a command and control structure, a heirarchy that actually operates to give signals to attack? Or is it simply a series of guerillas that pulse attacks whenever possible?

MW: Well, it's very complicated in the sense that nothing is concrete. However, there are very clear command structures. The one thing to be said though is there's no one overreaching command, or supreme command. This is a very fractured insurgency. There's many different organizations fighting in many different ways, for many different reasons, from the Islamic Jihadis of al Qaeda, and the Islamic militants. So you see Iraq is but one theater in a global holy war. All the way down to former Iraqi army officers, you know, Baghdad's version of West Pointers, who are fighting what they see as a war of liberation against a foreign occupier, be he benign, or be he malevolent. Then you also have a mix in between, guys who fight today, but don't tomorrow. Some who fight for money, some who fight because their brother's just been killed, or their cousin has just been arrested. It's a very mixed bag, but yes, there's coordination. And even between these groups, even when there's rivalry, they still work together. And at the very least, they deconflict their operations, so as much as possible, they try to avoid overlap. That's the level of organization.

HH: Have you spent time with the jihadis?

MW: I have. I have. It's certainly not something that's simple to do at any time, particularly now. However, in the past, though, I have actually been with Zarqawi's organization on different occasions. I once was taken to a Zarqawi training camp, although I was not told that that's where I was going, or for quite a while, that that's where I was. I've been to some of their safe houses. I've received some of their propaganda materials. By the same token, trying to film them secretly in Baghdad, I was kidnapped by them, dragged out of my car, and a group of Syrian fighters for Zarqawi were preparing to execute me on the street here in Baghdad. So I've been with Zarqawi's people in a number of different forms.

HH: What happened with the Syrians who were preparing to execute you? Did they get a Federal Express package from Zarqawi saying don't shoot the Aussie?

MW: No, I think if it was coming from Zarqawi, it would be very different. I mean, he's...or his official spokesman has threatened me on one occasion directly, and on another occasion, indirectly, publicly, as a result of things I've written. So if it was coming from Zarqawi, I don't think I'd be talking to you now. What eventually saved me was some Baathist fighters in the area, these former military officers. They see themselves as nationalists fighting this great war of liberation. Now they might work with these Islamic militants of al Qaeda, but they don't share the same goals, and they don't like to fight in the same way. It came down to a turf war, and I was very fortunate to fall between the cracks of these two organizations, where one group was saying if you want to kill this guy, you kill this guy. But understand, that starts a fight with us. And eventually, the al Qaeda Syrians decided it wasn't worth it, and through very gritted teeth, after having said a Westerner comes in here and you expect us to let him leave alive, they finally relented and set me free. It was not a pleasant experience.

HH: Michael, can you quantify for my audience the amount of time you've spent with the jihadis, and the amount of time you've spent with the insurgents? And then I want to ask you some questions about both of them. And the reason I'm asking for the amount of time is to give some sense of depth of experience with those two very distinct groups.

MW: Yeah, they are markedly different, and I guess principally, the bulk of any time I've spent dealing in any way with the insurgency, the vast majority of it has been with the Baathists, the former military officers, these men who identify as nationalists, or as Iraqi Islamists, dealing with the Islamists of al Qaeda. That's much, much more difficult, and it's only been a fraction of my time.

HH: Has it been a couple of days? A week with the Islamists? Or a few months with the insurgents? Again...

MW: I mean, I don't know how I'd add it up. I mean, it's a meeting here, it's a meeting there. It's a morning spent with him here, it's an afternoon spent with them there. It's...I'm told to meet on the street corner, taken to a restaurant for what looked like dinner, and then whisked out to go and see something for a few hours. And it's always very confusing. You're often blindfolded. You're often shoved down in the back of a car. You're often driven around for what seems like hours just to confuse you. You're shifted from place to place. You're constantly kept disorientated and confused, and you're constantly being challenged and tested. I mean, on three occasions, I was present when a discussion took place about whether I should be killed or sold, or goodness knows what else, and my fate has rested in their hands while they talk about this around me in a language I don't understand. So it's very hard to quantify the exact amount of time one has spent in these kind of circumstances.

HH: Okay, indulge me, a lawyer, and you're a lawyer, so you know. I'm just trying to get a sense of it. Has it been five different times out with the jihadists and 20 different times with the insurgents? I'm not looking for minute counts here, but I am trying to get a sense of how often you'll cross over to the other side and spend time with them.

MW: Well, I suppose it's a matter of how you look at crossing over, too. But I mean, I guess I've dealt with jihadis in one form or another perhaps a dozen, couple of dozen times, and the Baathists, many, many times. I mean, to constantly reassess where these guys are, I mean, as military intelligence does, trying to take their pulse of how sophisticated they are, how under pressure they are, how well financed they are or aren't, how organized they are, what morale is like. You constantly have to keep dipping into the well to see where they are. So with the Baathists, with the military types, it's many, many, many times.

HH: Okay, let me put a floor on it then. At least 18 times with teh jihadists, and 30 or 40 times with the insurgents.

MW: Yeah, you could easily say that.

HH: That's a lot of time.

MW: Yeah.

HH: All right. So we've got a good grounding here. Now this brings me to the interesting issue that we talked about on CNN, and that is the morality of doing that. Why do you do that?

MW: Well, there's a number of reasons. I mean, you can look at it very, very cynically. One is know thy enemy. Now I cannot begin to tell you how much the American people, not to mention the Brits and the Aussies back home, have been significantly misled about the nature of the enemy. I mean, I've been at press conferences under the CPA. I've been at press conferences under the interim Iraqi government. I've been to press conferences under the current regime. I've listened to all manifestation of U.S. military spokesmen, of diplomats, of ambassadors, discuss and describe the enemy. And so often, it has been wrong. And it's either because these people don't understand what they're up against, or more likely, it's that these people are not telling the public the truth about them, about the fact that they're not just one homogenous group, that there are many different motivations. And that was a very, very valuable thing to come to understand, because it's led to the point now, that we see, where we have this Bush administration opening dialogue and negotiations with the more nationalist, or Baathist elements of the insurgency. So learning that this was not one homogenous, scary boogeyman was vital to not just my and the public's understanding, but also to military intelligence and this administration's. Look what it's led to.

HH: Do you think it's true that everyone has understood from the beginning that there were Iraqis who were nationalists, and that there were jihadists who were Islamists, who just simply want to kill? I think that distinction has been there, my gosh, going back to the first blows of the insurgency against the coalition forces.

MW: Well, that's not entirely correct. Remember these famous glib, sad excuses for expressions like the dead-enders who are out there fighting us. Well, these dead-enders are still putting 15-20,000 men in the field on any given day. You know what? Today the current average for attacks on coalition forces is about 74 attacks a day. Now only about one in four of those attacks is what anyone would consider effective. But nonetheless, there's 74 odd attacks, any given day, right now. You know how many there were a year ago? Pretty much the same. And the year before that? Not that much different. So this enemy that is out there, these dead-enders of 2003, are still putting something close to a division in the field, and maintaining their tempo of attacks.

HH: But I go back to the distinction...

MW: So I mean, we've been misled many, many times. And for the public to understand this, I think, is important.

HH: Now see, I don't want to...I'm actually interviewing not to quarrel with you, but just to get it understood.

MW: Yeah, I know.

HH: But I do think that that distinction between Islamists and insurgents has been well understood, and for a very long time. And I'd look for you to tell me when were you misled about that. But more importantly, going to the Islamists, about whom...you'll agree with me, they're evil. Won't you, Michael?

MW: Well, I certainly...I mean, one has to be careful that as the Islamic army of Iraq reminded just last week on Al Jazeera, the insurgent groups study very closely everything that we hear, say and write. And given that we're within their grasp, one always must be diplomatic. Suffice to say, it's very hard to relate to the goals or tactics that the hard-line Islamists employ.

HH: Now that's very interesting, because that would indicate that...and I understand it, but that fear is affecting your reporting, or your candor level.

MW: Well, it certainly affects the way you couch things. It doesn't stop you saying things. I mean, like I said for example, I came across a tape once of Zarqawi himself, on an audio cassette, instructing or giving a seminar to some of his recruits and fighters, somewhere outside of Baghdad. Now this was a tape that was meant purely for internal consumption, for ideological or for training purposes. Now by one means or another, that fell into my hands, and I published it. I published its contents. Now within that discussion, Zarqawi himself showed that there was great division between his organization and one of the leading Iraqi Sunni organizations, and you're hearing him criticizing this very important Iraqi leader. Now by me publishing that, that aired their dirty laundry. As a result of that, he threatened, or his organization threatened to kill me. I mean, one has to be careful about how you couch things, but it doesn't stop you reporting the facts.

HH: No, but it does, however, get to the question of whether or not media from the West should be...what's the right word, Michael Ware? It's not assisting, but providing information flow to the jihadis about whom I'm quite comfortable, and I think most Westerners are quite comfortable, just declaring to be evil, because they kill innocents, and that killing of innocents is evil, is it not, Michael?

MW: Well, absolutely. And I think you'll find that that's the source of one of the greatest divisions amongst all the insurgents here.

HH: And so, is it easy for you to do good journalism with the threat of reprisal hanging over your head, perhaps even greater, because you've been given access over and over again to the bad guys?

MW: Well, yeah, it's still more than able to be done. Nothing is easy in this country. But it's just like how when you're writing about, let's say, an American unit that you're embedded with. You get into some very heavy, some very nasty combat. And I've done that so many times, I can't even begin to count. And something happens, something that may not exactly play well back home. And yet, it's something that you know, well, people outside of this experience would never understand that. I mean, how do you relay that without betraying the trust and the confidence of the troops? And for some journalists, they have to bear in mind well, if I write a negative story about the military on this embed, will they give me another embed? So there's always these pressures from all the players. For example, I wrote a story last year that reflected very, very badly on the Iraqi government, or very significant parts of the Iraqi government. And I was discussing and exposing through documents smuggled out of Iran, their links to the regime in Tehran. Now that resulted in elements of the government showing up at my house, demanding the production of these documents, which clearly we refused to do. So you're always at risk from everyone, either directly or indirectly, through self-censorship or through direct intervention.

HH: Michael Ware, what is the difference between what you've been doing, especially with the jihadists, though to a certain extent with the insurgents as well, and say a World War II-era reporter making numerous trips to the German side to talk with the Nazis, and then coming back and being ambivalent about reporting on the Nazis, or being candid about the Nazis.

MW: Well, I mean, I think we're talking about very markedly different experiences. I mean, for example, during World War II, there was very clearly delineated front lines that simply were not crossed in a fashion like that. It wasn't a guerilla war. It wasn't an insurgency that's fought amongst the mix of a civilian population. So that simply wasn't able to be done. Plus, there was also a very great understanding about the nature of German expansionism, and German nationalism. Hitler had very much outlined his intentions for a decade before the war. So I don't think there was any great mystery there. There was no great unknown to the extent that there is here, that people just don't know what this war is really about. And getting to the bottom of that is extremely difficult, and requires you sifting through any number of filters that all of these players want to throw at you.

HH: But as you said at the beginning, the jihadis consider this to be one battlefield of a vast war. And the jihadis...

MW: Yeah, as does the West. Exactly.

HH: And the jihadis are very prolific in their statements from Osama through Zawahiri down to Zarqawi. So we really know what they're about. Given that you're arguing geography is the reason you do this, I want to go back to the nature of actually doing it, and whether or not if, in fact, in World War II, someone had been offered in Portugal an assistance from the Abwehr to go back and forth to Germany to visit various Nazi encampments or policies, would that have been acceptable in World War II, Michael Ware?

MW: Well, I think the values would be different back then. But let's think about it. What would be the value of doing that? I mean, imagine, okay, we know what we know about the German regime, or the Nazi party. We are inundated with their propaganda. We're listening to their chatter. We're getting their side of the story. Could you imagine having an objective view, go in and come out, and say this is what is really looks like? this is what it really feels like? This is what people in their quiet moments behind closed doors will actually tell you. Now imagine the value of that.

HH: So you would have encouraged such reporting, had it been possible in World War II?

MW: Well, I don't know. I wasn't around in World War II, so I'm not sure I'm really in a position to determine. All I can talk to about are the circumstances that have presented themselves to me, and the wars I've found myself in.

HH: I'm really fascinated by the question of whether or not it's ever good journalism to consort with the enemy in search of interesting stories. And there's not denying, Michael, where you get scoops. It's fascinating to read. You've got a great deal of courage, of physical courage, in doing this. So no one's denying that. I'm just wondering whether or not there's a line that you have in your mind reconciled yourself to crossing not once, but scores and scores of times, to report on the enemy, and whether or not that's a good thing. And you think it is, I think I hear you saying, because the public will not otherwise know what it is that you're reporting. Is that a fair summary?

MW: That is fairly accurate, and let's look at it this way. I mean, you're sitting back in a comfortable radio studio, far from the realities of this war.

HH: Actually, Michael, let me interrupt you.

MW: If anyone has a right...

HH: Michael, one second.

MW: If anyone has a right to complain, that's what...

HH: I'm sitting in the Empire State Building. Michael, I'm sitting in the Empire State Building, which has been in the past, and could be again, a target. Because in downtown Manhattan, it's not comfortable, although it's a lot safer than where you are, people always are three miles away from where the jihadis last spoke in America. So that's...civilians have a stake in this. Although you are on the front line, this was the front line four and a half years ago.

MW: Absolutely, and I think that's really the reason that a lot of us are doing what we're doing. I mean, it's because of that horror that so much has ensued. It is because of this fight that these people came and picked, that so much has happened. But I mean, what I'm saying to you is that if you think anyone would have the right to complain or to take umbrage at what I do, it would be the troops here on the ground. It would be U.S. military intelligence. It would be the U.S. military. You'd think that they wouldn't give me embeds, wouldn't you? You'd think that they wouldn't grant me backgrounders, or wouldn't take me out on special events. You'd think that they wouldn't give me access to the generals, or to military intelligence. You know, in this war alone, I've been in combat with virtually every kind of U.S. fighting force there is, from the SEAL's, to the Green Berets, to Delta, to Infantry, Airborne, Armored, Mechanized. I mean, I've been there, done that in combat. I've been in every major battle of this war, except from Najaf and the first battle of Fallujah. That includes the battle of Tal-Afar, the Battle of Samara, and the Battle of Fallujah, with front line units. I witnessed an event that the Pentagon subsequently asked me to write about as a witness, which is now a matter for the Congressional Medal of Honor nomination. And I am mentioned in that citation. So if anyone would have a problem with what I do in exploring the issues of this war, you'd think it'd be the military. Yet strangely, they don't.

HH: Michael Yon, as you recall on CNN, paid you great compliment for the way you've covered the war, in a way that he is frankly admiring of, as I am. But I would prefer that you not report on the insurgents, and I'm troubled by your insistance on many occasions that the coalition forces, the military, are lying to people. I'd like you to expand on that.

MW: Well, as I said, I've sat in briefings where...and I will describe for example, events that...this is the thing. What's the title of Phillip Knightley's book, that great time of journalism, the first casualty...and how the first casualty of war is always truth. I mean, for a start, even with the best of intentions, not everything on a battlefield is clear. A lot of things are very fuzzy, particularly at the end of it. Don't forget also that this is an information war. This is a propaganda war. This war, as, you know, insurgents said way back in 2003, isn't going to be won on the battlefield. It's going to be won on the air waves. It turns out it's going to be won or lost on the internet. So these things become critically important.

HH: Michael Ware, I'm interested in your...and stepping back for a second, because I'm fascinated by this. You've been there for five years. Did you think it was wise to invade Afghanistan? And did you think it was wise to invade Iraq, knowing everything that you know now?

MW: Okay, I don't think there was any choice whatsoever about Afghanistan. It simply had to be done. You could not allow an organization that had reached out and attacked Western interests like that to sit in its safe haven. Even if it could not be destroyed, and let's face it. Al Qaeda has not been destroyed, and some could argue it's morphed and evolved and changed, and in some ways, is stronger, and in some ways, is weaker. It could not continue to have that sanctuary. It had to be ousted. It had to have pressure put on it. And that's been done. But let's look at Iraq. Iraq is an entirely different kettle of fish. From the reasons publicly stated and privately expressed for the removal of this regime, to the manor of the planning, and then that execution itself. All of them, I believe, went awry, or were poorly done, the consequences of which we are now living with, three years down the track into this war, with more than 2,300 American men and women who have been killed here in uniform, with what? $250 billion dollars. At the end of the day, what do we have? We have the shakiest of governments here, which is more aligned to our stated enemy of the United States, a member of the axis of evil, than it is with the American forces who liberated them. So Iran has actually become stronger as a result of this invastion. Who else has become stronger? Well, al Qaeda. It's got a whole new branch here in Iraq it never had, hundreds if not thousands of new members it never had, and Zarqawi, who was a nobody in Afghanistan, is now the superstar of international jihad, and that's been acknowledged by the administration when they put a $25 million dollar price tage on his head, the same as Osama. The Iraq war stands markedly different to Afghanistan.

HH: Christopher Hitchens rejects in every particular the argument you just made about Iran being stronger now, and Zarqawi having been a nobody. But rahter than get bogged down, I just wanted to make you aware that people dispute you on that. I want to ask you...

MW: That's fine.

HH: Because we talked about this on CNN. Do you think Iraq is better off today, just...than it was under Saddam? Do you think that...

MW: Well, I was never here under Saddam. My period during Saddam's regime was in the Kurdish North, where with U.S. air cover, they've forged their own autonomous sanctuaries. So I never lived under Saddam, and I can only imagine what the horrors were like, and what the restrictions were like. All I can tell you that life here right now is extraordinarily difficult, and there's a lot of killing going on, and there's a lot of deprivation going on, and to be able to compare that to something I never saw is a bit difficult for me.

HH: Well, do you think the Russian people were better under Krushchev than they were under Stalin? Neither of us saw Kruschev or Stalin, but both of us...

MW: Yeah, I wouldn't have a clue, you know?

HH: You wouldn't have a clue? Really?

MW: No, not really. I mean, Stalin was the beast of all beasts, but you know, I'm not a student of Russian modern history, nor of the Cold War, on where the broad brush strokes...and I certainly don't hold myself out as expert enough to be able to comment on something like that. All I can tell you about is what I see, and what I experience. And what I know is the reality on the grounds here. Now was a vicious dictatorship removed? Absolutely. On a human rights basis, it has to have been a good thing. However, as the result of which, we've let a horrific genie out of the bottle, where 50 or 60 people are showing up dead every morning from an undeclared civil war that even the American ambassador now acknowledges is killing more people than the insurgency. Now that's something that was not here before, yet is here now. So I mean, it's an entirely different problem set that I really don't think can be competently compared like that. It's not that simple.

HH: Now this raises a question of whether or not American journalists generally, and perhaps you specifically, Michael, have an investment in describing this as a genie out of the bottle, have an investment in ignorning, say, the benefits the Marsh Arabs have achieved, the benefits the stability, relative stability in Mosul...they just had an attack in Mosul, so it's relative stability, not great stability. What is it? 13 out of the provinces are generally sedate. It is Baghdad, Anbar, the Syrian desert there, that are the terrible places of great conflict. And while 50 to 60 bodies a day is a horrible toll, Mark Steyn argues that on a net, there are 100,000 Iraqis more alive every year that Saddam is gone, than every year this insurgency goes on. Does that not make a difference in your understanding of the conflict?

MW: Well, I mean, like I said, it's very hard to compare. If 100,000 more people are alive, then clearly, that's a blessing. How we come to those numbers I wouldn't have a clue. But I mean, what I can say is that I, for one, certainly have no investment in beating one administration, or favoring one party over the other. I'm an Australian who reports for an American magazine. I have no stake in your political process whatsoever. I just call it as I see it. I mean, there's nothing to be gained for someone like me. And look, there's enough people here that I've certainly come across in the three years, and who have been writing or publishing or broadcasting, that would be more than happy to tout the successes. Yet those people either can no longer be here because of the security, or I found that a lot of them like some of the soldiers I know, are just being warn down by the horror and drudgery of this place, to the point where that perhaps their views have changed. So I mean, I can't speak for every journalist. All I can say is that I don't personally have a liberal, anti-administration bias. And I can't say that I say that many of my colleagues do.

HH: I want to let you go, because you've stayed up late. I've just got three quick more questions. CNN's Eason Jordan wrote a piece after the war began, apologizing for the conduct of CNN under Saddam, not reporting on his horrors, having been afraid of getting people killed, having been in essence, a hostage to Saddam's regime. Some of the stuff we discussed earlier in this has a hint of you're being a hostage of the insurgents at this point, because they're watching you very clearly. Under those circumstances, Michael Ware, shouldn't you come home?

MS: Well, I don't know. Have you been listening to what I said? I mean, I said to you that regardless of any of these difficulties, I've still reported in such a way that Zarqawi's given me treatment that he's given no other journalist. And I don't know how many other journalists he's directly threatened. So I don't know that I'm exactly that hostage to him or his agenda.

HH: Well, CNN was also given access, and it was also threatened, and it was also affected, but it was only revealed by Jordan after Saddam was toppled, the extent to which CNN had been impaired in its journalistic integrity. So you're telling me we don't have to worry about you pulling an Eason Jordan on us, and telling us down the road you couldn't quite cover what the insurgents were doing, because they were...not just for you, but for your staff. That's what Eason Jordan said. It was his Iraqi stringers that would have been executed. There's no issue like that with you?

MW: Well, actually, in the course of this war, we've had a translator assassinated four blocks from our house. Our house has been hit by, or subject to car bombs twice. I've had two of my stringers who deal with the insurgency kidnapped, one of whom was rescued by the Marines when they overran Fallujah in November, 2004. The other one was tortured for five days as al Qaeda tried to get information on me before he was finally released, when they became convinced that he was innocent of any kind of crime. I had another translator of mine, who when al Qaeda targeted him to get information on me and our operation and he refused, they blew up his car. We had to fly him to Jordan, get last ditch surgery to save his arm, and he's now been granted refugee status in Australia. My staff have been in firefights. Their lives have been threatened. I'm not sure that that's been an easy ride.

HH: I'm not saying it is. I'm saying that it might weigh very heavily, and in fact, so heavily upon you, even as did similar circumstances upon Eason Jordan, that it might impair your ability to report. And you're telling me it doesn't?

MW: Well, it hasn't so far, and after all that we've been through, we're still out there revealing things about the insurgency that no one else has been able to reveal, and that is still being recognized by the U.S. military. So despite it all, we're still in there punching.

HH: My last question. Zarqawi.

MW: Yeah.

HH: He was there before the war began. He had come back and forth to Afghanistan. In your dealings with the insurgents, had they dealt with him prior to the war?

MW: No. I did uncover some documents, however, that referred to his presence, here in some form. Now it seemed to be covert and unofficial, and one can only guess. However, I did receive a document written by one of his right hand men, a man who was killed in 2004 by a U.S. JDAM in his vehicle, who wrote an after action report of the first battle of Fallujah, in the course of which he said well, you know, Abu bil-Bloggs (phonetic spelling) was killed at this point. You know Abu bil-Bloggs. He was the one who saw Zarqawi in Baghdad before the war.

HH: Did you publish that?

MW: Yeah.

HH: In Time Magazine.

MW: Yeah.

HH: Oh, that's interesting. I missed that one. I have to go back and find that. That's a very significant find. What about the weapons of mass destruction...I lied. I got one more. The weapons of mass destruction, Michael Ware. What do the insurgents tell you about what happened to them, or what the story is there?

MW: Well, I did a weapons of mass destruction story back in 2003, and back then, most of the people I was dealing with were not insurgents. I believe some of them probably went on to become insurgents. But back then, they were former Republican Guard, officers, former scientists, former secret police of intelligence officers, whose job was to monitor the U.N., or monitor the scientists. Basically, what all of them tell me was that all the stuff had been destroyed in the early 90's, just as Saddam had told the U.N., and the CIA subsequently found to be true, that whatever wasn't destroyed was so rotten it was unusable, that if we'd had it, by goodness we would have used it. The other thing was that the whole weapons industry, including the WMD industry that Saddam had mothballed, was riddled with corruption. So a lot of these guys were saying, you know, some of these big characters in the regime, were selling Saddam on the idea of this wonder-weapon, that actually never really existed. They fired once, it didn't really work. They dodgy up the report. He throws $10 million at them, which they all pocket. So that was what I learned from regime figures about WMD.

HH: Michael Ware, I've kept you up late, and now I want to let you go. But I hope we can get a return conversation. It's been fascinating. I appreciate your candor, and wish you God speed, and safe travels around Baghdad.

MW: Thank you very much. It's been a great pleasure. Take care, Hugh.

HH: Thank you, Michael.

End of interview.

Posted at 6:05PM PST

Senator John Cornyn on the immigration bill, and his concerns over the Taliban Yalie.

HH: I'm now joined by Senator John Cornyn of the great state of Texas. Senator, great to have you back, and congratulations on calling Yale on the Yale Taliban.

JC: Well, thanks, Hugh. Good to be with you. It's pretty unbelievable to me. I guess I'm still waiting on a written response from Secretary Chertoff, and I'm going to be briefed by the FBI soon on this. And hopefully, we'll be able to find out exactly what happened.

HH: It does underscore the laxity of our immigration laws, when the former deputy foreign minister of the Taliban can wander in on scholarship to Yale.

JC: Well, that's exactly right, and it would appear to be in violation of at least two laws that Congress recently passed, the so-called Real I.D. Act, and also other provisions of the intelligence reform laws that we passed just last year.

HH: Well, I'm glad you're doing it. Please keep us posted, and if the Secretary is wise, we'll get some quick answers on that. Now Senator Cornyn, you're on the Judiciary Committee. You are recognized as one of the experts on this immigration issue. I think that the McCain-Kennedy bill is like the Titanic aiming at the iceberg when it comes to the Republican Party. What do you think of it?

JC: Well of course, I voted against the McCain-Kennedy bill that was adopted in the Judiciary Committee yesterday, and I'm committed on the floor of the Senate, when we start the debate as early as tomorrow, to seek amendments that will strike some of the most egregious provisions, particularly the one that would essentially let people who have come to the United States in violation of our immigration law, breaking line ahead of those who have patiently waited and complied with the laws, and tried to immigrate legally. The so-called guest worker program, which is really just an alternative path to legal permanent residency and citizenship, I think, is flawed. It should be replaced by a temporary worker program, once we're able to determine we've secured our borders, and we've got worksite verification. But unfortunately, the bill that passed the Judiciary Committee just provides an alternative path to citizenship.

HH: Senator John Cornyn of Texas is my guest. Senator, it seems to me perplexing when 70 members of the House have sent a letter to their colleagues in the Senate, when the American people are overwhelmingly for not a border-length fence. We know we don't need that. But the House passed 700 miles of fencing, and Senator McCain says oh, we don't need that, virtual security is fine. When people want to protect their home, or Israel wants to protect their country against terrorists, they don't build virtual fences. They build real fences.

JC: Well, I know that the House has taken a tough stand when it comes to border security, and I think the principle is one that is absolutely important. And we are, I would say if there is some bright light in the bill that passed the Judiciary Committee yesterday, it is that it was built on the foundation of legislation that Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona and I introduced, that provides 10,000 more boots on the ground, doubles the size of the border patrol, and uses modern technology that the Department of Defense is using along the Syrian and Iraq border to detect intrusions, and unmanned aerial vehicles that will give us some eyes and ears a long way out, and help border patrol control the border. But there's a lot that needs to happen to improve the bill before, certainly before I can vote for it, and I'm sure that unless it's vastly improved, that it will be dead on arrival when it hits the House.

HH: Now Senator Cornyn, tell us a little bit about this process, and how long it's going to take. How long is the immigration bill debate going to actually take on the floor of the Senate, moving towards a conclusive vote on what to send to the House?

JC: Well, the Majority Leader, Bill Frist, controls the floor schedule, and he's given us the best part of two weeks for this debate and this process. And you know, what I would encourage your listeners to do, and your readers, is to contact their Senator and let them know how they feel, because I have the very distinct sense that what we're hearing in Washington is not what people across the country are saying, and what they really feel about this issue. And I think it's very important. But to answer your question, two weeks on the floor of the Senate, then we'll go, assuming a bill is passed, which it may or may not be, then it would go to a Conference Committee with the House of Representatives. That could be scheduled in a matter of weeks. It could take a matter of months. There's no time limit on it, but it would have to be done before the end of the year, or else they'd have to start all over again.

HH: Now help us understand some of the politics of this, Senator Cornyn, because I'm from Ohio. I really like Mike DeWine. I want him to win re-election. I write about it in the new book, Painting the Map Red, how important that seat is to us. But then he goes and votes for this bill, and it just cuts the heart out of the base. It is almost indifferent to what people in Ohio, and I broadcast in Ohio, I'm from Ohio. They don't like this bill. What is the political calculus for Senators DeWine and Graham and Specter, and of course, John McCain on this?

JC: Hugh, Mike DeWine, you're right. He's a prince. We need to get him back in the Senate for another term. And I guess I'd feel more comfortable having you ask him directly. I hope he'll listen to you, and his other constituents in Ohio, about how strongly they feel about this. But this is a strange issue, the whole immigration issue, because it cuts across so many different other segments of society. For example, I visited with the Archbishop of Houston on Saturday, who asked me quite directly, if I would support McCain-Kennedy bill. And I said respectfully, I can't do that, because I believe it repeats a mistake that occurred in 1986, when there was an amnesty declared. So there are a lot of different people, employers, the Chamber of Commerce wants McCain-Kennedy, because they believe that it provides them a source of labor that they need in order to keep doors open. So it really is a very unusual combination of factors.

HH: Thirty seconds, Senator Cornyn. Do you foresee the political pratfall that I am if we get this wrong?

JC: Absolutely. This is a test for the Republican Party, and in a larger sense, it's a test for the country.

HH: John Cornyn of Texas, thank you, Senator. We hope to check back with you repeatedly as the next two weeks brings this most important debate front and center in the United States Senate.

End of interview.

Senator John Thune on the immigration bill and his recent trip to Iraq.

HH: Joining me now to discuss, well, the devastating blow to the Republican Party underway on the Hill, and the war, Senator John Thune of the great state of South Dakota, no stranger to upset wins and hard politicking, and also no stranger to Iraq. John Thune, welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show.

JT: Good to be on, Hugh.

HH: Senator, you were in Baghdad last week. Can you tell us about the circumstances of your trip, and what you saw there?

JT: We were actually in Baghdad, Fallujah, and down in Babel province in Hilla. And I was there a year ago, and so it was interesting to get an assessment of where things are. One of the reasons of being there was to press the case with the Iraqi officials to get this national unity government formed, but secondly, to take the measure of how much progress they've made on getting the Iraqi security forces in a position to defend the Iraqi people. And that was the most noticeable change from my last visit there. They have come a long way. About 75% of the operations now, they are conducted independently by the Iraqis, or with them in the lead, and the U.S. troops supporting them. So they're making good headway on that front, and that, as you know, is one of the key conditions that needs to be met before we can beging to ease up on our presence there.

HH: Senator Thune, next hour I'm talking with Michael Ware, Baghdad bureau chief of Time Magazine, for almost the entire hour. He's something of an alarmist about conditions in Iraq, and the violence escalating, and fifty bodies a night, and the prospects for peace dimming. Do you share that pessimism?

JT: I think that it shifted somewhat after the Samara bombings, because now you've got this sectarian violence, where Sunnis are attacking Shiites, Shiites are attacking Sunnis. But frankly, Hugh, I think that the conditions are there for...everybody talks about civil war. That's clearly not the case today. The key is going to be forming a national unity government, and we made it clear to the Iraqi officials on no uncertain terms, that that absolutely has to happen, and it has to happen in a timely way. And they're very confident. They're very optimistic that they will see that government come together, and that when it does, a lot of the sectarianism, and some of the sectarian violence will come to an end. I don't expect that that's going to happen entirely, but I think it will go a long ways toward tamping down a lot of the violence that we're seeing there today.

HH: What's the morale of the troops, Senator Thune?

JT: Yeah, I've got to tell you, I couldn't be prouder of our troops, and people in this country, irrespective of whether they support the war there or not, need to support these men and women. They are incredibly accomplished at what they do, they're very dedicated, and they just make America proud. And I'll tell you, they're very upbeat. You talk to troops over there, I had a chance to visit with South Dakota troops. Of course we visited with the Marines at Fallujah. They believe they're making a difference, they believe that they're going to complete the mission there, and they need to have support from people in this country.

HH: John Thune, in Fallujah, of course, the site of a the fierce battle of November, 2004, which we often reference here, because the family of J.P. Blecksmith is a friend of mine, and I've had his sisters at the law school at which I teach, and I had a chance to meet his father. Is Fallujah being rebuilt? Is Fallujah a deserted city? What's Fallujah like now?

JT: Well, it's bereft of all the terrorists that created that web that we had to go in and root out. And it's, I think, remarkably improved. The Marines are now more concerned about Ramadi, where the terrorist organizations like Zarqaw are trying to set up an operation, and they're consistently having to go in there and lead operations. Many, I should say, the operations are now being led by Iraqi security forces. But they feel very good about the progress that's being made. You get into that Anbar Province, they've got two full divisions, they've got Iraqi police forces that are constantly taking over more and more battle space, and that part of Iraq, remarkably, Hugh, is dramatically improved from where it's been in the past.

HH: That's a real testament to the people who have sacrificed so much for Fallujah. Senator Thune, let's turn to the circumstances that confront the Republican Party. I'm out on a book tour preaching dire warnings because of a variety of circumstances, primarily simple indifference to the math, and a lack of energy on the Republican side. But now, Senator McCain teaming with Senator Kennedy and others to bring forward this bill, I think it puts the majority in peril. Your take?

JT: Well, I think that clearly, we have some challenges ahead of us. I think there's a lot of fatigue, Hugh, among Republicans, too, over the war, because of the constant bombardment, day to day, from the media, and the bad news that's coming out of Iraq. But you're right. On the issues like fiscal responsibility, immigration, we really need to provide strong leadership, and I think people need to know when it comes to border security, that we're serious about it. We have to enforce our borders, we have to as a matter of national security, let the people in this country know that we are serious about cracking down on what has become a rampant problem at the borders, and that's illegal immigration. So the bill that we'll have on the floor will have that component. We will deal with the border security, but there are a whole other range of amendments that will be offered, dealing with the status of people who are already here, and I can't predict today how that debate's going to come out. But I think you're right. We have a lot riding on it.

HH: Now one of the debates, and the one I focus on before everything else, is the issue of the fence, in its both practical and symbolic. Others say oh, we need a virtual fence, and I point out, no one ever puts a virtual fence around anything that matters to them. They don't have virtual fences around prisons, and they don't have virtual fences in Israel to prevent Hamas terrorists from entering. Fences are fences, and they can be patrolled. Is the Senate not going to endorse the House version of a fence, John Thune?

JT: I don't know if the Senate, if there are the votes in the Senate to...we won't start with the House bill. There is a lot of support for a fence, and in some cases, for a physical fence. But there are different, I guess what I would say opinions as to whether that needs to be completely a physical fence, or whether that is partly physical fence, partly a so-called virtual fence, or technological fence, however you want to refer to it. But I think that will be a point of debate in the Senate, and I suspect it'll continue to be a point of debate getting into conference with the House, because the House has that provision in there.

HH: It has 700 miles.

JT: It's a mixed bag in the Senate.

HH: Now what is the sense of your majority, John Thune? Some judges are still stuck, Terry Boyle, Brett Kavanaugh. They're languishing there despite the Gang of 14's deal. There's no permanent tax relief. Is anything happening there?

JT: Well, we've got to get movement on permanent tax relief. We're going to have votes on estate tax coming up. We're going to have votes on some health care reforms that have been languishing for a long time. We have, as you know last year, moved some judges, but we need to move more judges. I think that in years divisible by two, people begin to quit paying attention to sometimes the work ahead of us and the agenda, and start focusing on the elections. But I see the two as connected. If we don't have an agenda that's forward looking, and addresses the issues that people in this country, and particularly Republican voters in this country care about, we're not going to keep the majority. So we just flat out have to get some things done in the next few months to demonstrate to the people of this country that we deserve to govern.

HH: John Thune, two questions. One, how much are you hearing on immigration? And two, are your Republican colleagues up for election, or trying to take a Democratic seat, using you, or finding you available to help them in their campaigns?

JT: I have done some things for some of my colleagues around the country, particularly helping them raise money. I hope to be active as the year wears on in being out there. And so I will be...what was your first question again?

HH: The intensity of the public response to the immigration debate.

JT: Well, I think it really, in my state, the people care about it. We've got both sides of that deate engaged in South Dakota. But I do believe it is a white hot political issue that it's to our peril if we don't address it.

HH: John Thune, always a pleasure to talk to you, Senator. Thank you so much, and we'll talk to you soon.

End of interview.

Posted at 10:30PM PST

Wall Street Journal's John Fund with an update on the Taliban Yalie, and comments on the immigration debate.

Once again, Jed Babbin guest hosting for Hugh.

03-27fund-1.mp3

JB: Right now, at the risk of being serious, let's get back to today's news, the whole thing of, the whole wonders of the schoolyard. The wonders of the schoolyard up at Yale University. Joining me right now, from Opinionjournal.com, the indispensible John Fund. John, how are you? And what's the latest on the Yale Taliban?

JF: Well, it's fascinating, because Yale is starting to buckle. What's happened is the president of Yale, Richard Levin, has decided that he's going to yank the decision as to whether or not Rahmatullah Hashemi, the former Taliban ambassador at large, and bon vivant, and apologist for that murderous regime, is going to be a sophomore member of the Yale class, taking it out of the Admissions Department, and put it right into his office, where he's going to make the final decision.

JB: Really? So maybe the general public ought to make its opinion known to Dr. Levin, whose...I just happen to have his e-mail address, ladies and gentlemen. If you want to express to Dr. Richard Levin your opinion on them having a former Taliban minister at Yale, maybe you want to write to richard.levin@yale.edu. John, what's going on with this, though? I mean, they've got this guy here. You've got the most famous woman in Afghanistan coming to the campus to protest this?

JF: Well, she was scheduled to give a speech on Afghanistan in general, but of course, this controversy erupted just before her arrival last Thursday. Her name is Malalai Joya, and she is a 27 year old women's rights activist, and member of the Afghan Parliament. She's the same age as Rahmatullah Hashemi, the Taliban activist, and she was not happy. I have to tell you, I have never seen such a searing condemnation of someone from a podium in years. She got up and she said, "It is disgusting, and an insult that he should grace the halls of Yale University." She said, "It is an insult to every Afghani. It is an insult to every American's sense of idealism and human rights." And she said, "He is a germ who should be removed from the campus."

JB: Now she's got some standing to say this, right? I mean, what's her background? She's a member of the Loya Jirga, as you said, the Afghan Parliament. But she ran some sort of an underground railroad for women during the Taliban years?

JF: She went back to Afghanistan during the Taliban, and she ran an underground school for women, because education was forbidden for women after the age of 10. And she braved her life to try to fight for her people. At the same time, Rahmatullah Hashemi was apologizing for a regime...well, step back. Jed, I have to tell you. There was a film shown before her talk, one of the most haunting films I've ever seen. It went to the area where they had those giant Buddhist statues that the Taliban blew up five years ago, just before 9/11?

JB: Yes, right.

JF: And they had a woman there who said they came by and they tried to exterminate my entire tribe. "From hundreds of women here, not one has a husband. From a hundred children, just one still has two parents. They bulldozed houses with women and children inside. They cut off women's breasts." And this is the same group that's now fighting guerilla war in Afghanistan, killing American soldiers. One of the people at this speech last week was Natalie Healy, who lost her Navy SEAL son to the Taliban last year. She was there to protest, and say how dare Yale dishonor American service men and women by having the minister of a regime which is still fighting them.

JB: Now John, has Yale's president, Richard Levin, condescended to meet with this brave SEAL's mom?

JF: Yes. She was driving down from her home in New Hampshire to Yale. She called and asked for a meeting. He had his office call back and say he would be willing to meet with her, but she had to get there by 1:30, so she sped up. She was tied up in traffic. She got there about fifteen minutes late, and he'd already left the office for the day.

JB: Wow. So...

JF: But a public affairs officer did meet with her and hear her complaint.

JB: Well, whoop-de-do. Is she going to take another crack at this? Is he actually going to come down and meet with her?

JF: Well, you can call Natalie Healy up in Exeter, New Hampshire, and ask her. I simply don't know.

JB: I think we should.

---

03-27fund-2.mp3

JB: John, recap that for us. Dr. Levin himself is going to decide whether Hashemi is going to be part of the Yale student body next year?

JF: Hashemi is applying for sophomore status, Class of 2009. He's also going to be applying for financial aid, because apparently his backers from the foundation that was supporting him have pulled out. So Mr. Levin, President Levin, has taken the decision away from the Admissions office, put it into his office. In the next few weeks, he will be deciding whether Taliban Minister Hashemi stays at Yale, and all of those other people who were worthy, and Afghan women who were applying, I wrote about them today at Opinionjournal.com...

JB: Yes.

JF: ...whether they'll keep being frozen out.

JB: Wow. Well, I think we all ought to just pick up our phones and call Dr. Levin and let him know our opinion. (203) 432-2550, or you can e-mail him. richard.levin@yale.edu. All right, enough said about that. John, talk to me about what's going on in Congress on this illegal immigration bill. We have the House taking some very strong action, apparently creating a new crime for being an illegal immigrant here in the United States...

JF: Well, making it a felony rather than a misdemeanor.

JB: Right. Making it a felony. And we have the Senate doing something today. I don't think anybody really knows entirely what the heck they did, least of all them. But now something's going to go to the floor of the Senate. What do you think is going to come out of this mess?

JF: Well, the House has an enforcement only bill. The Senate has a bill that combines some enforcement with the beginnings of a guest worker program, and waters down a lot of the House provisions. But the real action wasn't in Congress, Jed. It was in Los Angeles and other cities, where hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, and legal immigrants, turned out to protest any Congressional action on immigration. And I have to tell you, I think this was a watershed. I am someone who is not for a dramatic crackdown on immigration. I'm not a Tom Tancredo type. Tancredo calls immigrants the scourge facing America. He wants to dramatically restrict legal immigration, when actually, there are a lot of high tech and other jobs where we need people legally to immigrate to this country.

JB: Heck yes.

JF: But that rally was just amazing. I mean, I saw a similar one in 1994, when Prop. 187 was being proposed. This is not good, because the rally featured hundreds and hundreds of Mexican flags, Guatamalan flags, El Salvadoran flags. And it was not like a St. Patrick's Day rally. This was a demonstration of solidarity with another country, another way of life. And regardless of what the people who were carrying the flags were thinking, the message they were conveying is these are people who have a different perspective on what it is to be an American, and what it is to remain in America.

JB: Well, it's more than that, John. Isn't it worse than that? I mean, what they're basically saying, they're planting the Mexican flag on our soil. They're saying hey, we own this. This is part of Mexico now. Deal with it, and too bad.

JF: Not all of them are saying that, but I'm telling you this. They certainly are allowing people to come to that conclusion. Now here's the problem. I personally believe that while people who come here to earn a living, pay their taxes, and many, many people do, put down roots, I think they contribute to our society. But anytime you have hundreds of thousands of people, illegal immigrants coming here, and you have the Mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, saying this bill is criminal, in other words, the bill that simply restates the fact that people shouldn't come here illegally, because they're cutting in line in front of all the people who are waiting patiently to get in legally...

JB: Sure.

JF: ...to himself say this bill is a crime, I mean, this is an abrogation of his oath of office as an elected official.

JB: Well, and that's absolutely true. But he will pay no penalty for that, John. We're talking about a situation here where Congress and not only this President, but the several before him, have not dealt seriously with this problem. what are we going to do? What kind of confidence can we have that even now, they're going to do anything seriously? I mean, talking about making this into a felony is nonsense. You've got 90,000 cases go through the federal courts every year. It's going to take a hundred years to put these people through the courts.

JF: Jed, I think there are two things that need to be done, and I'm going to disappoint some of your listeners here. I think one of the most important things we need to do is recognize that 30% of the people in federal prisons are non-citizens. Most of them are illegal aliens. We've got to find a way to send them back to Mexico. We also have to make sure that anyone who commits a crime, however small, here in this country, that's an automatic ticket for deportation. But as for all the millions of other people here, we have to have a comprehensive approach. It cannot just be enforcement only, and I'll give you an example, because a comprehensive approach that included guest workers did once work. Do you remember the Bracero Program?

JB: Yes.

JF: That Eisenhower put in?

JB: Absolutely.

JF: This is a program that took the number of arrests of illegal aliens on the border from 885,000, 885,000 in 1953, to 45,000 in 1959. And when Lyndon Johnson got rid of it because the unions pressure him to do so, we went from 87,000 illegal aliens arrested in '64, to 876,000 in 1976. The Bracero program, which brought in agriculture and other guest workers, and if people complied long enough and stayed long enough, they might be able to stay longer, that program worked. We can make it work again, because we now have much better technology, and much better border control implementation procedures.

JB: Well, John, I agree with you substantially. But I think that we've got to start first with controlling the borders. I don't believe we have much control on our borders, and if you look at what just broke...

JF: Well, Jed, the problem is, you cannot get...you know, Congress is the art of the compromise. You cannot get through Congress a bill that is guest workers and no enforcement, or just enforcement and no guest workers. It's not going to happen.

JB: Well, and maybe we need to do both. And I don't disagree with you, John. I think we need to have a guest worker program, and we need to have a means of deporting people forthwith who commit crimes here. But I think the basic bottom line is until we get control of security at the border, no matter what kind of guest worker program we have, nothing's going to work. It's not going to have any meaning.

JF: I agree.

JB: Well, I thought you'd come around. No, we are really in violent agreement as usual. John, thanks very much for joining us. Read him on Opinionjournal.com.

End of interview.

Posted at 9:00AM PST

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Monday, March 27

Michael Barone on the great immigration debate.

Sitting in for Hugh Hewitt today while he is on his book tour for Painting the Map Red, available at all fine booksellers and online at Amazon.com, former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Jed Babbin.

JB: Illegal immigration is the subject of the week, and joining me to talk about that, and a lot of other things right now, Michael Barone of U.S. News and World Report. Read his blog at USnews.com. And if you don't own a copy of the Almanac of American Politics, you just don't have the single most indispensible reference tool that will help you figure out what the heck is going on in Congress. Michael, thanks for joining us.

MB: Nice to be with you, Jed.

JB: Let's talk about this illegal immigration issue. We've got four or five, or half a dozen different bills being bandied about the Senate. It seems that they range from guest worker programs to amnesty, to declaring the illegal immigrants illegal and making it a felony. I mean, how is this going to play out? Are the Democrats going to win? Are the Republicans going to duck and hide?

MB: Well, I don't think it's purely a partisan issue. I think this is an issue that cuts across party lines to some extent, and that apparently was the case with the Senate Judiciary vote, which I gather was within the last hour. On it, you had four of the ten Republicans supporting some of the measures...of the legalization measures in the McCain-Kennedy bill. And evidently, some guest worker things. I'm not fully up to speed on this yet, as well as all eight, or just about all eight of the Democrats, and so you had six Republicans against. The posture of this thing now is it's going to the floor of the Senate tomorrow. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has said last week that he would not bring to the floor a Judiciary Committee bill unless it was supported by a majority of the Judiciary Committee Republicans. And in this case, is wasn't by just a narrow margin of 4-6. If one vote had switched, that would have been...met Frist's condition. So we'll go forward with the Frist bill, which is strictly a border security bill, similar to, but not identical with the one that the House passed in December. But given the margin, the apparent margin of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I think it's quite possible that some of these other provisions will be added by the majority voting in the course of the Senate debate.

JB: Now is that going to bring about some sort of filibuster? Our friend, Harry Reid, the leader of the Democrats, said that if there was something in the nature of the criminalization provision, he was going to mount a filibuster against it.

MB: Now I'm not clear if the Senate Judiciary Committee has the same kind of felony classification for people who've come across the border, or whether Senator Cornyn said that he...one of the more conservative Republicans on the Committee, that he favored a misdemeanor rather than a felony thing. So I'm not clear whether Senator Reid's characterization for the reasons that he would filibuster have been invoked by this bill. But I think to some extent, that is a little bit beside the point, because Reid's filibuster...you've got some Democrats there, including Edward Kennedy, whom I remember seeing sitting in the gallery of the Senate, watching him manage an immigration bill forty years ago...

JB: Wow.

MB: He was a little slimmer then.

JB: (laughing) Weren't we all, Michael.

MB: And not as gray, but...and he was doing a good job of it. Senator Kennedy, I think, wants a bill, and he may think that he has the votes on some of these provisions, and will want to bring it forward, and he's probably going to tell his Senate minority leader don't filibuster this thing. We've got the votes. And under Senate rules, typically, it's hard to prevent a Senator that's got considerable support from bringing forward an amendment that he wants to bring forward. You can do that in the House with the Rules Committee. You can't really do it in the Senate.

JB: Well, play it out for me, Michael. You're really more expert on this than pretty much anybody I have ever heard of, far less know. What is going to be in a bill which would benefit the Republicans this Fall, versus a bill that would benefit the Democrats this Fall?

MB: Well, I think that the border security measures are measure that will certainly benefit Republicans, and I think have some possibility to benefit Democrats. I mean, the fact is that there's a widespread perception that our border is too porous, and that we haven't fully utilized the, I would say, the private sector in order to do this. You know, the fact is that we could do a better job, and that government is a clumsy instrument, and the U.S.C.I.S., the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, has long been known as one of the government's least competent bureaucracies. So it's a benefit for the Republicans there, but I think also for the Democrats. 36 Democrats voted for that House bill with those tough provisions in it, tougher than, I think, are going to come out of any Senate bill. So obviously, Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader in the House, said basically, it was okay for Democrats to vote. It wasn't a party line issue as far as she was concerned. On the question of legalization and guest workers, I think there's some in the Republican Party and the Republican base that are not going to like those measures. President Bush has called for something along those lines. You know, you've got very noisy Congressmen like Tom Tancredo of Colorado, who's very strongly against it. The House leadership did not bring forward such a measure. I think Democrats will go to Latino voters and say hey, we got this for you. But the fact is there is also Republican support for that, and there's a danger for Republicans that if they're seen to take an issue...if they're seen to be contemptuous of the hard-working immigrants that we have, you pay a political price for that. That happened in California in 1994, Proposition 187. That was really only about denying benefits of government service to illegal immigrants, though it also included their children. That was...35% of Latinos in California voted for it in that election, among the voters. But the ads that were run that suggested that Hispanics are only coming across the border because they want welfare, that really stuck in the craw of a lot of people, including many conservatively-inclined Hispanics. I mean, they said look, Hispanic males have the highest workforce participation of any demographic group in this economy. And if you're saying...whatever else we may be, we work hard.

HH: Michael Barone, USNews.com, read his blog, and read his book, The Almanac of American Politics.

End of interview.

Posted at 10:13PM PST

Who's reading Painting the Map Red?

If you're a longtime reader of this blog, you'll remember when Hugh wrote Blog, his last book, the Photoshop contest followed soon after, and the results were hillarious. To view the old gallery, click here.

Well, Hugh's new book is now officially out, and available for your viewing pleasure at all major bookstores, and online at Amazon.com. Here's the assignment. Who are where would you find Paint the Map Red that you wouldn't normally expect? Here's the cover art.

To get you going, here's a couple of starters from our good friend, Joshua Sharf:

Now for the prize part of the contest. We're going to put up a poll of the top 10 entries, and the top three are going to win the coveted Crosley Solo radio, worth $130 bucks. And, if that wasn't enought, the first place winner is going to get not one, not two, but an entire case of Hugh's new book, Painting the Map Red.

Here's what you have to do. First off, be creative. Be funny. Think outside the box. Do not be pornographic or offensive, or it'll never have a chance. When you've created your masterpiece, or masterpieces, as some of you get on a roll, send the picture in .jpg or .gif format only, please, and reduce it to about the size above, and send it to generalissimo@hughhewitt.com.

Make sure you include your name, address and contact phone number in your e-mail, and if you have a blog to flog, include the url as well, and I'll link back to you in the gallery. Once again, lay off the video games for a few days and stretch those artistic muscles. Then send your entry to generalissimo@hughhewitt.com.

To see the gallery as it grows, click here.

Good luck, and check back as the entries come in.

Posted at 2:30PM PST

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Sunday, March 26

The Fox News-Halliburton connection.

The Associated Press today incredibly printed an anonymous story, reporting a find on the website, The Smoking Gun, in which the Vice President's hotel requirements were leaked. Amazingly, the AP found this to be news.

Nowhere have you seen what the hotel requirements are for any previous executive branch leaders, especially while they were in office, and wouldn't you have loved to see what Bill Clinton's requirements were?

Here's the link to the AP story, and what they actually have to say:

It doesn't take much to make Dick Cheney at home on the road: Diet Sprite, a pot of coffee - both sans caffeine - and a TV tuned to Fox News Channel.

No matter how controversial his policies or how great his political power, the vice president has kept any excitement in his personal life and habits under deep cover (except for that one hunting trip).

So perhaps it isn't surprising that the newly unearthed memo Cheney's office sends to hotels, outlining his "downtime requirements," contains no shockers or even rock star-like indulgences. The memo, obtained by the Web site The Smoking Gun, makes such modest requests as:

_A suite with a king- or queen-size bed and a connecting parlor.

_Four to six bottles of bottled water (specifically the name brands Calistoga or Perrier, if Mrs. Cheney is traveling with the vice president).

_Diet Caffeine Free Sprite, 4 cans.

Also, the hotel staff is advised, when the veep arrives all lights should be turned on, a freshly brewed pot of decaf should be waiting, and the room should be 68 degrees, with "all televisions tuned to FOX News."

I'm stunned after reading this. I might have to go lie down for a while. Diet Caffeine Free Sprite and decaf coffee? The nerve of a man who has had cardiac issues to actually follow his doctor's advice and cut out caffeine.

Forget the opportunity to throw in a cheap shot by reminding people about the hunting accident, which has nothing at all to do with the "story." There's only three possible reasons why this is "news," according to the AP.

1. The room must be 68 degrees - To the phantom AP writer, in an era with oil prices going through the roof, energy costs rising, and global warming about to cause the distinction of all known life on the planet, the Vice President, by not keeping his thermostat at the recommended 78 degrees to conserve energy, clearly is out of step with the rest of the country trying to come to grips with the energy crisis we're in.

2. Calistoga or Perrier bottled water - Again, if you are a lefty hack AP writer, Dick Cheney is just another conservative that doesn't really care about clean air and clean water. The fact that he requests bottled water shows that he doesn't care about all the impoverished people out there who can't afford to buy bottled water, and are polluting themselves by drinking plain old tap water, the stuff that Republicans won't spend government money on because they gave it all away in tax cuts to the rich.

3. FOX News - This is the big one. The other two would be interesting if it was a slow news day, but the Vice President actually requesting Fox News? Well now, the right-wing cabal is exposed once again, isn't it? Whenever Cheney is on the road, Karl Rove has to stay with the President, or else there's nobody running the country, right AP? So Fox News on the road makes perfect sense. It's like a direct pipeline back into the White House, actually, since Karl Rove secretly programs that network. It saves time and trouble of having to sit through conference calls, when the Vice President can get briefed by Karl through Fox like the rest of us.

Now for the fun part, if you are a left-wing fever swamper.

Dick Cheney ran Halliburton, right? That's one leg of the triangle.

Now we see that Cheney goes out of his way to support Fox News whenever he's on the road. He also appeared exclusively with Brit Hume after the hunting accident. No coincidence. You now have another leg of the triangle.

According to Halliburtonwatch.org, and yes, there is such a thing, Fox News has done puff pieces on Halliburton and their subsidiary companies, including this one from last year where KBR, a Halliburton food company that feeds the troops. So Fox News covers for Halliburton, which everyone knows is crooked. The final leg of the triangle.

Why again was the Cheney hotel requirement story news to the AP? It just reinforced to the MoveOn.org readership out there that there really is an axis of evil, and it ain't Iran, Iraq and North Korea. To the fever swamp, the axis of evil is the Bush Administration (Bush, Cheney, Rove), Fox News, and Halliburton.

In all seriousness, what you might see out of a piece like this is an attempt by MSM to go after Fox News and try to discredit them. The MSM is supposed to be the 4th estate, a check on the other three branches of government. For Cheney to request Fox by name, they might say, shows that Fox can't be trusted in reporting on the executive branch because they're too close. Nonsense.

The mere reason why the Vice President would request Fox is because unlike the other television news channels, he actually wants to know what's going on in the world without the spin. Seriously, do you think Cheney can learn anything constructive from the likes of Jack Cafferty, Paul Begala, James Carville, or Bill Schneider on CNN?

Do you think such stunning political analysts like Ron Reagan, Chris Matthews, Dana Milbank, or Keith Olbermann can add anything that Cheney hasn't figured out already?

If he's got a choice, and being the Vice President, he does, it's no surprise that he picks Fox. He doesn't strike me as a man who suffers fools, which, with some exceptions, is largely what's on display on the other two cable news channels.

Posted at 11:35PM PST

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Saturday, March 25

The Beltway Boys

HH: Fred Barnes, Morton Kondracke are with me. Together they're the Fox News Channel Beltway Boys. You can watch them tomorrow night, 6PM in the East, 3PM in the West. It repeats later in the evening, and it's been quite a tumultuous week. And so I'll start with you, Fred Barnes. The media expected to roast George Bush this week. Instead, I think they got roasted. What was your assessment?

FB: Well, they did. At the press conference that the President held on Tuesday, he was triumphant. It was one of the best I've seen. He was animated. He was strong. He was more persuasive in defending the war in Iraq, and the aftermath of the war in Iraq than he was in his set speeches. It was really remarkable. And then there was this encounter with Helen Thomas, who just rather than ask a question, just leveled accusations at him about Iraq. You know, all the reason you cited were false, and so what's the real reason you went into Iraq, and so on. Things like that. And importantly, it touched off a national debate on whether the media is accurately covering what's been going on in Iraq, whether it's been too negative. And I don't think this debate's going to end soon.

HH: I carried it on the last two nights on CNN with Anderson Cooper and Time Magazine's Michael Ware and Nic Robertson from CNN, Morton Kondracke. Laura Ingraham took it to David Gregory on the Today Show. A number of places, the MSM have found themselves under withering counter-assault, and you know, the troops are being heard from as well. Bloggers blogging from Iraq, they're angry at the mainstream media, and they're saying the mainstream media's hurting the war effort. Your take on it?

MK: Look, I think that the mainstream media does emphasize the negative, that they've, right from the beginning, they've been expecting that this was going to be Vietnam, and they've been following that story pretty steadily, and they ignore good stuff. They're fixated on the bad, and I do think that the President has the right idea that the enemy knows how to play this, that they create enough violence, and they create a firestorm of public opinion back in this country. On the other hand, I think that there are real problem in Iraq, and this whole story about the possibility of civil war was not a media creation. I mean, the Samara bombing really did take place, and there really are militias going into neighborhoods and killing people on the basis of what sect they belong to. So it's a double story. And even if the media were reporting about all the good reconstruction projects and all, the heroism of American soldiers, which they should do, I think still people would be largely negative on the war.

HH: Now Fred Barnes, the civil war meme, Ralph Peters filed a column from Baghdad saying Dude, who took my civil war? And others have pointed out Karbala march from Baghdad, tens of thousands of Shiia pilgrims unattacked this week. Is that the overplayed hand? Is that the straw that broke the public's back when it comes to media credibility in Iraq?

FB: Well, I think it's certainly one of the things, and I certainly admire Mort's standing up for America and for President Bush and the soldiers in supporting the war in Iraq. He and I agree totally. But I do disagree on this thing about a civil war. I think it's a media creation. I mean, Iraq is nowhere near a situation of civil war, and yet it's repeated over and over and over again, that it makes it sound like a small amount of partisan strife, and a few killings, have put the Iraqis right on the edge of a full-scale civil war, that in fact, nobody wants, not the Kurds, not the Shiites, and not the Sunnis. So I hold the media responsible for that, too.

HH: Morton Kondracke, go ahead.

MK: No, listen. Look, look, look. Zalme Khalilzad has talked about the danger of a civil war. Former Prime Minister Alawi admittedly for political reasons, has said that there's a low grade civil war going on. Don Rumsfeld has said if the civil war breaks out, that we would largely leave it to the Iraqis. I mean, these people are not saying there's no danger of civil war. I mean, it's clear that Zarqawi or whoever blew up that...

FB: No, no. That's not what the media's saying. What the media said is that Iraq was on the brink of a civil war.

MK: Huh?

FB: What the media said is that Iraq is on the brink of a civil war. That is simply not true.

MK: I think Zalme Khalilzad has said they're on the brink of a civil war.

FB: No, no.

MK: I think I'm going to pull back. I think they have not...look, I agree with you that they have not plunged into civil war. What is happening, though, is not good, and you've got militias going after one another, and it's got to stop, and it's got to stop as you yourself say, Fred, with the formation of a government that can govern.

FB: Absolutely.

HH: Let me see what else has to stop, though. At ABC, Drudge got ahold of, and put out on Thursday, the Bush makes me sick e-mail from a senior ABC producer. John Green said he wanted to puke when the President talks about mixed messages. How prevalent is that attitude, Fred Barnes, in mainstream media?

FB: Well, I think there are two attitudes in the mainstream media. One is the pure we hate Bush and we hate this war. And I think that's probably the prevalent one. On the other hand, there's also the we can't win attitude. Mort referred to this earlier. It's the reporters and pundits and so on who think it's another Vietnam. And while they're not necessarily against it, they're just weary and thinks it's just unwinnable. You see this from, particularly in the writings of John Burns of the New York Times, a great reporter, but he's been consistently pessimistic about Iraq and the ability of the U.S. to prevail.

HH: And Morton Kondracke, I get so many e-mails saying where are the Ernie Pyle's. I don't think they're there.

MK: You know, I've seen some reporting from Knight-Ridder, for example, which does tend to be negative, but the correspondent there whose name I forget, has actually been around in a lot of nasty places, Tal Afar, and Fallujah, and Ramadi, and places like that, along with the troops.

HH: Don't get me wrong. They go to nasty places, like Time Magazine's Michael Ware. But when they get there, they're not there to encourage the public about the progress or the bravery of the troops. They're reporting almost with moral equivalence on the insurgents sometimes, Fred Barnes. And I think that's what exposes a nerve.

FB: Well, it does, and on the other hand, I would say that Ernie Pyle was writing about a different war, where you could stay with a group of men over a long period of time, and report on them, the grunts. And this is a different kind of war. But on the other hand, the other reporters don't seem inclined to write about any courage or heroism, either.

HH: Thank you very much, Beltway Boys. Fred Barnes, Morton Kondracke, tomorrow night at 6PM in the East, 3PM in the West. It repeats again, and after a week that was like this week, you do not want to miss the Fox News Channel Beltway Boys. At least I don't want to miss them.

End of interview.

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Friday, March 24

Frank Gaffney the film critic?

HH: Frank Gaffney joins me now, Center For Security Policy, www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org, blogs at Warfooting.com, and has gone film critic on us. Frank Gaffney, welcome to the program.

FG: My pleasure to be with you in all of my capacities.

HH: On Tuesday, What We Fight For, your column in the Washington Times, talks about a new film, Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West. Run through who made this, and why it's important.

FG: Well, to be honest with you, I can't remember the names of the guys who made it, but they're small, independent film makers. They've put together an extraordinary array of experts, some in the West who are not Muslim, a number who are. But most powerfully, perhaps, they've used extensive footage from television stations and networks in the Middle East and the Arab world, that are promoting the kind of Islamo-facism that the film addresses as the immediate threat we face, and a very dangerous one indeed.

HH: Now you mention in your column, Sir Martin Gilbert, Alan Dershowitz, Daniel Pipes, Carolyn Glick, Steve Emerson, Itamar Marcus. These are very different people. I mean, this is not any particular group of one ideological center or another.

FG: Well, I think that there's a community of people of which they're representative, who are very thoughtful, very knowledgeable about different aspects of history, of the faith, the Islamic faith, of the strategic character of the enemy, of a totalitarian political mold we face today. And interestingly enough, Hugh, that is so similar, in important respects, even down to now the stiff-arm salute and the goose-stepping, familiar from Hitlerian days, they're bringing to bear a wealth of expertise that I think is tremendously informative about this enemy. And most especially needed at this moment, when we hear people in, particularly in Washington, consumed with paroxysms of doubt about the future of the war in Iraq, when in fact as we've talked about so many times. And this film makes very clear the war in Iraq is but one front in a larger, truly global war we are now facing. I would call it the war for the free world.

HH: On Monday, Frank Gaffney, the Christian Science Monitor, a usually very respectable newspaper that is careful in how it approaches issues, had a story by Ileen Prusher out of Jerusalem, the headline of which "Key Hamas Cabinet Posts Go To Hard-liners." Moderate politicians refused to join the organization's new government on Sunday. Frank, isn't it sort of a crippling inability to see if they call anyone at Hamas other than a hard-liner?

FG: Well, I'm not sure whether they were indulging in the fanciful notion that there are so-called doves or moderate in the Hamas ranks. My guess is what they were referring to were the moderates, so-called, of Fatah, Yassir Arafat's party. Even by relative terms, the terrorists who followed the secular, relatively secular banner of Fatah were no moderates, and certainly not people that I think Israel, or for that matter, the United States could repose any more confidence in that these thugs following the banner of Hamas.

HH: Well actually, I think they're just talking internal Hamas. It begins, "The crucial diplomatic position of foreign minister, for example, went to Mahmoud Zahar, who's adamantly opposed to any softening of Hamas' position that Israel should be destroyed. Zahar is known for his fiery rhetoric and vocal support for the organization's use of suicide bombing." I mean, I don't think there are any moderates inside of Hamas, and I think that a lot of the West believes it is reformable. Do you?

FG: I certainly don't. I haven't seen the article, in fairness, Hugh,

HH: All right.

FG: So you may be right that they're seeing something that I don't see, and I don't think bears up under close scrutiny. But the point is that I've not seen anybody in Hamas come forward and say you know, we really are ready to live side by side peaceably with Israel. We really are ready to not only renounce, but condemn this practice of sending our children in to blow up innocent people. To the contrary, I think everybody continues very much to toe that line, for the simple reason that they believe it. And this is one of...again, the points of Obsession is this ideology, which is so redolent of Hitler and the Bolsheviks, that this brutally repressive, totalitarian political ideology, is alive and well. In fact, growing in places like the Palestinian community, where people are being indoctrinated and brought up, generation upon generation to believe in a culture of death, that is a threat not just to Israel, but to freedom loving people everywhere, including here.

HH: I want to go back to one of the experts you quote in your column, Matthias Kuntzel, who's a professor at the University of Hamberg, and an expert both on Islamo-facism and Nazism. He does not claim that the former sprang from the latter, but he does point out that while Islamism is an independent anti-Semitic, anti-modern mass movement, it's main early promotors, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Mufti, and the Qassamites in Palestine, were supported financially and ideologically by agencies of the German National Socialist Government. About the Mufti, I was aware. But the other connections I was not.

FG: Yeah. Well, he's made a quite intensive study of this, something that I think perhaps springing from his own familiarity with the German history, has made easier than perhaps for the rest of us. But he's documented an association that at certainly the ideological level, and it would appear at the financial and operational level between the early Islamo-facists, and the national socialists, also known as Nazis.

HH: Frank, as we're running low on time here, when does Obsession get to the public? Where will it be able to seen? And do you expect an attempt to blockade the movie by sympathizers of Islamists?

FG: Well, it's a good question, Hugh. We're hoping to make it available to the public. I don't know that it has any distribution arrangements at all right now. I'm just trying to help, having only seen it myself for the first time last night, get the word around that it's a very important film, it is one that we are going to, I think, hear more about in the future. It did win, by the way, the best feature film at the Liberty Film Festival, so it's beginning to get a bit of buzz, but we can use all the help we can get getting the word around.

HH: The movie is Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against The West. The critic, our friend, Frank Gaffney, Centerforsecuritypolicy.org.

End of interview.

Posted at 5:44PM PST

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Thursday, March 23

Mark Steyn on the herd mentality of the media coverage: Ignore the media, and find out for yourself.

03-23steyn.mp3

HH: For two night this week on CNN, I've been told by Michael Ware, Time Magazine Baghdad correspondent, and others, that only the people with boots on the ground in Baghdad, those brave journalists know what's going on. Well now, Mark Steyn, columnist to the world, has in fact been in Iraq, dined on chicken in Fallujah, as I recall. And Mark Steyn, is the media anti-war?

MS: Well, I think the media has a herd mentality, as Christopher Hitchens was talking about in his marvelous interview with you just the other day. And I think that is the problem, that anyone who's been with large groups of journalists, whether you're at a political convention in Philadelphia, or whether you're with the foreign correspondent crowd in Kabul, knows that they all sit together in the same bar, and they reinforce the herd think. And I think the most interesting stories to come out of Iraq have been the ones from independent bloggers, sometimes with the American military, and sometimes Iraqi bloggers, or sometimes just from some fellow who happens to be in Kurdistan, and notices the big tourist boom that's going on there. They're all stories that are different stories. You know, the State Department, a lady at the State Department asked me if I wanted to go to Iraq the other day, and I politely said well, you know, I'm not thinking about it at the moment. And the reason I said that was because I think there's a difference when you go as part of a media assignment. When I was just driving around the Sunni Triangle, I was doing it pretty much as a tourist, and I think you see a different way that way. The media sitting in the same hotel bar in Baghdad, and then watching, filming the burning Nissan of the morning so it can be on the Today Show, is not the whole story about what's going on in Iraq in any means.

HH: Mark Steyn, a mil-blogger in Iraq, in Mosul, actually, named Buck Sargeant, sent me an e-amil today, which includes in part, some slams at Michael Ware and other journalists, and he says soldiers really do know what's going on, and he concludes by saying the media wants us to lose, and they're doing their damnedest to see it happen. But I have faith in the American people that they're too smart to fall for that trick twice. Do you think that attitude, whether or not justified, is pervasive in the American military?

MS: Yes, I think so. I think that is one of the big stories here, that in fact, the military, whether or not Iraq is like Vietnam, I don't think it is. That's rubbish. But clearly, the military this time around is not like Vietnam. That's the big difference. Anyone who gets e-mail from the troops knows that they're full of pride in what they're doing, and they think it's doing very well. And the way...I think the way to test this is just to try and be reasonably objective about it. When people use terms like insurgency and civil war and all this, think about the meaning of those terms. We've seen what civil war is within recent memory, in Rwanda and Bosnia and Ivory Coast, just to pick three examples. That's where the country gets split from top to toe between different ethnic groups, and they all start killing each other, and rival governments spring up, and there's massive population displacements. None of that is going on in Iraq, and it's absolute...you know, Tim Russert said today, he defended NBC, the media's Iraq coverage, by saying we capture reality. Yeah, they capture reality in the same sense that those insurgent guys capture people. They saw it's head off and shout Allah Akhbar at reality. That's what they're doing when they capture reality. The reality of what's happening in Iraq is very different from what Tim Russert thinks it is.

HH: You wrote a column up at today's Jerusalem Post. I want to quote a paragraph. "Despite the Mosque bombings," you wrote, "There's a net gain of more than 100,000 civilians alive today who would have been shoveled into unmarked graves had Baathist rule continued. Meanwhile, the dictator would have continued gaming the international system through the Oil For Food program, subverting Jordan, and supporting terrorism as far afield as the Philippines." That's the math, I say, Mark Steyn, but most of MSM will not even begin to try and do the sums.

MS: Well, in fairness to them, that's not just them. But the idea that they're...my column today was to reject the idea that there is such a thing as stability. There's no stability on the international scene. It's like a frozen lake in New Hampshire in March. Underneath, the water is on the move in that frozen river. And if it's not going in your direction, it's generally going in the other guy's, and that's basically what was happening during the twelve years under which American was containing Saddam. When George Bush I declined to finish the job, Saddam understood very well what was going wrong, that when you go to a lot of time and trouble and expense to set up, effectively, a big dictatorial management program, which is what the U.N. and America and Britain did, Saddam understood that was an act of weakness. So to think that you could have held him in that position indefinitely is ludicrous.

HH: Now Drudge has obtained from inside ABC e-mails, a particularly provocative source on the web today. One of them, from a senior producer for one of the weekend shows reads, are you watching this? Bush makes me sick. If he uses the mixed messages line one more time, I'm going to puke. He's now had a friend go out and say he feels very, very bad about this, he's a straight shooter, a great producer, he's always fair. What does the John Green e-mail tell us, Mark Steyn?

MS: Well, I think the fact of the matter is, I wouldn't put Bush makes me...you know, a lot of people make me nauseous, but I wouldn't put it on an e-mail, because I wouldn't assume that everyone who saw that e-mail agreed with me. What is reveals is that what the media think of as their impartiality is in fact rather a bland assumption that they all think the same way. And that's what's revealing about this, that he knew he could send that e-mail to all his chums at ABC, and that they would all agree that Bush makes them puke. And the difference is, you know what I think, and I know what you think. And why doesn't...I'm happy that this has come clean, that Bush makes him puke.

HH: Yup.

MS: That's great. Now if he can only say where ABC, where the network thinks Bush makes us puke, that would be one step to a kind of greater honestly and straightforwardness in dealing with the public.

HH: And I think that is the bottom line, that the appearance, or the assertion of objectivity...and I just ran into it so often with Michael Ware over the last two days. And he's an Aussie, and he has the old standard we understand better than Americans do, because it's not our fight, blah, blah, blah. It's just maddening to Americans when they can smell the anti-Bush aroma in the room. Mark Steyn, let's talk a little bit about the documents that are coming out. You referenced one of those with Saddam's connection to Philippines terror. Another one revealed that he was holding onto hundreds of Kuwaiti hostages ten years after the war. What's the effect of these documents on the left's sort of acquittal of Saddam campaign?

MS: Well, the left's argument has always been that Saddam was a secular dictator, and therefore he would have nothing to do with a bunch of theocrats like Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Well, you know, the left themselves refute that argument, because they're essentially secular leftists, and they are happy to make alliances of convenience with the Islamists who hate gays, and hate women, and all the rest of it, if it means...because they both happen to be anti-American. So I think they left themselves as self-refuting on that argument. But there's no doubt that when you look at these documents, that there are all kinds of small links that emerge between, explicitly between Iraq and their contacts with al Qaeda going way back into the early 90's. And there are also links with all kinds of other terrorist groups across the planet. And this is why I think it's so absurd to pretend to use that as an argument for not getting rid of Saddam. The point of the matter is that Saddam was someone who had been allowed to mock American victory in the 1991 Gulf War, and been allowed to mock it for 12 years. And so he was part of the September the 10th world, and needed to be removed on those grounds alone.

HH: Mark Steyn, you and close behind you, Christopher Hitchens, are the two people I think have been thinking clearly and, a long record of thinking clearly about the war. You referenced the interview I did with Hitchens two days ago. There's a note of pessimism in his voice about the ability to rally the West to this long war. Do you share that pessimism?

MS: Well, I think what Christopher Hitchens said, he used an expression which I think is correct, this passivity that you know, essentially the left's arguments, the non-deranged, America-hating left. Put them aside, the America-haters, for a bit. And the argument of a lot of the mainstream of the Democratic Party is this passivity. Oh, we can't do this, and we can't do that, because something may go wrong, and it may not be easy, and this will happen, and that will happen. And we don't understand any of these strange, wacky foreign places anyway. That passivity will end freedom in the world. It won't end freedom in the world in America, it won't end it in Iowa and in Massachusetts tomorrow. But it will end it in a lot of the borderline jurisdictions around the world very quickly. You cannot be that feeble in the face of an existential threat. Christopher Hitchens understands that. I don't agree with him when he starts talking about Mother Teresa and the Royal Family and all his other bug bears, but I respect him because on this issue, he shows a clarity that should be obvious to everybody of left or right.

HH: I think you're right about that. Robert Kaplan has written extensively. The American military gets it at the lowest level, Mark Steyn. It's just a question of whether or not the media will ever catch it from them.

MS: Well, I think you should ignore the media, and find out for yourself. You know, Glenn Reynolds has a marvelous new book out called An Army of Davids. And he promotes this idea he's had on his website, a pack, not a herd. The media are the herd. And the way to beat the herd is with a fast-thinking pack that draws in all kinds of resources, and uses them to the full.

HH: Mark Steyn, well put. Always a pleasure. Steynonline, America.

End of interview.

Posted at 4:00PM PST

Victor Davis Hanson on the tripartite nexus of Congressional leadership, media elite, and the celebrity fringe criticizing the war effort.

Read or listen to it all, but make sure you get to the last part, where Hugh plays back the Michael Ware/Hugh Hewitt interchange from CNN a couple of nights ago, and Professor Hanson just schools him.

03-23hanson-1.mp3

HH: Joined now by eminent military historian and classicist, Victor Davis Hanson. Professor Hanson, I got up pretty early this morning, had a 7:00AM meeting. But before I did, I read your Jewish World Week Daily column on your house, and it was melancholy. And I said that's not very VDH. Explain to people your reflection on your six generations of Hansons and your farmhouse, and let's take it after there.

VDH: Well, I live in a house that was built in 1870, and so I have an alternate version of U.S. history, because I grew up with stories from my parents, about my grandparents, about my great-grandparents, about my great-great-grandparents. And it was always the take on the U.S. from this particular house, whether it was the Great Depression or World War I, or the Spanish-American War. And I was just saying that if I could synthesize that take on the world of people who lived in this house, it looks just about the same as it did when it was built, was a tragic view that they accepted that Americans did not have to be perfect to still be good, that when you went to war, you had a bad choice and a worse choice. But we, the generation, and I said the people that live in this house live in a very different therapeutic world. Even though the house looks the same, I think that our ancestors would look, if the house could talk, would say what's wrong with you people? Do you think that you have a birthright to have perfection? Don't you understand that we almost died? We starved to death, we had Typhoid, people got Polio in this house? We were lucky to eat? We built this farm out of nothing, and now you have six hundred channels, and you're less happy than we were. And I think I was trying to use this as a metaphor to a way a lot of Americans look at Iraq, for example.

HH: That's where I was going. Does that crisis of the spirit that you're describing for the next generation, the generation after you and that one, condemn us to defeat?

VDH: I don't know if it condemns us to defeat, but at some point, either somebody who's in the administration, a spokesman's got to say now just wait a minute. We went 7,000 miles over to the ancient caliphate, and right in the heart of the autocratic Middle East. We're trying to make a democracy. We've lost 2,300 people, but that's about two weeks in Okinawa, and this country's been through a lot worse at Shiloh and Antietam, Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima, the Yalu River, and we can win this, and we're not getting any oil, the price skyrocketed. We have the biggest, magnanimous foreign aid plant since the Marshall Plan, $87 billion dollars. We don't have anything to apologize for, and we're almost there. We've had three successful elections. We've dismantled a lot of al Qaeda. We have millions of people in Iraq who've pledged their lives to see this democracy work, and we're not going to stumble before the finish line. So stop it, and just get a grip on yourself. But we need to hear that.

HH: Now this is going to be a little esoteric, but it's prompted by the fact that you are, along with David Horowitz, and the Center For the Study of Popular Culture, going off to Rome, May 21st through 29th. And you, Victor Davis Hanson, are going to give four lectures to the group that's traveling. There's a link if people want to go to your home page on this trip. And as you go off to Rome, I wonder if you're not considering sort of the collapse of the late Roman Republic, when Sulla marches on Rome, and Marius comes into Rome, and the games that were always not indulged in, because it was the Republic that was at issue, all of a sudden did become indulged in. And then of course, you had the second triumvirate and all...it just sort of gradually became so deeply partisan that it ended in disaster for the Roman Republic. Are you going to be lecturing on that, Professor?

VDH: I am, and I was reminded of that when all of a sudden this week, I kept hearing this strange refrain, whether it was Ted Kennedy or Harry Reid, that the President was dangerously incompetent. And I didn't realize that almost everybody was saying that. But it was just a patent refrain. I want to know what was dangerously incompetent. We haven't had another 9/11, we freed 50 million people, we've set up democracies in the most unlikely places following the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and I don't see anything incompetent about that. And to use the words dangerously incompetent, and then to have the exact same words mimicked, it's almost as if we've got some kind of group speak going on. And it doesn't match reality.

HH: And to refer to the action of the NSA to conduct surveillance of al Qaeda contacting their agents in the United States as criminal behavior, it's reckless political behavior. It's over the edge political behavior.

VDH: It is.

HH: The sort that marked the end of the Roman Republic. Now I'm not...

VDH: It is, and it's ahistorical, Hugh, because...not just the Roman Republic, but this is a country where Abraham Lincoln suspended habeus corpus. Andrew Johnson did it in the entire state of Tennessee. We intured people in World War I and World War II. Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy used things, all things that we regretted later, and we haven't even approached that, even though in this particular war, unlike those in the past, we've lost 20 acres in downtown Manhattan from stealthy attacks, which are more likely to be the exact things we have to watch for, than a conventional, transparent enemy. And we haven't done any of that, and yet this country has almost become unhinged in a way that our ancestors, getting back to this house, were not unhinged about.

HH: Now when you say unhinged, are you speaking of the elite media? Or are you speaking of the hard left, or both, or something broader?

VDH: I think I'm talking about a tripartite nexus of the people in the Senate like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, the rhetoric they use, and talking about people in the elite media, and I'm talking about the fringe, the Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan left that uses language like Bush is the greatest terrorist. The Harry Belafonte people that have no constituency, but they seem to have the ear of the media, and their views resonate, and we hear about them, even though they're unhinged. They're not credible or serious thinkers at all.

HH: Have we seen this...you're a military historian. In other campaigns, and other drawn-out wars, have we seen the American left ally with elite media to wage war on the war?

VDH: Well, we saw it in Vietnam, and a good example was when Walter Cronkite came back and said the war was lost after Tet, even though in just one of the most heroic chapters in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps, in Hue, and then the U.S. Air force at Que Son, the U.S. Army in Saigon itself, we killed over 50,000 Vietnamese, North Vietnamese Communists, and lost 1,500, and really destroyed the Viet Cong in the South for over a year, and we were told that was a grievous defeat, because the media covered it in such a way it suggested that terrorists were on the Embassy grounds. And we've seen something like this in the past. If you go back and look at the Summer of 1864, when people were calling for Lincoln's impeachment, the Copperhead movement...and this is what we have, is a Copperhead movement. That's a term used for people who wanted to bisect the United States, and have a confederacy and a union, and go back to the status before the Civil War under George McClennan and Horace Greeley. So we have that kind of extremism, but what we don't realize is we all canonized Lincoln, but Lincoln was hated more than Bush ever was. So what seems conventional wisdom today, if President Bush can stick it out, and we're already seeing changes in Iraq the last three weeks. The Iraqis are taking more and more of the responsibility. American casualties are going down the last four weeks. If we can pull this off in five years, Bush will be considered a great President. But I'm just worried that even his base is starting to be affected by this hysteria.

---

03-23hanson-2.mp3

HH: Professor Hanson, I'd like to play for you a little bit of Michael Ware, Baghdad bureau chief for Time Magazine. Two nights ago on CNN, I was debating him. I'd like to get your reaction to what this says about our culture.

HH: Compared to what, Mr. Ware? Compared to Baghdad under Saddam? Are you arguing that Iraqis are worse off today than they were four years ago?

Anderson Cooper: Michael Ware, do you want to respond?

Michael Ware: Yeah, well I think if you ask a lot of Iraqis, I think you'll be surprised by what the answer is. A lot of them say what? This is democracy? The joke is you call this liberation. And okay, let's look at the context as you suggest. Let's look at the even bigger picture. What is the bigger picture? Who's winning from this war? Who is benefitting right now? Well, the main winners so far are al Qaeda, which is stronger than it was before the invasion. Abu Musab al Zarqawi was a nobody. Now he's the superstar of international jihad. And Iran...Iran essentially has a proxy government in place, a very, very friendly government. Its sphere of influence has expanded, and any U.S. diplomat or senior military intelligence commander here will tell you that. So that's the big picture. Where's that being reported?

HH: Now Victor Davis Hanson, how do you respond to that?

VDH: Is that man a journalist?

HH: Well, he's the Time Magazine Baghdad bureau chief.

VDH: That's just a mockery of what we would call sober and judicious reporting. And everything he said was factually incorrect. We dismantled two thirds of the al Qaeda heirarchy, and Mr. Zarqawi was well enough to get an invitation to come before we went into Iraq to seek medical care under Saddam. Everything he said was untrue, and when we went into Iraq, nobody knew much about the Iranian nuclear program. The entire world is galvanizing against it now. The Iranians are petrified that this democratic experiment will work right on their border, and one of the most subversive things they can imagine right next to them. And the United States knows so much more about the danger of Iran than it did two years ago. The world was asleep to their nuclear antics. And 67% of the people have confidence in Iraq, according to the polls, that things are getting better. And it shows two things. One is that this idea of stability is always better than the chaos that comes with freedom. It's like saying that Hitler or Stalin...1936 Germany was much, much better than anything you can imagine in the 20's, when you had inflation. Or Stalin's...after the purges, there was a sense of order in Russia. All of that's true, as long as you accept that Saddam was killing 40-50,000 people a year. And the second is this utopianism that all wars are a choice between something's perfect, and something that is bad. When we went to war after 9/11, and we had one war with Saddam in '91, a second war with 12 years of no-fly zones, then we had...there were no good choices. There was a bad choice and a worse choice.

HH: So with this in mind...again, I stress he's the Baghdad bureau chief of Time Magazine, at one time the most influential magazine in the West, I believe. What is the disease in the media? Where did it come from?

VDH: I think it came to be frank between the journalism schools, the academic training of a lot of the people, and this affluent, elite culture, to be frank, that comes out of the unversities on the left and right coasts, that's divorced from the tragic view, because these people are not...they don't open hardware stores. They don't service cars. They've never worked physically with their hands. They have an idea in this international culture of the West that somehow, all of their affluence, all of their travel, all of their freedom came out of a head of Zeus, and it's not dependent on the U.S. military, the United States role in the world. They have no appreciation for the very system that birthed and maintained them. And they've had this sort of sick cynicism, nihilism, skepticism, and the height of their affluence and leisure, that they don't have any gratitude at all, which is really one of the most important human attributes. Humility to say you know, I'm very lucky to be a Westerner, and have certain freedoms. And that's why he cannot appreciate what we're trying to do in Iraq, because he has no appreciation of the very idea that he can jet out of Baghdad anytime he wants on a Western jet that's going to get him safely to a Western country, where he's going to be protected, that the people in Iraq want that same thing that he doesn't seem to appreciate. And that's...I know I'm sounding a little emotional, but that's been one of the most depressing aspects of this entire media...you did a great service to the country, Hugh, by having him on your show, and having him admit to something that we all suspect. But that hysteria and that anger and that predjudice was very valuable for people to see.

HH: Well, we hope to continue to do it. Victor Davis Hanson, thank you for spending time with us this afternoon.

End of interview.

Glenn Reynolds and Mickey Kaus weigh in on the ABC Bush makes me puke memo.

03-23reynolds-kaus.mp3

HH: As we continue on with the coverage of a media meltdown and a backlash against anti-war reporting bias in the media, attacks on the President, set-ups of the Secretary of Defense, I'm joined by two of the new media titans, and I use that word advisedly. Mickey Kaus, one of the original bloggers, he blogs at Slate.com under Kausfiles.com. And of course, the Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, professor of law at the University of Tennessee, and author of An Army of Davids. And I think that's what's going on this week, Glenn Reynolds. Many of that Army of Davids just got fed up with mainstream media coverage of the war. Agree or disagree?

GR: Oh, I think that's absolutely right. I think we've got a swarm starting up again.

HH: A swarm about what?

GR: Well, about a whole variety of mis-coverage, and under-coverage, and distorted coverage, and people remembering that it's not the first time. And I think sometimes, you get kind of tired, because it seems like you just have to keep pointing this out over and over again. I know that's how I kind of feel. It's like oh, God, here we go again.

HH: But it doesn't stop. Mickey Kaus, is this an accurate assessment of what's happening?

MK: I think so. I'm not sure...is it going to rise to Eason Jordan heights? Is this guy going to have to quit? Is there going to be a relentless attack? He's sort of just said what everybody knew all along, and I thought Roger Simon's take was quite accurate, which is now we know. So congratulations. Thanks. There's nothing to be...he needn't apologize for it. It's what he thinks.

HH: Yeah, but you're talking about...I agree with you, by the way. The honesty expressed by the ABC senior producer. But I'm thinking more of, it began with Helen Thomas this week. It spiraled with David Gregory and James Carville ganging up on Laura Ingraham. Michael Ware and I got into it on CNN a couple of times this week, and then you had Jaime McIntyre going after Rumsfeld with a Maureen Dowd column, Mickey. I think...and then Jack Cafferty flips out today. I think people are sick of these people.

MK: Well, I thought Laura Ingraham held her own, actually.

HH: Yes, she did.

GR: Always outnumbered, but never outgunned.

MK: But it depends on what happens in Iraq. I mean, I was down on the war when I turned to Iraq the Model, who was a pretty pro-war blogger from Baghdad, and his home was getting mortared, okay? And he was depressed. And he talked to his father, and his father thought the war was lost. And so, when that happens, it's hard to blame media bias.

HH: No, but I think actually you can, if that is the only story they're running with, and they're not, for example, covering what's going on in Kurdistan, the Marsh Arabs, the relative security around Basra, or in fact, those homes that were mortared once, and then not mortared today. It's not really about reporting good news, it's making sure that it's balanced. Glenn Reynolds, your reaction?

GR: I'll tell you the example. The press knows how to be exquisitely sensitive about sending the wrong message when they care. For example, with regard to race. If they reported only crimes where black criminals were involved, and they always mentioned the race of the perpetrator, and they never point anything else positive about black people, which is in fact how they used to do it fifty years ago, we would say that was bias, one-sided, and that they were responsible for the change in social climate that that one-sided reporting produced. In fact, we did say that, and they tried to change their ways. And if you want to contrast saying Bush makes you want to puke may hurt somebody's career, maybe not, one racially charged remark which was I think just a slip of the tongue about Condi Rice, and a deejay's out of a job. So when they care about the message, when they care about what's going on, they know how to control themselves.

HH: Mickey Kaus, your reaction?

MK: Well, I think that's right. A couple of points. First, then they're very careful about who they hire. And if you hire somebody who Bush makes puke, or whatever he wrote in that memo, he's not going to change his spots just because he's ordered to be sensitive. So these people are all over the media, they have tenure, they're not going away. And you can't just overnight, suddenly...they're not going to change.

HH: Mickey, what percentage, if we define the elite media as the big newspapers, and we know the five or six of them there are, the big networks, Time, Newsweek, and we talk about their senior leadership, meaning the top one hundred people in the organization, so we're talking roughly the thousand people who make the news right now...

MK: Right.

HH: What percentage of them are anti-Bush?

MK: Anti-Bush?

HH: Anti-Bush.

MK: I would say 80.

HH: Instapundit, what do you think?

GR: 90.

HH: I think it's 90, maybe 95. Now of those one thousand people again, Mickey Kaus, what percentage of them are anti-war?

MK: I would say 70, 65.

HH: Glenn?

GR: About 85.

HH: I'm still up at around 90, and I go to what Christopher Hitchens said on this program on Wednesday, that a senior network executive admitted to him that in fact, they are beginning to cause the insurgents to believe they can win this war. I'll go back and get the exact quote here. Is that happening? Is the media helping, Mickey Kaus, the bad guys?

MK: Well, it's certainly a small world. That's all part of what Instapundit says is happening, and sure, the people in Iraq watch the American media often more closely than Americans do.

GR: It's an information war. Terrorism is an information war disguised as a military conflict.

HH: I think you're absolutely right. So what does the Army of Davids do, because honestly, I've been doing this for six years, and I've been in media for fifteen years, and I went to Columbia Journalism School and did an article. The intake valve is still open on the left and closed on the right. It's not going to change. Mickey Kaus is right, it's self-perpetuating elites who hire themselves, who bring those same opinions. So what happens, Glenn Reynolds? What's your Army of Davids do except grind their teeth?

GR: You marginalize them by giving people alternatives. You point out, and I actually pointed this out on Reliable Sources on CNN a couple of weeks ago, the best single piece of reporting I've seen from Iraq was Michael Totten, who's a blogger, who's paid by his readers to go report. And he does a great job.

HH: Yeah, and he just left Kurdistan, is on his way home. I also put Michael Yon in that category.

GR: Yes.

HH: But it doesn't seem to, Mickey Kaus, change GE's assessment of how NBC is being run.

MK: Well, you know what? NBC is not doing very well lately, I was told. I just found out last night. So at some point, they will start to lose money. There are mainstream reporters that do a good job. I think John Burns does a very good job. His reporting today of the election was certainly inspiring, and he seems to have his heart in the right place.

HH: Let me read this to you from Hitchens. He's saying about a well-known network senior executive. He called me the other day. This is not a guy who's in any way a conservative, and he said you know, we've known each other for a bit. He said you know, I'm beginning to think you must be right, because it really worries me what we're doing, when we are giving the other side the impression that all they need to do is hang on until the end of this administration. Do people know what they're doing when they're doing this? One doesn't have to make any allegation of disloyalty, but just if it worries him, as it really does, I think it should worry other people, too, and it certainly worries me. Is Christopher Hitchens right, Mickey Kaus?

MK: Well, you know, there is an argument on the left, which I think some of them at least make sincerely, which is that our presence there is doing more harm than good. And I don't think...but you know, there is also this inevitable effect, which is it emboldens the terrorists, sure.

HH: And today, Glenn Reynolds, I want to ask you both about this. New documents indicating contacts between al Qaeda, and specifically Osama bin Laden, and Saddam's people came to light, a '95 document, 2001 document. Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly writes, so what? I mean, that's his quote. So what? What do you do to that, Instapundit?

GR: You laugh at it. I mean, you just have to note that people are out of touch with reality. One thing I've noticed about the press, by the way, the defensiveness I've seen in the last week or two illustrates a couple of things. I think first it shows that even they realize that they've gone too far and overplayed their hand, and it's likely to come back to bite them. The other thing I think they've figured out is imagine that in fact, what they're doing succeeds, that we do lose the war, that it is seen as another Vietnam. A substantial portion of the American public, 30, 40%, at least, is going to blame them and hold a grudge that will last decades. Now is that a position they want to be in? Because that's what's going to happen, and they will have earned it.

HH: Mickey Kaus, I want to quote Kevin specifically. Who cares? This document apparently dates from 1997, it doesn't tell us anything new, we've known for years that Saddam and Osama had few contacts during the 90's, the last of which was in '98-'99, when Osama's relationship with the Taliban was undergoing some strain, and Saddam had just been bombed by U.S.-British forces. The contact was brief, and nothing came of it. No one ever suggested Saddam had no contact at all with al Qaeda. He did. But it never amounted to anything, and the credible evidence indicates there hasn't been any other than casual contact between Saddam and al Qaeda for over four years. Does this just strike you as oddly disinterested in fact?

MK: Kevin's a pretty reliable guy. So he's not one of the...

HH: Oh, he's not a screamer. I agree.

MK: He's not one of the left-wing crazies. My impression is that are people running around saying that there absolutely no connection, and that there was more than a casual connection. They sort of reached some sort of semi-entente. And I sort of see it like Bill Clinton and Patricia Duff Medavoy. You know, maybe they didn't meet and get it on, but it was sort of inevitable, given events that some point in the future, that might well happen. If you were paranoid about it, you would worry about it.

GR: Now remember, Richard Clarke was worrying in 2001 that Osama was going to boogie to Baghdad when we invaded Afghanistan.

HH: Absolutely. And we're just learning about the Philippines connection. It just seems to me that the blinkard left and the anti-Bush media are combining to deny important facts. An Army of Davids, how's the book doing, Glenn?

GR: Book's doing great. Had a great review in the Wall Street Journal today, and was on NPR, and got a bunch of other stuff coming out, and it seems to be selling pretty well. So I'm pretty happy.

HH: Mickey, when's your coming out?

MK: I shot my wad back in '92.

HH: Well, there's got to be another book in there somewhere. Mickey Kaus, Glenn Reynolds, two great new media titans. Thank you both.

End of interview.

03-22hugh-cooper-ware.mp3

Powerline's John Hinderaker on the AP's collapse in Project Harmony analysis.

HH: As I wind down a day devoted to this disease that has the mainstream media in its grip, I did not want to ignore the fact it's not just the Baghdad bureau chiefs. It's not just the ABC producers who say Bush makes them puke. It's not just the talking heads. It's not just David Gregory. It's not just Helen Thomas. It's at every level, including the level of AP reporters. One guy who's been covering that aspect of the collapse of mainstream media character is John Hinderaker of Powerline. Hello, John. Welcome to the program.

JH: Hi, Hugh. Thanks.

HH: John, you caught this story. I didn't. I want you to explain to people what AP did this week, and put it in the context of how AP is operating.

JH: Well, it has to do with the release of documents and audio tapes from Iraq and Afghanistan, that generally goes under the name of Project Harmony. And these are the thousands of boxes of documents that Stephen Hayes was instrumental in getting released. And the government is now putting these out on the internet so that people can look at them, read them, translate them, and so forth. And maybe 10% or less of all of the audio tapes that were made in Saddam Hussein's office have now been released. Saddam was like President Nixon in that he had a tape recorder running in his office. And the night before last, the Associated Press came out with a story that claimed that these audio tapes proved that Iraq did not have WMD's. And it actually portrays Saddam and his henchmen almost like the heroes of this story, and quotes a couple of sentences pulled out from these audio tapes, and talks about how they were frustrated, and how could they get the U.N. to understand that they weren't trying to cheat. And at one point, the article says the documents make clear that Saddam's regime had given up banned weapons. Well, I thought this was just nuts for several reasons. Number one, fewer than 10% of these audio tapes are out. So to start drawing conclusions as to what they prove or don't prove is, I think, premature to say the least. Number two, none of the audio tapes that have been released so far date from after 1996 or 1997. So even if it were true that they showed that there were no WMD's as of 1996, say, that doesn't mean that there were none in 2002 and 2003. If there were audio tapes that late, they have not been released.

HH: Now you also point out that there is a nine minute gap on one of these tapes.

JH: Well, but the other thing is that I don't know how they...if they missed this one audio tape, or decided to ignore it, or what, but I quoted on Powerline, at considerable length, an exchange on one of these transcripts between Saddam and one of his henchmen. And this guy talks about their efforts to fool the United Nations, and he talks about the WMD programs that Iraq had going on. He says the U.N. was concentrating its efforts on the biological issue. And it's a small program compared to the chemical, missile and nuclear programs. Okay? This is Saddam's...one of the top guys in his regime talking. And then he goes on to talk about the fact that the U.N. has kind of got the goods on them with respect to biological weapons, and I'm just going to read a quote here. He says, "Sir, this is a meeting of the highest leadership in our country. We did actually produce biological weapons." Okay?

HH: Yeah.

JH: And then he goes on to the conclusion that the special committee, that's of the U.N., came to is correct. It's not a lie. And then he goes on, and it's actually kind of funny, because he talks about the fact that there was some substance, some material, he doesn't specify what it was, that they ordered from Western countries, and they tried to tell the United Nations that is was for medical purposes. And I'll just read you another quote. He says, "You said it's for medical purposes. Using it for medical purposes only requires kilograms, not tons, meaning that the ministry of health can use 200 kilograms the entire year for examinations, but it doesn't use 37 tons." Okay? So this is how they got caught. And then the conversation goes on, and the last words that are on the transcript are this guy in the regime says, "So the biological issue," and then it ends, and it says the next nine minutes of the tape are blank. So you know, for the Associated Press to say that these audio tapes prove that Iraq had given up on WMD's, and they were just frustrated because the U.N. was irrationally convinced that they were trying to cheat and so on, is just nuts. And in this one audio tape, there's an explicit admission that we did actually produce biological weapons, along with the admission that the biological weapons program is, "a small program, compared to the chemical, missile and nuclear programs."

HH: Isn't that amazing? And of course, the AP is so invested in a narrative about Bush. It's so liberal, it's so left-wing...

JH: It's unbelievable, and you know, the guy that wrote this...and you read it, and it's very hard to tell...I think what he's trying to say is that Saddam never had WMD's after 1991. Remember the first Gulf War ended, and that he was supposed to destroy them all?

HH: Yup.

JH: And what I think you're supposed to take away from this article is that he did, and after that, he was completely innocent. Well, you know, that's ridiculous. In 1996, his son-in-law, I believe it was, defected. Remember that?

HH: Yeah, to Jordan.

JH: Yeah, to Jordan, and told all about these stockpiles of WMD's. And then his son, Uday, kind of panicked, and he led people to various locations where they had hidden WMD's. So I don't know if this reporter is ignorant of that history or what.

HH: Oh, he is. Obviously, or duplicitous. One or the other, because it's just not correct. John, I want to thank you for short notice to fill in that gap. AP in the tank along with everyone else, high and low, and I just wanted to make sure we got the complete picture of that. Thank you, John.

JH: Okay. Thank you, Hugh.

End of interview.

Posted at 11:55PM PST

The good, the bad, and the odd with Lileks.

HH: That music means Lileks is here, as in James Lileks, columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, proprietor of Lileks.com, author, humorist, and general good guy around the radio. James, you've heard this media debate all week.

JL: Yes, and I've enjoyed every minute of it.

HH: I'll bet...after a while, I'm sick of it. But I do think it's...

JL: You know, sick of it...It's been going on since the start of the Afghan invasion. Every since the dreaded Afghan Winter, which was supposedly going to leave our troops as soldier-cicles in the high mountains, we've been hearing nothing but the same old miserableism, but go on.

HH: So when does it end? Or will it not end, if we want to win the war?

JL: It ends when a Democrat takes the White House, perhaps. Because at that point, there's a fighting chance, maybe, that large swaths of the media will begin to consider this theirs. Up to now, it hasn't been their fight. If there had been some Democrat in the office in 2002, 2003, who gave them that old JFK 'bear any burden', Berlin airlift vibe, they might have gotten manned up sufficiently to realize that this is actually everybody's war. But until that point, no. They're going to see it through a very narrow prism, and that's going to be exactly what they've been showing us. On the front page of my own paper, which I love dearly, the third anniversary of the war was heralded by what? Do you think it was...and I'm not expecting a cake. I'm not expecting some ginned up photo where the little kids from the neighborhood bring a big cake to the soldiers every day. But was it a hospital? Was it a school? Was it a smiling thumbs up or a purple finger? No. The third anniversary was presented through the bombed-out window of a car. That was the image of three years of accomplishment right there.

HH: Did they cover the French riots? I'm just curious, because cars got really badly used in those riots.

JL: (laughing) Well, you know, it's hard sometimes. I mean, there's the sort of instinctual pro-French, they're Europeans, so they've got something going. But on the other hand, burning cars is good, because cars are bad. But on the other hand, burning cars creates toxic fumes, so that's bad. But on the other hand...I mean, yes, you can just tie yourself...

HH: But isn't this going to...I think it's been palpable. When the standing ovation in West Virginia hit, when that woman said you know, they're not telling us the truth, and the reaction I've gotten to the CNN appearances, and Laura Ingraham got to her attempted mauling by Gregory and Carville, I think there's a real backlash, although I don't know that the bottom can fall much more out of the media than it already has.

JL: No, I don't think so. It's so stark, that at the top of the hour news, Harris Faulkner on the Fox...we have the Fox News feed here on this particular station, and she referred to the allied troops, coalition troops, as our troops. And that actually sort of jarred me, because you don't hear that very often.

HH: No, you don't.

JL: And it's one of the reasons that people detest Fox News in the first place, is that they have the unmitigated jingo gaul to use terms like the first person plural when referring to American troops. I mean, I have a whole selection, I should just pass these along to you, of World War II-era news reporting. And what's remarkable about it is not only the depth and the detail, but the calmness of the voice, and just the absolute recitation of the fact without attempting to punch everything up with undue emotion. And it's that need to make a 15 second, 30 second newscast sparkling, and peppered with emotion, that sometimes drives them to do things like this, because you can't really get people excited, and turned to the radio, if you're talking about the fact that the electricity in Baghdad is not on 17% more than it was last week.

HH: Did you hear the conversation with Michael Ware, the Aussie who runs Time's Baghdad bureau?

JL: Yes, yes I did.

HH: What do you make of him?

JL: He's full of gusto, isn't he?

HH: Yes, he is.

JL: I defer to the gentleman who called, I believe the soldier who called and said he detected a bit of the adrenaline junkie in the man's voice, and a bit of self-aggrandizement. However, he's there, I'm not. And I also have to go, like you, with Tim Blair's assessment of the man.

HH: Yeah, that's what's so funny. My guess is he's a pugnacious brawler who really believes this stuff, that they're in a better position than the American military to know what's going on. That's what I love.

JL: Well, I don't believe, necessarily, that the even-handed approach is what's required here. It's good when you're covering a school board meeting. It's fine when you're covering a fire, and it's necessary to look at things from combustion's point of view as well. But in this case, we...actually, there is an us. There is, at the end of the day, an us, which is a civilization, which I think...well, again, it comes back to what you've pointed out, what Hitchens has pointed out, what Steyn's pointed out, and that is that this is essentially an existential matter. And that feeling, I don't believe, is shared. I'm not even exactly sure that the other side knows what the word means, necessarily.

HH: No, they don't. Now I've got to move to important stuff. The number of avalanche deaths in this country has risen dramatically to thirty a year, and 90% of them are men. And the Men's Health writer who wrote about this couldn't figure out why that is. I wonder why do you think that nine out of ten avalanche victims are men?

JL: (laughing) Because women are smart enough not to go climbing the stupid things. I'm waiting for the rash of avalanches that kill sharks, because that will combine all these things together. You know, the shark attacks on the rise, avalanches are on the rise. If we can get the avalanches to kill the sharks, I think we'll be fine.

HH: That would be good. Now Matt Sutter couldn't get tornado out of his head or ears, because he, on March 12th, went for a ride in a tornado. "It's a pretty awkward record to have," he said about the longest known ride in a torado on record. Interesting?

JL: (laughing) I wasn't sure that they were actually keeping records of the number of people who have survived being picked up. If I saw a tornado deposit somebody in my front yard, I would just have all of my friends get down on their knees and speak in little, tiny, high voices, to make the guy think he'd landed in Munchkinland or something.

HH: (laughing) Okay, from the AP in Bonita Springs, Florida. Someone knocking at her door in a gated community earlier this week, she looked out to see an unwelcome visitor on her front stoop, an 8 foot alligator. The bull gator had wandered up from the pond behind the house, and had a bloody lip from banging its head against the door. What do you do, James Lileks?

JL: Well, instantly, you call your husband and the appearance of a man will trigger an avalanche, apparently, and the avalanche will kill the alligator.

HH: That's it. You're right.

HH: Do I know my ecosystems? Or do I know my ecosystems?

HH: You've got this down. Now James, you worked in a bar for a while, didn't you?

JL: Seven years.

HH: Seven years in a bar. Texas has begun sending undercover agents into bars to arrest drinkers for being drunk. What do you think about that?

JL: I don't like that at all.

HH: (laughing)

JL: I don't like that. I mean, I understand, and I have a problem with them catching people as they stagger outside, not when they go to their cars, no. Perhaps when they go to their horses, or walk or bike or whatever. But the idea that people inside of a bar should be worried as to whether or not somebody is monitoring their intake seems rather un-Texan, shall we...un-Texican.

HH: It does. I think that's what's so amazing about this story, is that no one would ever have expected Texas to break down on drunks in bars.

JL: In Vermont, yes. But if a man cannot get drunk at a honky tonk in Texas, then America is truly a different country.

HH: That's the media's fault, I think. Finally, Face Book, that online meeting place for undergrads, has gone from 2.2 million visitors a day, to 10.5 million visitors a day. What does this tell you, James Lileks?

JL: That there are a lot of people with internet access at work.

HH: But these are college kids. They don't work.

JL: I know. Fine. Well, then there are a lot of people who go to Kinko's and hang out. Look, the amount of time that I spend on the web on absolutely stupid debates in small little corners of blogs, it surprises me not that a page like that should get as much attention as it does.

HH: How many columns do you write a week?

JL: Five for the website, six for the newspaper, one for Newhouse, one a month for American Enterprise Institute, and then the 30 minute podcast, and the other stuff.

HH: So it's about 13 a week it will average out.

JL: 13, 14 pieces a week, yeah.

HH: And do you consider yourself hard-pressed?

JL: I consider myself lazy.

HH: All right. That's what I wanted to know. Lileks, always a pleasure. Lileks.com.

End of interview.

Posted at 10:44PM PST

RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman.

HH: Joined now by the Chairman of the Republican Party, Ken Mehlman. Chairman Mehlman, welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show.

KM: Thank you. I've been all over Wisconsin today.

HH: What's going on in Wisconsin? We've got a Senate race up there?

KM: Well, we've got a very competitive governor's race up there. We're going to have a potentially competitive House race, and we have a great state party up here, a lot of energy, a lot of grass roots, and spent the day traveling the state. One of the other things we talked about in this state was what I saw, was the misguided effort by Senator Feingold to censure the President. I think that we ought to be appreciating the President for trying to stop foreign terrorists before they hit us, not punishing him for it.

HH: Now Ken Mehlman, the subject this week, every day on this show, and many other places. I've done CNN two nights in a row on this, is the media's coverage of the war. I think Americans are fed up with, at least a majority of Americans are. Do you sense that out on your travels?

KM: I do. I hear people talking about it all the time, and you know, one of the interesting things that happens, and you noted in your excellent books, is that people can vote with their feet today. In the old days, when there was a liberal mainstream media monopoly, there was nothing you could do about it, except for to hope that they improve. Today, you can change, and we've seen so many examples of that, and there's no question it's a problem, and I think that the mainstream media ought to think about what it's doing, because every day they do what they do, is they lose more customers.

HH: Now Ken Mehlman, a lot of people are happy that the President gave the press conference and two stem-winders this week. Do you think he needs to keep that up, because this is a long war?

KM: I think he does, and I think he will. I think we need to remind people what the stakes are, remind people of the 9/11 attacks, remind people that what we're doing is dealing with the threat over there, so that we're safer over here. And I think all the time we can do to remind people of those things are critically important. You know, it's interesting, when America faces a new war, the old way you thought about war, the metrics you used to judge success and failure, aren't as relevant anymore, and that's one of the challenges we face, just as during Korea, when people had been used to the World War II model, they were anxious. We have the same challenge today, I think.

---

HH: Ken, what's the money situation as we look at seven months away from the mid-terms, party to party?

KM: Well, our numbers look pretty good. I think the latest numbers we have was about $40 million dollars cash on hand. I think the Democrats had about $8 million dollars cash on hand. So we have a big advantage, party to party. But as you know, Democrats have certain advantages. One is the power of trial lawyers and labor unions, which have historically overwhelmingly backed them. And the second is a point you mentioned, which is the power of the mainstream media. And so I think that we need to have more resources. In 2004, we were outspent by $120 million dollars, and we've got to be ready for that potentially to happen again. We've also got to recognize that ultimately, we need a strong grass roots. We need a lot of people listening to shows like this, participating in the blogs. All these are part of what we need to have, which is an alternative network to get the word out.

HH: Now Ken Mehlman, are you worried, because I am. I think it's break the glass and sound the alarm time, that complacency among Republicans threatens the majorities they hold in Congress.

KM: I am. I worry not just about complacency. I worry about something I call learned helplessness sometimes. I think people either think they really can't do anything to make a difference, because they feel very safe. Or they think things are bad, they throw their hands up. That's not the right answer. John Boehner is a fantastic new leader in the House, and will do a great job as the majority leader, continuing the tradition of a great majority leader. We've got great leaders in the Senate, we've got the President. The stakes are enormous. We've got to remind people our nation is now at war. This isn't like even back before, when we had the Cold War, we had an established pattern of dealing with that challenge. We're now at the same moment we were in 1946, when the Iron Curtain came down. And the policies that were established then for a generation decided how Americans would deal with the threat of international Communism. The policies that are made right now, the results of the elections right now, will decide for a generation whether we take the battle to the enemy, whether we use every tool at our disposal to defeat the enemy, whether we make sure that things like Patriot Act and the surveillance of foreign terrorists continue, or whether those things stop, and we go back to a pre-9/11 mindset that says we can win this thing somehow with just law enforcement, and responding after the fact. So all of these issues are on the table now, and it is critically important that every one of your listeners be involved in these campaigns.

HH: Ken Mehlman, always great to talk to you. We will check in often as we approach election day. Of course, we always invite Howard Dean, and he never accepts. Howard, if you're listening, you're welcome to come on early and often.

End of interview.

Posted at 6:00PM PST

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Wednesday, March 22

A reasonable look at the media coverage of Iraq on CNN's Anderson Cooper tonight.

On the panel was Michael Yon, Michael Ware, Nic Robertson, and Hugh Hewitt.

The transcript is here, or will be shortly.

The audio is here.

The video? Expose The Left's got it.

Christopher Hitchens on the media coverage of Iraq, and whether some on the other side are recognizing what they've wrought.

03-22hitchens.mp3

HH: Happy to have back to begin today's show Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair columnist, author of many books, including a recent bio of Thomas Jefferson. And a great time to talk to you, Christopher Hitchens, as this is the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. There have been a lot of lookbacks, including a couple of which I participated that have focused on the media's role in reporting from Iraq. I'm wondering, generally, do you think the media is doing a good job in conveying both the stakes and the situation on the ground in Iraq?

CH: Not really, I don't. I mean, I can think of some outstanding reporters who've done their very best to cover it. Michael Gordon's new book, for example, I think is very good. And John Burns from the New York Times is outstanding, much better than his newspaper, when he writes there, that's to say. It's just that I've been doing this business for a long time. I've been a journalist for most of my life, and it must be nearly 40 years now, and I know a press herd mentality when I see one. I really do. And sometimes, I approve. I mean, I remember when I was in Bosnia, all of the press was hostile to Milosevic in one way or another, and as it happened, I thought that was the right bias to have. But I did realize it was a bias. And when I've been in the company of people covering Iraq, I notice this...another herd mentality, and it's been there since before the war, and it's placed a bet on quagmire at best.

HH: Yeah, I tried to make an argument last night...

CH: And defeat at worst. And in some ways, it doesn't want its prediction to be falsified. I won't say any more than that. It's not a conspiracy, but it's definitely a mindset.

HH: That's my point. Last night on CNN, I was debating this with Michael Ware from Time Magazine. Do you know him, Christopher Hitchens?

CH: I don't, but I was on CNN with Michael Weiskopf of Time Magazine a few nights ago, who said that the only person capable of unifying Iraq was Saddam Hussein, and I thought good grief. We've come this far to hear that?

HH: That's...this is exactly...I want to play you a little bit. Michael Ware's a very respected war correspondent. He's covered Timor, he's covered all sorts of civil wars. He's an Australian, he's a rugby player. He's tough as nails. But here's an exchange last night I'd like your take on. I'm asking him a question.

HH: Compared to what, Mr. Ware? Compared to Baghdad under Saddam? Are you arguing that Iraqis are worse off today than they were four years ago?

Anderson Cooper: Michael Ware, do you want to respond?

MW: Yeah, well I think if you ask a lot of Iraqis, I think you'll be surprised by what the answer is. A whole lot of them say what? This is democracy? The joke is you call this liberation. And okay, let's look at the context, as you suggest. Let's look at the even bigger picture. What is the bigger picture? Who's winning from this war? Who is benefitting right now? Well, the main winners so far are al Qaeda, which is stronger than it was before the invasion. Abu Musab al Zarqawi was a nobody. Now he's the superstar of international jihad. And Iran...Iran essentially has a proxy government in place, a very, very friendly government. Its sphere of influence has expanded, and any U.S. diplomat or senior military intelligence commander here will tell you that. So that's the big picture. Where is that being reported?

HH: Christopher Hitchens, does that reflect the mindset that you're talking about?

CH: In part it does, because it's very passive. In other words, you read all the time, people say, you could look at any of your today's newspapers and notice it, and say well, there's a civil war atmosphere, as if that was a criticism of the Bush administration, instead of the people like Zarqawi, who have been announcing for two years now that it's their plan to create a sectarian civil war by destroying the other side's Mosques in an unbelievable piece of facistic blasphemy. People look at you when they read about atrocities is if it's your fault for wanting to get rid of Saddam Hussein. This is simply illogical. It's a non sequitur. And you'll note the slight tone of hysteria and the nervousness, I think, in the over-assertive way that your man was just talking now.

HH: Yes, I did notice that.

CH: By the way, since he mentions Mr. Zarqawi, about whom I know a lot, Mr. Zarqawi was a very senior member of the bin Laden family. He probably had, and in my opinion, probably always did have the ambition to outdo Mr. bin Laden, and to become himself the great sheikh and a great leader. But he was a very important member of that gang in Afghanistan already, long before. And of course, if we hadn't gone to Afghanistan, if we'd left it in the hands of the Taliban and al Qaeda, he'd still be there. He wouldn't be in Iraq, so of course your man is correct again in saying we've made him worse. But what...has he thought of the logic of what he's saying? Of course Zarqawi would still be in Afghanistan if we left him alone.

HH: The logic of...

CH: I mean the whole thing is based on this unbelievably masochistic passivity, and which leads to people making elementary logical mistakes they wouldn't otherwise make, because they wouldn't otherwise be blinded by their predjudice.

HH: Last week, when we talked about Yugoslavia and the descent into genocide that Milosevic led, it was because Yugoslavia descended into civil war, and the slaughter became too high, that we had to go in. In Rwanda, the great shame is that in that civil war, the West did not intervene. Now it strikes me as exceedingly odd that on the left, there are voices who wish us to withdraw from Iraq because of the threat of civil war. Does that add up?

CH: Of course, if we had gone into Rwanda when we could have done, when we were warned, and when the United Nations commanders there were begging just for a slight increase in force that would have held off, or at least blunted the original genocidal attack, of course there would have had to be a moment where American soldiers fired on the people trying to commit genocide. It would have happened, and we would have been accused of starting a civil war in Rwanda if that had happened. And you know by who, as well.

HH: Right.

CH: Or we're just really glad...or even though we keep complaining and say oh, we're so sorry we did nothing, secretly we're relieved we didn't ever have to expose ourselves to the messy responsibility. By the way, there's a question from your last...I'm sorry, Michael Ware was it?

HH: Yes.

CH: ...that I didn't answer. I didn't want anyone to think I was ducking it. On the question of Iran's influence in Iraq?

HH: Yes.

CH: There's no doubt about it. I mean, we've known for some time. It was a risk we ran from the beginning, that anything you do to reduce the power of any Iraqi government...this is the reason why we tried to split the difference during the Gulf War between Iran and Iraq. And by the way, the other way around, as when Carter encouraged Saddam to attack Iran, risks the possibility of enhancing the other side. That's almost zero sum, but as against that, which is a serious problem, has taken a very nasty form in Iraq. We can also say that among Iranians, millions of Iranians, there's a great deal of pro-American influence that has been spread, and I don't know a single Iranian who isn't glad that Saddam Hussein was removed, and doesn't think that in the longer run, this movement that's been unleashed in the region will be at the expense of the mullahs, in spite of any short-term gains. I can't promise that that's true, but I can promise that it's a real possibility.

HH: Christopher Hitchens, just objectively stepping back, is Iraq better off today than it was four years ago, given the documents we are now seeing, given what Robert Kaplan called the unbelievably Stalinist nature of Hussein's regime, and the mad as hatter sons who were in line and would never have given it up.

CH: Yes.

HH: What do you think?

CH: Oh, on that decision, there's only one way to argue it. It's not only a great deal better off than it was four years ago, but it's enormously better off than it would have been if it had been left to rot and crash under this mad despotism, which bear in mind, stayed in power by using the tactics of divided rule, and importing jihadists like Zarqawi, and the Fedayeen Saddam, who were going to be the suppressor regime. I mean, if you think it's bad now, just try and imagine what it would have been like if it had been left alone. And on that, I don't think there's any disput at all. And by the way, I've made this point in countless arguments with so-called anti-war people, many of whom are actually pro-war, but on the other side, in public and in print and on television and on radio and in universities. I've never had any of them reply to my point there.

HH: When you say pro-war but on the other side, what do you mean, Christopher Hitchens?

CH: Well, I object to people like Michael Moore for example, or Ramsey Clark being referred to as...in the New York Times as anti-war activists, or anti-war campaigners. They're not anti-war at all. For one thing, they're not pacifists, particularly not Ramsey Clark. For another, they've declared that they believe the beheaders and jihadists and the blowers up of Mosques and mutilators of women and so forth are a liberation force or an insurgency. Michael Moore even said they were the modern equivalent to the American founding fathers. So in that case, fine. George Galloway's the same. Many of them are. They're not really against the war. They're not anti-war, but on the other side in the war for civilization, and they should be called out on it and given their right name.

HH: Do you believe that there are leaders in the Democratic Party in Congress who also belong to that caucus?

CH: No, I can't say that I do think that. I mean, maybe Cynthia McKinney, who is not exactly a leader. She seems sometimes to talk in a sort of MoveOn.org manner, but no, I think that we're far from that in this case. I think what you have there is again, a sort of fatalism, the feeling that if you can say a war is unwinnable, you've also said it's wrong. In other words, that you would desert the side you were on if you thought things were going badly. That's a moral degeneracy of a different kind.

HH: And is that so pervasive as to be irreversible, as we've got about 45 seconds left, in the Democratic Party?

CH: Yes, I believe so. I don't need 45 seconds to say that.

HH: Well then, in 30 seconds, if the Democratic Party returns to power in this country, you get thirty seconds now, what happens?

CH: I'll just tell you something a very senior person at a well-known network. I know this sounds a bit odd, but I just can't tell you who he is or which network. I don't have the right to do it. But you'll have to believe me, okay?

HH: Okay.

CH: He called me the other day. This is not a guy who's in any way a conservative, and said you know, we've known each other for a bit. He said you know, I'm beginning to think you must be right, because it really worries me what we're doing, when we are giving the other side the impression that all they need to do is hang on until the end of this administration. Do people know what they're doing when they're doing this? One doesn't have to make any allegation of disloyalty, but just...if it worries him, as it really does, I think it should worry other people, too, and it certainly worries me.

HH: It certainly should. Christopher Hitchens, as always, a pleasure.

End of interview.

Posted at 4:00PM PST

The Smart Guys on the keep your hands off my Church case, or Kelo, Part 2.

HH: Now John Eastman, last week we touched on your Long Beach case. I want to take a couple more minutes and lay it out and get Erwin's reaction to it.

JE: Sure. I actually have two Long Beach cases that we're in the middle of. The first was a campaign finance case, and we got a temporary restraining order against an illegal campaign finance ordinace just last week.

HH: Oh, congratulations.

JE: Thanks. The second involves, and it's not in litigation, yet. We're waiting to see whether the city's going to follow up with condemnation that they're now authorized to do. They're condemning a Church because it's in the redevelopment zone, and of course, half of the city is in the redevelopment zone. And it's not that they need the Church land to create an assemblage of a parcel for a big Home Depot, or anything like that. They just want to extend the housing development a couple more units, to take out this Church property. The Church is not blighted, and there's been no demonstration that taking the Church out and bulldozing it down is necessary to fulfill the elimination of blight purposes in the rest of the area that is the ground for bringing the condemnation in the first place. I think it presents a very important challenge to Kelo. When you're dealing with a non-profit organization such as a Church, what does Kelo mean when it said it's permissable to take private property for economic development, when you're dealing with private property that by definition doesn't contribute economically to the base of the city, but has a different kind of contribution.

HH: Erwin, what do you think about this?

EC: Well, I think it's complicated, because when you're dealing with a Church property, then all of a sudden, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act comes in, that says if the government significantly burdens religion with regard to land use decisions, the government has to show a compelling interest. And so I would start with that aspect of it before even getting to the takings clause aspect of it.

HH: John Eastman, are you pleading that?

JE: Well, you know, we certainly will, and I think Erwin's absolutely right. RELUIPA says they've got to show a compelling interest, which is even a higher standard than the taking. The taking says they had to have a finding of necessity, and the RELUIPA standard is they have to have a compelling interest. And I'm just not sure getting a couple of extra lots is compelling.

HH: Erwin, what would your advice be to the City of Long Beach?

EC: Well, I don't know enough facts, but based on what John has said, my advice would be to settle the case.

HH: Yeah, I think they are out of their minds. John Eastman, where can people learn more about this atrocity?

JE: Well, we've got a wonderful web URL we've set up, called Handsoffourchurch.com, and people can go to that, and it transfers you to the internal Claremont Institute webpage with all the details on the case.

HH: And Erwin, have you been to the NCAA's yet?

EC: No, though I'm sure following closely what's going to happen tomorrow and this weekend.

HH: If you're at Duke, I assume you have to, or they'll run you out of town. Erwin Chemerinsky from Duke University Law School, John Eastman from Chapman University Law School, thank you both.

End of interview.

Posted at 11:59PM PST

The Smart Guys deconstruct the 5-3 Court decision today.

HH: That music means the Smart Guys are with us. From Duke University Law School, Erwin Chemerinsky. From Chapman University Law School, John Eastman. Professors both, John from the right, Erwin from the left. And today marks the handing down of the first John Roberts dissent. The Chief Justice dissents. John Eastman, you want to give a quick summary of why?

JE: Well, the case involves 4th Amendment law. The police have long have the ability to conduct a warrantless search if the occupant of the property gave consent. And an earlier case by the Supreme Court had held that that was true, even if the person was only a co-tenant, and the other tenant may not have given consent. But if they were absent, the co-tenant's permission is sufficient. Here you had the wife giving consent, and the husband explicitly not giving consent, and the Court ruled 5-3 that the non-consenting co-tenant can prevail, and the police can't search the house based merely on the consent of the other party. Now Chief Justice Roberts' dissent raises some important question and concerns about the ability of police to conduct searches and intervene in domestic violence matters as a result of this ruling.

HH: And it also, according to Justice Roberts, Chief Justice Roberts, says the end result is a complete lack of practical guidance for police in the field, let alone for the lower courts. Erwin Chemerinsky, your reaction to today's decision?

EC: Well, I think it's a very narrow decision. Justice Souter's majority opinion is clear that he's dealing just with the situation where the objecting person is at the door and says to the police, you're looking for evidence about me, you don't have my permission to come in. Justice Souter says I'm not dealing with the situation where the person's in the house but not at the door, not dealing with the situation where the person is away from the house. And so I think the problem with it is it's too narrow, because it's just focusing on a very unique situation. The police come to the house, two spouses come to the door, one says yes, the other says no. The one in whom the evidence is sought against says no. The Court says you can't go in on those circumstances.

HH: So if the wife has called, and then the husband who's abusing her knocks her out, she's out of luck?

EC: Well, that's not what the Court says. I mean, obviously, if the police come to the door and the wife says my husband just beat me up and the police hear her testimony, the police can arrest him on the basis of that. But what they're saying is here, which had nothing to do with domestic violence, when the police are trying to come to somebody's house to get evidence on that person, that person at the door saying no should prevent there being consent. If the police come to my house and I'm the only one who answers the door, and they say do we have consent to come in, I think all three of us agree I have the ability to say no.

HH: Correct.

EC: Well, the fact that my wife is at the door saying yes, but they're not looking for evidence against her, and they're looking for evidence against me and I say no, that's the no that should count.

HH: John Eastman, the Court is fractured here. Not only did Justice Souter write, but so did John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer, Justice Kennedy siding with them. And we had three dissents as well. What happened to the fabled unanimity under Chief Justice Roberts?

JE: Well, you know, I've been tickled by the pundits talking about how there's a new era, and everything's going to be unanimous all the way to June. These are the early cases coming out that were unanimous. Some of them could have provoked controversy, but they wrote them narrowly enough so they didn't. There's a big dynamic going on at the Court, but I don't think unanimity from this group of justices is going to be the measure. Let me go to what I think it means in practice. It means a second question from police at the door. You've got the husband saying no, you've got the wife saying yes. The police will then say to the wife, is there anything in there that would give us probable cause to search? She'll say yeah, he's got his cocaine pipe on the desk there. Bing. Now all of a sudden, they've got exigent circumstances that gives them probable cause to go in, and the ability to destroy evidence. That means they don't have to stop and go get a warrant from a magistrate and then come back. And so they'll just ask a second question. So at the end of the day, I think we may get where we need to, but it's...well, we'll see. I've got to parse all the opinions to see all the implications.

HH: And Erwin, before I go back and talk to John about his Long Beach case, I just wanted to sound you out on a case I brought up last week, Vermont's campaign finance reform. The three dissenters from the most recent application of Buckley are still there. Two of the majority upholding campaign spending contribution limits are gone from the Court. Do you think there's the potential here to overturn Buckley V. Vallejo?

EC: I think there's a real potential, but probably not this year, in this case. There's no doubt that Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas believe that any restriction on contributions is unconstitutional. We don't know if Roberts and Alito will be with them. We can surmise they might be. If so, that will be five votes that any limit on campaign contributions is unconstitutional. My guess, though, is in the Vermont case, they're going to decide much more narrowly, just saying the Vermont law's unconstitutional under Buckley V. Vallejo, and leave for a future year the dramatic change in American election law that would come from overruling Buckley.

HH: I certainly hope your wrong.

End of transcript. More from them in a bit.

John Mark Reynolds on how to really get your kid prepped for college.

HH: This is a special segment I told you about. Professor John Mark Reynolds is my friend. He's a tremendous blogger, he's a professor of philosophy at Biola University, where he leads a program for elite students. And I found out a couple of weeks ago that he also spends his Summer, along with some of his colleagues from Biola, running the Wheatstone Institute, and I wanted Americans to hear about this. John Mark, good to have you, pal.

JMR: Yeah, it's always good to be here.

HH: Tell people what the Wheatstone Institute is.

JMR: Well, if you are worried about the fact that students who go to college, head off to college are going to get indoctrinated with views that are not open-minded, that don't teach them to think for themselves, that instead propagandize them in a worldview that you might not like, then Wheatstone is a great place. It doesn't teach students answers so much as how to think critically, how to think outside the box, and understand, well, bull when they hear it. So Christians should be able to think better than anyone else. And so since we know the truth, we don't have anything to fear from teaching critical thinking, and so it's an exciting time to teach students how to handle the propagandistic college environment that in a couple of years, juniors and seniors in high school are heading off for.

HH: So now you run three of these a Summer?

JMR: They're running five this Summer.

HH: Wow. And how many students in each one of them?

JMR: They try to hold it down to thirty. It's an absolutely amazing student-teacher ratio. You'll find a mentor who's, generally speaking, an honor student from Biola University, or from the Torrey Honors Institute, though there's no connection between Wheatstone and Biola, I should add, who will model good behavior for your student, but also model good intellectual behavior. It's not just about learning to be good. It's learning to think really critically, and be at the cutting edge of technology in other areas while learning to be a good Christian person.

HH: It sounds like boot camp for kids going to secular university.

JMR: I'll tell you, that's exactly what it is. No one should come to Wheatstone if they think fun is hanging out at the mall and saying whatever. This is a place for students who are serious about changing the world.

HH: And now, what do you do?

JMR: Well, that's a good question. We begin by helping people to think about the status of Christianity in the world. You know, Hugh, we're in a war of ideas against a radical Islamic ideology that's essentially facist in nature, against secularists who can't fight anything or even reproduce themselves, they're so narcissistic and have so embraced a culture of self-indulgence. They have no staying power. And against that, I'm afraid Christians veer between being reactionary, not traditional Christians, just reacting to whatever the culture's giving them and hiding. Or they just give up and become wimpy. My former denomination did that, and has drifted off into absolute irrelevance. And so the goal will first, to paint a vision for students. Then the second thing they do is, we put them into discussion groups, reading some of the hardest and most important books ever written, not all of them by Christians, like Plato's Republic. And then after they're done with that, we wrestle with what the Bible would have to say about that, and look at contemporary film, talk about blogging, talk about things that are going on in the culture in the light of these big ideas we've been looking at.

HH: What's the web address for the Wheatstone Institute, John?

JMR: What's really great is that people can just type in Wheatstone, that's wheat as in the thing you put in bread, and stone, academy. It's dot org. Wheatstoneacademy.org, and that will take them right to the site.

HH: Okay, I want to make sure I say that again. Wheatstoneacademy.org. Where are the five sites this Summer?

JMR: They are all over Southern California. So if you take a look at the site and you live anywhere close to Southern California, we'll also have students fly in from all over the country. Another thing we'll challenge students with are ropes courses and other things to bring together the physical with the mental.

HH: Do they have to be really smart?

JMR: They don't. No one starts off really smart. All of us are created in the image of God, and we can all learn to think, and we can all learn to be culture changers.

HH: Do the kids who go enjoy it? Or is it like prison?

JMR: No, that's a good question. I can imagine students saying you're sending me where to do what?

HH: Yes.

JMR: 99% of the students who've ever participated, and this is the 6th year of the program, have reported an outstanding time. Many of them come back again and again to experience the program, and a lot of them end up at Biola, because they've become addicted to doing what you do every day on the radio, which is taking no prisoners for good ideas.

HH: John Mark Reynolds, what's it cost? Because people will want to know that.

JMR: It's just under a thousand dollars for a week, and that's all inclusive, but there are scholarships available for people that need them.

HH: All right. And so, walk us through the first day, because again, it's always tough to sell a high school kid. I'm sure these moms and dads that are intrigued by this are hearing this, and their kids are rolling their eyes saying a week of my last Summer before college, and you want me to go do Plato with John Mark Reynolds?

JMR: That's right. Well, we'll start off trying to explain why that's important to them, but then we'll take them to an art museum like the Getty, and show them what the culture has turned into. They'll also, on those first couple of days, experience working on a ropes course, and thinking about fear and the edge of a challenge, and how that integrates with what we're reading. They'll also meet other really bright students who are going through the same struggle, and they'll sit in groups of three or four people, and get down to brass tacks. It's the sort of thing that can change your life, Hugh.

HH: Is it co-ed?

JMR: It is.

HH: And does...tell me the ideal student for this, John Mark Reynolds, because a lot of parents probably driving around thinking about this right now, and they're intriguted by the Wheatstone Academy. But who is it for?

JMR: The ideal student isn't just a good student. They're somebody who's a leader. They're somebody who wants to think outside the box. They might do theater, they might be involved in a sport, and they also make pretty decent grades. They want to do the right thing, but they're sick of easy answers. They want to be challenged, and think outside the box.

HH: John Mark Reynolds, it sounds a little bit like the Summer session at the U.S. Naval Academy.

JMR: Well, that's the goal. Really, when we invented this, we said is there a way to strip out all the bull, bluntly, all the touchy-feely stuff, let's try to entertain you, and while having a good time, having fun, get real, get serious, realize we're at war in several different ways, culturally, and prepare shock troops for victory.

HH: Wheatstoneacademy.org. Is that correct?

JMR: That's correct.

HH: John Mark Reynolds, always a pleasure. I think I'm going to replay this on Friday in a different hour, so other people get to hear that. Professor John Mark Reynolds of Biola University, one of the founders and leaders of Wheatstoneacademy.org. I saw this brochure. I thought I'd tell America about it. That's why I love having a radio show.

End of interview.

Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes on what the Saddam docs should be telling us.

HH: Joined now by the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, who absolutely owns the story about connections between al Qaeda and Saddam. And in the new Weekly Standard issue, has an article on the Philippines connection. It's a cover story, actually. It's now available online. Stephen Hayes, welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show.

SH: Hugh, good to be with you.

HH: Last night, as I was in the green room waiting for CNN to go on opposite Michael Ware, I read through this three or four times. I finally got it, but it's a complicated story, Stephen Hayes. I'd like you to take your time and set it up for people to understand, who have not read your article.

SH: It is a complicated story. I did my best to simplify it. I don't always succeed at tough things. The story was derived from three translations of sets of documents that I was given by a U.S. government official. One set of documents deals with the operations of Iraqi intelligence, and the Iraqi diplomatic corps in the Philippines, primarily in 2001. The second set of documents deals with the Iraqi intelligence service's outreach to Saudi opposition groups, including bin Laden. And the third document was, a single document, was a second or third-hand report from an Iraqi intelligence source in Afghanistan, regarding the various connections between Iraq and al Qaeda, or the allegations of a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.

HH: Now I think what's important also is to describe the Philippine/al Qaeda branch, and its connection to Osama at the beginning of the money transfer.

SH: Yeah, Abu Sayyaf has what I think most people would regard as very strong links to al Qaeda. It was funded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the mid to late 1990's. There are, I think, credible reports that members of the Abu Sayyaf received training both in the Philippines and back in Afghanistan in al Qaeda-sponsored camps. So the ties between Abu Sayyaf and al Qaeda are of something I don't think anybody would dispute.

HH: Right. And so, pick up the story then.

SH: Well, the Philippine documents are interesting. Basically, what it is, is it's a series of correspondence between the Iraqi Embassy in Manila, including the members of the intelligence corps there, and the Iraqi intelligence headquarters back in Baghdad, and the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs back in Baghdad. And what you have, essentially, is letters back and forth that form the core of a debate. And the debate is taking place from March, 2001, through June, 2001. And the debate, essentially, is this. Should the Iraqi intelligence service use a charity that is sponsored by Mohamar Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, in order to reinforce its connections or support of Abu Sayyaf. And the argument there would be by using this third party, essentially a cut-out, the Iraqis could then further distance themselves from this terrorist group, but at the same time, support it. And there was a robust debate back and forth. There was one document that I saw where somebody makes an argument for doing this, says that there would be intelligence value in doing this. There are apparently documents going back the other way, saying well, this isn't such a good idea. Unfortunately, we don't have full translations of those documents, just summaries. But anyway, the debate goes back and forth. Should we do this? Shouldn't we do this? And ultimately, the Iraqis apparently decide that they're not going to further engage themselves in funding and supporting Abu Sayyaf. But what I think was very interesting, in a June 6th, 2001, letter from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila, back to Baghdad, he describes the scene after one of Abu Sayyaf's kidnappings...your listeners may remember some Americans were kidnapped along with 17 other civilians from a resort in the Philippines.

HH: The husband and wife missionaries, the Burnham's, yeah.

SH: Exactly. And this was essentially the report from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila, back to Baghdad on the status of the kidnappings, what's going on in the Philippines with respect to the kidnappings. And he goes through and gives sort of just a cursory review, I've met with these people, this is what's in the newspapers, this is what the Philippine government is saying. And in the course of doing that, he says, sort of mysteriously, we have been supporting, essentially...I'm paraphrasing here...we have been supporting the kidnappers until now, and we no longer have any contact with them, which just struck me as a very interesting revelation sort of buried in this mountain of correspondence.

HH: Yes, it is. Stephen Hayes, with two minutes left, I want to jump to a piece that you quote at the end. The Foreign Affairs piece that gives us a glimpse inside the Fedayeen Saddam, which Christopher Hitchens just pointed out, was being set up to take an evil, despotic regime even deeper into the abyss.

SH: Yeah, it's really an interesting passage. There's, I think, a brilliant Foreign Affairs piece that walks through sort of what Saddam was thinking and doing in the years before the U.S. invasion, March, 2003. Most of the report deals with Saddam and weapons of mass destruction, what his scientists were telling him, what he thought, etc. But there's an interesting paragraph in the middle of the piece that talks about Saddam Fedayeen taking part in the regime's domestic terrorism operations, and planning for attacks througout Europe and the Middle East. They cite one document in May of 1999, where Uday Hussein ordered preperations for "special operations, assassinations, and bombings," for the centers and trader symbols in London, Iran, and the self-ruled areas, where they mean Kurdistan. But the most interesting sentence in the entire piece, I think, and it's a lengthy piece, is the next sentence. Preperations for "blessed July," a regime-directed wave of martyrdom operations against targets in the West, were well under way at the time of the coalition invasion. That is pregnant with lots of interesting questions...

HH: Yeah.

SH: And certainly, we need to know more about what "blessed July," was, and just how far along those operations were, and what the targets in the West were.

HH: And how it was going to be operational. We've got about a minute, Stephen Hayes. What's coming out from the document trove next?

SH: Well, there's a document that I highlighted in the middle of this piece that you referred to, that is an internal Iraqi intelligence memo, which describes outreach from the Iraqi intelligence service to four Saudi opposition groups. One of those groups, the Iraqis refer to as the reform and advice committee, and it's headed by Osama bin Laden. And essentially, in a nutshell, Saddam Hussein agrees to a request from bin Laden to rebroadcast anti-Saudi regime propaganda videos. And they sort of defer a request from bin Laden to make the relationship operational.

HH: We're going to need a new updated edition of The Connection, Stephen Hayes. You've got too much new stuff. It's got to go into the book. Thank you much. We'll check back, Stephen Hayes.

End of interview.

Posted at 8:11PM PST

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Tuesday, March 21

More revelations from the Saddam documents.

HH: Dan Darling is a counter-terrorism consultant for the Manhattan Institute's Center For Policing Terrorism. He is also a contributor to Weeklystandard.com, and today at the Weekly Standard, he has an article, Republic of Fear, focusing on some of the newly released documents from Saddam's regime. Dan Darling, welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show.

DD: Thank you for having me.

HH: Let's start, Dan, with the documents that discussed the captured Kuwaitis, because to me, this is a hugely significant find, and your article's very important. Explain what these released documents tell us about the Kuwaitis.

DD: Well, during the Iraqi conquest of Kuwait back during the first Gulf War, a number of Kuwaiti prisoners were taken back to Iraq. Iraq admitted in 1996 that they had taken 126 prisoners, but they said that those were no longer in Iraqi custody. Now the reason these documents are significant, is this shows that in 2003, before the war, Iraq was still holding 448 Kuwaiti prisoners, and apparently had arranged for them to be placed as sort of human shields around sensitive targets, so that when the U.S. bombed those locations, it would create the greater impression of civilian casualties.

HH: That's my first question, because as I read through the Republic of Fear today, I couldn't quite get a date on the document from Qusay Hussein that directed that the 448 Kuwaitis be used as human shields. Was that document actually dated?

DD: I believe it was, at least from 2003. It goes back into the Iraqi war planning stages.

HH: Okay.

DD: So we can reasonably place it just from the internal evidence at being around late 2002, early 2003

HH: Now the significance of this is obviously that the Iraqis were lying through their teeth concerning one issue. So that just beyond a reasonable doubt, they had Kuwaitis, they had proffered many times there were no Kuwaitis, and they had Kuwaitis, and they were going to use them inhumanely as human shields, correct?

DD: Yes, and this is after giving numerous international assurances that no such Kuwaitis were being held.

HH: Now Dan Darling, why didn't the United States government put out this document, for example, in the last three years?

DD: Well, there've been hints that this existed, generally from private people. I found one story in the Christian Science Monitor, indicated that perhaps the Kuwaitis were alive as of the early 2000's, and still in Iraqi custody. I would say probably because they may not have even known this document existed. We know that many of these documents were not seriously went over by the U.S. government, some of this for lack of resources. And that's one of the reasons why the Pentagon is releasing them now.

HH: And how did this one come to your attention, Dan Darling?

DD: Well, this particular document was posted on the website of the foreign military studies section up at Fort Leavenworth, which is where I'm from. And as soon as it was posted up there, I checked it regularly, and I saw it, and I recognized the significance of the document, and so, the story kind of wrote itself from that point.

HH: I'm curious. Has the Kuwaiti media picked this up yet?

DD: I honestly have been very busy today, so I haven't been able to see the Kuwaiti reaction. I would imagine that especially the families of the individuals who were claimed to have been imprisoned by Iraq would be very interested in knowing who was being held, were they killed during the war, are they still alive?

HH: Wow. That is huge. Second, we go to the area of chemical weapons. You have a document, linked again at Weeklystandard.com, Dan Darling is my guest from the Manhattan Institute, counter-terrorism consultant for the Center For Policing Terrorism, and it discusses in details, plans made up to draw, to attack the Kurdish bases, Kurdish guerilla bases. Were those the Ansar al-Assam bases? Or were they the good Kurds, the Kurds that were our allies?

DD: Peshmerga?

HH: Yeah.

DD: Well, this document itself occurs back in 1987, I believe, back during the conduct of the Iraq-Iran War. And basically, what happened is these would not be Ansar al-Islam. Ansar al-Islam wasn't even around back then. It was the two major Kurdish factions, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which today are staunch allies of the United States.

HH: So in 1987, we see the planning to deploy special equipment, that is obviously a term for chemical weapons, Dan Darling?

DD: Yes, it's actually clarified that they're referring to serin mustard gas, and several other nasty toxins.

HH: Yeah, and ricin.

DD: That's right.

HH: And so the question is, does this have any bearing on the post-Iraq war, Gulf War, disarmament? Can we draw anything other from the fact that it confirms that we knew he was an evil, chemical weapons using tyrant in the 80's?

DD: Well, this in and of itself confirms first of all, that anybody who had any serious denial the Iraqi regime was gassing Kurds in the 1980's, really doesn't have much of a leg to stand on anymore. As far as the broader issue of WMD's, there's a lot of contradictory evidence floating around in that regard. I mean, NBC News broke just the other day that Naji Sabri had claimed that there were no nuclear or biological weapons, but there were large stockpiles of chemical weapons. There have been various Saddam tapes...but on the other hand, Charles Duelfer in the Iraq Survey Group looked all around the country and...very seriously looking for WMD's after the war, and they couldn't locate them.

HH: Now Dan Darling, though, these documents that are pouring out, that the Iraq Survey Group looked at, they never touched these documents. What's this do to the credibility of the Duelfer report, and the work of the Iraq Survey Group?

DD: Well, obviously that depends...this is one of the issues with the documents, is that many of these have not been yet authenticated. In the case of these documents, it's pretty clear that they're genuine. But if you found something, say, dating from the early 2000's, you know, regarding chemical weapons, you would need to get that authenticated, and that could very easily alter the whole public perception there.

HH: But I'm thinking that given that the Iraq Survey Group did not bother to translate these documents...I mean, any police investigation that left aside 48,000 boxes of evidence because it was inconvenient would simply not be persuasive, would it?

DD: At the very least, it would be called into serious question. And then further investigation would be required before you reach a conclusion.

HH: How long it this process going to go on, Dan Darling? How much time are you devoting to the release of new documents as they come forward?

DD: Oh, God. There's been...I believe there's about 2 million documents, and so even assuming we're going at a rate of, say, 15 or 25 a day, it still takes an astronomical amount of time, especially with the limited resources that we ourselves have at this stage in order to get some kind of a thorough picture of what's going on. And once we have the documents translated, the issue is authenticating them. It's particularly the ones that contain some of the more explosive information.

HH: Dan Darling, keep digging, keep translating, keep authenticating. It's important stuff. I appreciate your spending time with us. The article's Republic of Fear. It's at Weeklystandard.com. I'm certain it's making a splash in the Kuwaiti media. It should be making a splash in ours.

End of interview.

Posted at 11:43PM PST

Marc Holtzman, another very viable candidate to be the next Governor of Colorado.

HH: You may recall a few weeks back I was in Colorado, Colorado Springs, in fact, talking to a lot of that red state's political elite about the move by deep pocketed blue Democrats to try and take that state into the blue column. One that I missed and wanted to catch up with is Marc Holtzman. Marc was in Davos at that time. Marc Holtzman's a candidate for Governor in Colorado, and I'm pleased to welcome him to the Hugh Hewitt Show. Marc, welcome. Good to have you here.

MH: Hugh, I'm a huge fan of yours, and it's wonderful to be on your show this evening. Thank you.

HH: I was just reading your bio, I've known about your work at the University of Denver as a venture capitalist, but I didn't realized you're a Pennsylvanian.

MH: Yes, I grew up in the coal country near Wilksbury, Pennsylvania.

HH: And now, that doesn't make you a Steelers fan, does it?

MH: Well, not over the Broncos.

HH: Okay, good. Just checking, because then we'd have to end the interview right now. The Broncos are bad enough. I have too many Bronco friends, but that's okay. Marc, tell people about your career in venture capitalism, so when we move to talk about some reconstruction issues in Iraq, people understand you know what you're talking about when it comes to business.

MH: Sure. Well, after working for Ronald Reagan as a young man, I went over to Eastern Europe and Russia in 1989, as an entrepreneur. You know, they have a saying over there, Hugh, that in the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And that's how I kind of felt when I got started over there. But I worked hard, I persuaded my best friend to leave Solomon Brothers at the time, and over a number of years, we built the premiere boutique investment banking firm in Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, and Moscow, even in Al Mati, Kazakhstan. And we intermediated over a billion and a half dollars of capital markets transactions. We took public the first private company from all of Eastern Europe since the Second World War to go to the international equity market. And it was a very satisfying and rewarding experience to be able to do financial transactions that in some cases, had we not done, they wouldn't have happened.

HH: Now I want to use that experience in the post-Soviet Eastern Europe bloc countries, and Russia itself, and ask you to take a look at what's going on around the world right now, particularly in Iraq. And do you see a future for capitalism in places that have been so badly destroyed by Stalinist and neo-Stalinist governments?

MH: Well, I do, but I also believe strongly that in most cases, political reform precedes economic reform. And I think that's a huge difference. When you look at the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, especially the Central European countries like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, those are countries that were dominated by Communism for a generation, for forty years. And there were still people around when we started our business that remembered what it used to be like. And culture does matter. And even in Russia, where over 75 years...the culture of a country had been decapitated, there were still people that knew and appreciated the capitalist system, the free market model. My concern is that while it will certainly work in the Middle East, that it is very important that first, the political reforms precede the economic market reforms.

HH: Now when you set up the stock exchange in Warsaw, for example, you helped establish the Warsaw stock exchange. Had the Communists given up? Had they thrown in the towel? Or were they still actively trying to interfere with the growth of capitalism?

MH: Oh, there's no question that in those early years, there were people in the bureaucracy in Hungary and Poland that were definitely obstructionists, that were not happy about things. We used to say that there kind of a whole class of technicrat that kept the bust of Lenin in their secret closet at night, and did the dance. I mean, there's no question. But those people were pretty much weeded out by the mid-1990's. And unfortunately, Russia's a different matter. Russia was often perceived by people as a less-developed country. I used to say that that was wrong, that it was a mis-developed country, though they had a very high literacy rate, math scores even surpassed those in the United States. So I felt that by the most part, by the late 90's, there had been pretty much a house cleaning.

HH: All right. I'm talking with Marc Holtzman, running for Governor in the state of Colorado. His website, by the way, www.marc2006.com, and that's spelled Marc2006.com. Let's switch over to some Rocky Mountain politics for a second, Marc Holtzman. You've got some deep pocketed blue, blue activists in your state, and they are spending like drunken sailors. How does anyone win against that kind of tidal wave of money, when you don't have contribution limits?

MH: Well, I believe that you work very hard to articulate a positive message. I have three things that I'm talking about. I'm talking about how horrified I am by the in-flow of illegal immigration into Colorado, the fact that with 400,000 people living illegally in a state of just a little more than 4 million people, it's a tremendous economic burden on our working families. And as Governor, I have a plan to address it, to deal with it, to end benefits beyond what are federally mandated, and to get tough on making sure that employers know and understand their responsibilities and obligations under the law. I'm talking about how I'm going to erect safeguards to protect eminent domain from not being used ever in a private purpose. And I'm talking about how I'm going to try to roll back the effects of this $4 billion dollar tax increase, Referendum C, that was on the ballot last year, how bad it is for working families, how misrepresented the case for the tax was, and how as Governor, I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that we get as much of that money back to working families as we can.

HH: Now let's go back to illegal immigration. Fred Barnes, a frequent guest on the program, Marc Holtzman, as you've obviously heard if you've been listening for a few years, and Fred last week went on a mini-rant about the Republican nativist element who are going to drive Latinos from our party's ranks forever by their inappropriate emphasis on this issue. How do you respond to Fred?

MH: You see, I love Fred. Fred's been a friend of mine for a long time, but I think he's dead wrong on this issue, Hugh. In fact, I will tell you that my strongest support on this issue is coming from Latino-Americans that resent the fact that people are trying to get ahead of them in the line, that they don't want to go through the same process that many of these people went through to legally and properly become American citizens. And for that reason, I'm opposed to amnesty. And I will tell you, this issue is being framed simply by me on what is fair and what is right and not right. We are a nation of laws, not a government of people. And no one among us has the right to selectively decide which of those laws we're going to enforce on any particular day.

HH: Now would you be opposed to the mixture of increased border security and some kind of guest worker program that seems to be what the Senate is looking at?

MH: We definitely need to improve border security. As far as a guest worker program, I would consider such a program, but I believe that for someone to qualify, they should first have to go back to their country of citizenship, and legally and properly apply to come here, because anything short of that is just another way of saying that we're granting amnesty. And every time, Hugh, that we've done this in the past, we've just resulted in a bigger problem.

HH: Now you've also obviously seen the stories about deep splits in the Republican Party, especially state and local leaders fleeing from George W. Bush. What's your attitude about the President?

MH: Well, I love the President, and I support him on so many issues. I wish the President would do more to enforce the existing laws of our land, and to protect our borders. And again, I believe that this administration is selectively deciding which of our border and immigration laws on any one day they're going to decide to enforce. We know that after 9/11, 2001, those borders of this country, North and South, were shut and sealed tight. No one dared cross. We have the capability through science to know the difference of the heartbeat of a human being and an animal within ten miles. We only lack the political will, and I want to see this President show that kind of strength.

---

HH: Marc Holtzman, I mentioned earlier the money advantage Democrats have in the Colorado elections coming up, and they just wiped out Republicans in 2004. Pete Coors lost to Ken Salazar. Boy, do we regret that. What's the ground game look like in Colorado right now? Is there any way to get the energy back?

MH: Well, Hugh, first of all, we are so looking forward to your upcoming visit at the Arapahoe County Lincoln Day dinner in Colorado.

HH: I am, too. I'm looking forward to that, too.

MH: Yeah, let me suggest something else. I believe that in 2004, that Republicans lost not so much because the Democrats beat us on the front that you described, but I believe that the leadership of our party in Colorado became detached from the core soul and Reagan roots of our party. We became so obsessed with holding onto power and winning elections, that we lost sight of what we stood for. We did a terrible job at articulating a positive and optimistic and conservative vision for Colorado. And the result was that in a year when President Bush won by 7 percentage points in Colorado in '04, we lost the Senate race, we lost the state Congressional seat in Western Colorado. And we lost the House and the Senate, first time both chambers combined in 42 years. One of the reasons I'm running is because I want to return our party to its core values and basic principles. And I'm articulating just such a message, and I am the anti-establishment candidate in this race. but we've got a lot of support that we're building among the grass roots of our party. And I am convinced that my message is not only a winning message for my campaign, but it's going to bring in a Republican House and Senate, and a sweep across the entire team. And we're not going to stop at anything less than total victory.

HH: Now obviously, Republicans have been running Colorado for a long time. And they've had Wayne Allard in the Senate for a long time. Until Salazar came along, they had both seats. They've had Governor Bill Owens in the state house for almost eight years now. Does a party run through a cycle where it just runs out of gas?

MH: No, I don't believe so, but in the case of our party, some of the leaders of our party lost their way. Governor Bill Owens, for whom I have respect and admiration, I served in his cabinet, the Governor last year sided with the Democratic majorites in the House and Senate to promote the largest tax increase, a referendum, in Colorado history, a $4 billion dollar tax increase. When that happens, it sends confusing messages to the electorate, to our base, and to others. I believe that the way we win elections is to stay true to the core values of who we are and what we stand for.

HH: Now obviously, Colorado's had two major education stories. We've only got a couple of minutes, but I've got to talk about Jay Bennish and Ward Churchill.

MH: Yes.

HH: You were the president of a university, and you know what it's like to get rid of a tenured person. It's impossible. But what is it that went wrong in those two instances?

MH: Well first of all, I reformed tenure at the University of Denver. If you are a recipient of one of the chairs at our school of law today, you have to voluntarily relinquish tenure before you can accept the benefit of that chair. Ward Churchill would have never happened at my university, because we simply wouldn't have allowed it, we wouldn't have permitted it. That man should have been fired and dismissed, because he plagiarized, because he misrepresented his credentials. It had nothing to do with academic freedom. That was a thin veil behind which he tried to hide. Jay Bennish, absolutely disgraceful what he did, and that's all too typical. And that's why I support vouchers, I support school choice, and Hugh, I am behind an amendment which is going to be on the Colorado ballot this year, which if passed, will require that at least $.65 cents out of every education dollar, as opposed to 57% today in Colorado, go into the classroom. but I support school choice for home schooling, for use at Parochial and religiously affiliated institutions, and through competition, we have to shake up the system, and that's what I want to do as Governor.

HH: Marriage is on the ballot, is it not, Marc Holtzman?

MH: Yes, it is, and I'm proud to say that I'm a strong supporter of the institution of marriage, and that fact that marriage is defined as an institution between a man and a woman.

HH: And so when does that come before the voters of Colorado? June?

MH: It'll be on the ballot this November.

HH: November. So it's going to be the same time as the general election?

MH: Yes.

HH: And that's going to be a brass-knuckled fight, right?

MH: I think it's going to be a hard fight. The left is mobilizing, the kind of secular anti-God establishment is certainly digging its heels in. But we're going to beat them on this, because they are wrong and the majority of Coloradans agree with me.

HH: Quick question. What's it cost to run for Governor in Colorado, both primary and general?

MH: Probably going to cost about three to four million dollars in a primary, and at least that again in the general election.

HH: Well, people can go and read more at Marc2006.com. Marc Holtzman, great to talk to you, make your acquaintance. Look forward to seeing you at the Arapahoe County Republican dinner when I'm in town in April.

End of interview.

Posted at 10:00PM PST

Michael Yon on how the mainstream media covers Iraq.

HH: As I told you at the beginning of the hour, I am on CNN tonight, Anderson Cooper, opposite Michael Ware in Baghdad, and another CNN correspondent also based in Baghdad, whose name is Nic Robertson, arguing whether or not the coverage of the war in Iraq has been useful. And I had already in my talking points rehearsed, because they asked me, who does a good job? And I've got six names, and at the top of that list is my guest, Michael Yon. In the States right now, but going back soon. Michael, welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show.

MY: Thank you, Hugh, and thank you for that compliment.

HH: Well, I'll be mentioning your name on CNN tonight. They really ought to have you on CNN, not me, but I want to make sure people know where to read your stuff. Michaelyon.blogspot.com. Michael, what do you think of the American mainstream media's coverage of the Iraq war?

MY: For the most part, it's doing an incredibly poor job. I see some exceptions, Tony Castaneda at the AP does a good job. But for the most part, they do...Rich Opal (?), New York Times, does a good job. But for the most part, they just focus on...I mean, the mainstream media just focuses on the flames and the bullets. They focus on the terrorism. They don't tell us that the Kurdish areas are a complete success. They're becoming economically viable, they're making a lot of progress, they're sending their children, including their girls, to school. They love us there in the Kurdish areas, and they don't tell us that Mosul is a success now. I mean, Mosul was the only thing on the news last year when I was there. I'm sure you remember that.

HH: Yup.

MY: But that battle has been won by the Iraqis and the American forces, and you don't see it in the news anymore. Very rarely, anyway.

HH: What about in the Southern part? Basra and other areas around the waterway. What's your impression down there, Michael Yon?

MY: It's not as good as the Kurdish areas. That's a certainty, and it's restive. But it's not certainly...you don't see it as much on the news as you see the flames up in Baghdad. And Baghdad's easy to cover. It's a big city, about 6 million people. You know, the Green Zone is there, so when there's a car bomb, it's easy to roll out and your stringers can get the footage, and you can immediately get it up. It's cheap, it's flames, and it sells.

HH: Now what about, for example, Jack Kelly was just on, himself retired Marine, Special Forces, background very much like yours, commenting that the dog that doesn't bite never gets covered. For example, the march to Karbala today, huge, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Shiia, no attack. And he notes that will not make the news tonight.

MY: That's well said, the dog that doesn't bit doesn't get covered. You know, I didn't actually know about that march today, either. And clearly, because it's not been covered, because I watch the news coming from Iraq with great interest.

HH: Do you think that the country is on the brink of civil war?

MY: Well, I've been saying all 2005 that it really is in civil war already. It's just not boiling. It's simmering. But you know, it's been in civil war for decades. Saddam Hussein killed untold thousands of his people. They're out there in mass graves. I would venture to guess, I do not know this, but I would venture to guess that it was worse back then than it is now. He gassed his own people, he went to war with Iran, he went to war with Kuwait, and destroyed Kuwait, destroyed the oil fields. Certainly, there's a lot of violence going on there now, and it might be getting worse, but it's been at civil war for decades.

HH: And what doesn't get covered? What do you say about the war that you really wish mainstream media would pay attention to?

MY: I interviewed a captain yesterday that I knew in Mosul. He was badly injured in a car bomb. He's fine now, he's back on duty. And he told me about an Iraqi man, an older man, he said he was very clean and stood well, and his English was very good, and he said please don't go. You're doing a good job. Please don't go. And this was back when Mosul was full-on combat. A car bomb went off about a block away, right then, and this soldier, Captain Shaw is his name, a great soldier, hit the ground, and the two soldiers with him hit the ground, and the Iraqi man did not hit the ground, and he actually helped Captain Shaw get back up. The Iraqi man just stood there, and he said you'll be fine, you'll be fine. Please don't leave.

HH: Now Michael Yon, when are you going back?

MY: Well, I almost went back this week. It could be as soon as next week, but I'm ready, my combat gear is right in front of me, actually.

HH: Have you raised enough funds?

MY: Yes, I have.

HH: You can always use a little bit more, can't you?

MY: I can, and thank you, by the way. Your listeners bought me night-vision gear.

HH: Michael, we've got to get you back over there. You and Roggio...and I admire the work of Ricks and a few other people that go out with the troops, but I don't think we're getting the story from people like Michael Ware. Do you know Michael Ware?

MY: I talk with him on the phone occasionally. I haven't spoken with him in a while.

HH: Good reporter? Biased reporter? Ideological? I just don't know his work, other than what I read, and it drips with acid.

MY: Well, he gets out there. He definitely gets out there with the troops. I mean, he spent a lot of time in combat.

HH: Yeah, he was in Afghanistan as well, covered a lot of the early Afghan war as well. But do you sense there as with some of the Vietnam correspondents of long ago, a desire for defeat?

MY: Well, I sense that with some of the reporters, definitely. I mean, I'm not going to name any names...

HH: All right.

MY: One from CNN, in particular, when I speak with this individual, and this individual's not on the camera, the words coming from this individual do drip with acid, as you say.

HH: You know, that's what I think is going on here pretty much, is an ideological tinge to a lot of this war reporting. Michael Yon, when you do go back, which part of the country are you headed to? Are you going to embed with another unit like the Infantry division you were with a year ago?

MY: Well, I've already contacted Sergeant Major Mellinger, who's the top enlisted man in the theater, meaning he is the top enlisted man in Iraq. And he goes everywhere. I've been out with him twice before, and I call him the University of Iraq, because he seems to know everything that's going on. So I'd like to spend a couple of weeks with him, getting in-briefed again about the new state of the country, because he speaks very bluntly. And then after that, I'll go to probably where the action is. I tend to go to where our troops are seeing the most combat, but then I pop out sometimes, and go to the peaceful areas. But I want to know how our troops are doing.

HH: I hope you will pick up a phone, and in fact, I hope you have Command Sergeant Mellinger give me a call. I'd love to brief him on the air.

MY: I'll tell you, the guy's the University of Iraq. If you can get him on the phone, he would be a great interview.

HH: Michael Yon, God speed. I'm going to send people to Michaelyon.blogspot.com. Is the tip jar still there?

MY: It sure is.

HH: Well, I think people should go and throw in $10, $20, $50, whatever. It's important to get the good news that we need from Iraq, and to keep you there. So God speed. We'll talk to you on the other side when you get over there, Michael.

MY: Thank you, Hugh.

End of interview.

Posted at 6:14PM PST

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Jack Kelly on the media coverage of Iraq.

HH: I'm joined now by Jack Kelly. He is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, also in the Toledo Blade, and he blogs at Irishpennants.com. Jack, good to have you back on.

JK: It's great to be on with you, Hugh.

HH: Now Jack, this is a coincidence, and obviously a little meme is working through the media. Tonight, I'm on CNN opposite Michael Ware from Baghdad, another CNN correspondent from Baghdad, and Anderson Cooper to talk about mainstream media's reporting from Iraq, what is good about it, what is bad about it. What's your take on it, Jack? You wrote about this in a column that's at Real Clear Politics this very day.

JK: Well, the column was about my friend, Bill Roggio's, appearance on a CNN show on Saturday. And he gave the media a D-plus, and I think he was generous.

HH: And why is that?

JK: Well, the reporting shows first a monumental ignorance of military affairs. As Bill pointed out, there's commentary larded in with the reporting, events are looked at in isolation, you don't get reporting of events in context. To give you an illustration, there were two news stories day that made news. One was this terrorist attack on a prison, an Iraqi prison in Muqdadiyah.

HH: Yup.

JK: It got a lot of attention.

HH: Yup.

JK: The more significant thing was the dog that didn't bark, that the Shiia pilgrimage into Karbala, on this Shiia holiday, passed peacefully, that there were no terrorist assault, there was no sign of civil war. That got very little attention.

HH: That's a annual and very massive march, is it not?

JK: It is indeed. There are hundreds of thousands of people that participate. And they walk hundreds of miles in many instances. The Northeast portion of Sadr City largely empties out to march down to Karbala, which is about 80 miles away.

HH: Whoa. That's a big walk.

JK: It is indeed.

HH: Okay. You're right, though. It's also a huge target.

JK: It is a huge target, and there was a lot of security for it, and there was one incident yesterday where several pilgrims were shot by drive-by shooting, like a gangland shooting in L.A. But as far as I know, that was it.

HH: Now Jack Kelly, how do you respond? Michael Ware will be opposite me, and he has sort of got a patent on the 'unless you live here, you can't accuse us of bad reporting.'

JK: Well, you can rely on those who actually go out and do something. Michael Ware probably rarely leaves his hotel, because most journalists, understandably, because if you wander around by yourself, there's a white, American-ish looking person, bad things can happen to you. But because...apparently because they're afraid of ideological taint, they won't embed with U.S. forces, which has its dangers, but is relatively safe.

HH: Is that in fact going on? Do you think MSM is shunning embeds because they don't want the ideological taint of having traveled with the American military?

JK: I suspect that...I mean, it is true that they are shunning embeds. There are very, very few embeds, a couple of dozen, I think, at the current time, which is really an abomination, when you consider what's going on. Why, I suppose, depends on the individual person in the news organization. But the only good reason I can come up with is they fear the taint. For instance, when Bill was on the CNN show, On The Line, Saturday night, it was implied by a CNN correspondent that he was biased because he was a former soldier. Now consider the breathtaking implications of that.

HH: Yup.

JK: We don't consider a doctor who was a laywer, like Fox News' Megyn Kendall, to be biased simply...in covering the courts, simply because she knows something about the subject she's covering.

HH: Right.

JK: We don't consider someone like Sanjay Gupta, who's a medical doctor who works for CNN to be biased in reporting on medicine because he knows something about the subject. But most news organizations are quite comfortable...not only comfortable, insistent upon having our wars covered by people who aren't clear on from which end of the rifle the round comes.

HH: (laughing) Jack Kelly, you're yourself a veteran. Marine Corps, right?

JK: Marine Corps and Army Special Forces.

HH: Oh, I'd forgotten the Army Special Forces stuff. And so, of the journalists who you've watched who are mainstream, whose work do you admire?

JK: Actually, not very many. There's a reporter for the Washington Post, Tom Ricks.

HH: Tom Ricks, yeah. He's very good.

JK: ...who is usually very good and on top of his game, has been to Iraq a few times, and who's quite accurate. There aren't very many others. There are two reporters for the New York Times, Dexter Philkins and John Burns. John Burns is a hero. He was in Iraq before the invasion, long-time correspondent with background there. And in fact, CNN people ratted him out, because he was getting news outside of the established Saddamite sources.

HH: I'm talking, by the way, with Jack Kelly of Irish Pennants. He's a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. You can read all of his stuff at Irishpennants.com. His column today that we're discussing at Realclearpolitics.com. Jack Kelly, do you see any hope for mainstream media in covering this war? Or do they want a replay of Vietnam? Is that what's going on here?

JK: Well, for many, I think that's true. But a large portion of this is merely incompetence. It can be attributed to it. It isn't all bias. A lot of it is just utter incompetence.

HH: And so, if you had to quantify that which is bias and that which is incompetence, what numbers do you put on it?

JK: I would put about 40-40 with a 20% overlap.

HH: Okay. Now the fact of the matter is, will be know when peace has broken out in Iraq.

JK: Not directly, but there actually are some hints, and one of them is now all this talk about civil war, because even the densest of journalists in Baghdad understand that the insurgents can't win now. You know, last year, the meme was the insurgents are winning. They're ahead, they're going to triumph. Now, with Sunni tribesmen hunting down al Qaeda wherever they can find them, no person with an IQ above a carrot can make that claim. So now the meme is we're in a civil war, or on the verge of a civil war, and all of this is going to be hopeless for a different reason. But it's not the reason that the insurgents are winning. No one can say that anymore.

HH: Jack Kelly, as always, wonderfully illuminating and right spot on. Irishpennants.com for all of Jack Kelly's work. His column today, Ignorance pervasive In Reporting from Iraq, available at Realclearpolitics.com.

End of interview.

Posted at 5:08PM PST

Bill Clinton to the NFL?

Could we be so lucky as to have Bill Clinton take over the National Football League after Paul Tagliabue retires as commissioner? Apparently, there are media reports that the former disgraced President has been mentioned repeatedly to fill the shoes of Tagliabue.

Anyone that knows me realizes that I'm no fan of either of the Clintons. In fact, Inauguration Day, 2001 was one of the happiest days of my life. But I'd actually campaign for Clinton to get this job, if possible. The material that would present itself would be too rich to pass up. Consider the possibilities, if you will.

Just this past season, several members of the Minnesota Vikings were caught up in a sex/orgy scandal aboard a boat on Lake Minnetonka. Could you imagine a Commissioner Clinton being faced with discharging...oops, bad word...dispensing appropriate punishment with a straight face? It's not entirely clear what went on during the three-hour pleasure cruise this last year, but I'd bet a cigar wasn't used inappropriately.

The league is full of players who are addicted to excess, so why not have a commissioner who himself is addicted to excess? When attending games around the league, will Mr. Clinton be more focused on the players or the cheerleaders?

One thing about a Commissioner Clinton would be certain. Unlike Tagliabue, who maintained just enough of a public face as necessary to do his job, Clinton's mug will be front and center during his potential tenure. In fact, the entire league might be renamed the CNFL, because of his fondness for the spotlight.

Now if only we can get Hillary to let him...

Posted at 11:00AM PST

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Monday, March 20

Must-die TV Reporter.

Far be it for a humble blogger to suggest to the creative team how to do what they do, because '24' is simply the best show on television, and they clearly do not need my help. But if I may be indulged, might I suggest that for my own personal satisfaction, there be a character brought in that would remind viewers of a television columnist for the New York Times, someone a lot like Kate Aurthur. And then may her character be submitted to torture that would make Saddam Hussein shudder.

Let's go back to Sunday, shall we? The day started pleasant enough. A little sleep-in time, a little breakfast, checking in with Sundial.com to monitor Hugh's progress in the Los Angeles Marathon, and going to Church. Not a bad sermon, I might add. Upon my return home, I picked up the Sunday Orange County Register. Living in Southern California, where the weather is perfect most of the time, the one price we apparently have to pay is finding alternatives to the Los Angeles Times. The Register isn't a particularly good paper, but it usually does the job, and has a decent crossword.

I leafed through the paper, and got to the Arts and Entertainment section. Five pages in, and I cannot explain the shock, disappointment, and outrage that began to take over.

For years, Monday nights had been reserved as either softball night, or some other project that usually spilled over from the weekend. I hadn't caught the '24' bug yet, because the opportunity to catch it live wasn't really possible in my schedule. Once TiVo and the first four seasons appeared on DVD, however, I had no excuse anymore, and so the catch-up process began earlier this year. I started watching Season 1, and got hooked by about the second hour. Season 2 and 3 soon followed, and Season 4 is now rotating its way through the DVD player. Up to now, I've been able to dodge any mention of what happens during Season 5, the current season, because everyone that talks about it, whether it's Rush, Hugh, or any interview I've seen or heard, there's always a warning if there's going to be any plot disclosure. I realize it's silly, but I was truly enjoying the ride, not knowing what was coming next, episode by episode, just letting the show play out.

Now back to Black Sunday, the day that Kate Aurthur became the new bane of my existence. Don't worry, people. I'm not going to stoop to her level. I'm not going to reveal anything about the show, or the fate of its characters. That would be wrong. Wouldn't be prudent. Not going to do it.

Page five in the Sunday Register starts with three large photos, taking up half the page, with two of them revealing what just happened on 24 within the last few weeks. No warning, no consideration for the millions of people that may or may not have seen it live when it happened. Then the story below by Ms. Aurthur, reprinted from the New York Times, not only divulges without any warning whatsoever the fate of '24' characters, but much of the plot twists of several other popular dramas, in a piece entitled, Must-Die TV.

I realize I should have turned away. I shouldn't have read the piece. But once you saw the picture, the genie was out of the bottle. There was no going home again. Innocence was lost, and so I read the story, feeling rather violated once I finished.

I have been stewing over this for a day and a half, wondering what in the world this demented woman was thinking when she wrote this. The point of her story was to show that TV dramas are getting increasingly competitive by killing off some of their main characters. That's fine, if you do the story in generalities. But there is a line there, and she crossed it.

If there is a movie out there that you might want to see, you don't want some movie critic giving away the ending. Almost all the time, that unwritten rule is adhered to, even by critics that don't like the film. There are exceptions, of course, with Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby being the movie in recent memory where the plot line was disclosed, because some critics decided the movie trailers were misleading the public into thinking it was a boxing movie, when the movie clearly had a different agenda. See, Kate? I didn't spoil the ending.

There was easily a way for Ms. Aurthur to write her story, and even talk to some of the writers and producers of the different series she mentions in her piece, without going down the road of names and modes of death. That was just plain mean. For someone that is supposedly plugged into the TV scene more than the average person, she ought to have realized the cult following some of these shows have, and taken a real hard look before deciding to ruin the surprise factor for millions of people who actually have a life and can't spend all of their waking hours in front of the television.

There is a reason why VCR's gave way to TiVo, and DVD's have exploded in sales over the last few years. Technology is starting to catch up with the average American consumer that is working, along with most every other capable American, if you look at recent unemployment statistics, at a pace that is keeping the economy booming along. And it allows for busy people to capture what they want to watch, and gives them the opportunity to watch it at their convenience.

In the days before the VCR, when you either caught the show when it happened or you missed out until reruns, Ms. Aurthur could have gotten away with this stunt. Not now. There is simply too many alternative ways for people today to have a chance to see the show for the first time, and not have the New York Times' TV town crier spoil everything.

Imagine, if you will, the children's magazine, Highlights. You know which magazine I'm talking about...the one that you always see in the dentist's office waiting room. Imagine your child flipping through the magazine, and then all of a sudden asking you why Santa Claus looks like somebody's daddy in that picture? (By the way, if you are under the age of 7 and are reading this blog, don't worry, wee one. I wasn't really serious about Santa. I was just making an example and showing what a bad, bad thing that mean lady from the Times did.)

Kate Aurthur should issue an apology for being completely insensitive to '24' fans, and tone-deaf to what the repercussions of revealing plot twists, even ones that have already aired, could do to otherwise sane and rational people. She should also be censured by the United States Senate, since she has released more damaging information, and caused more harm than the President has with the NSA wiretapping program.

I also want to point the finger of blame to the editors of the Orange County Register for reprinting the piece, although that's like scolding a small child for coloring outside the lines. Some things like common sense elude them.

Posted at 11:55PM PST

John Fund with the latest on the Taliban Yale.

03-20fund.mp3

HH: With John Fund of the Wall Street Journal's Opinionjournal.com. John, another update on the Yale Taliban, former deputy foreign minister of the Taliban there at Yale on scholarship. But let's begin with the assumption that some people don't know anything about this. Set up the story please.

JF: Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi was the chief propagandist and spokesman for the Taliban, which was the murderous regime that harbored the terrorists that attacked us at 9/11, harbored Osama bin Laden. We destroyed their government after 9/11, but they retreated into the hills where they're still killing American soldiers. They killed four of them just last week. And Yale, for some reason, even though we'll still fighting them, has decided to let a largely unrepentant senior official of the Taliban in as a student, and he's attending classes today at Yale.

HH: Now John Fund, in today's piece, you wrote that you had a memorable 90 minute meeting with this man in the Spring of 2001, months before the attack on the World Trade Center, which if the Taliban did not know about it, they certainly allowed to happen by virtue of the comfort they extended to the enemy, al Qaeda, and which in most instances, people believe they did know was coming. Tell me about that 90 minutes with this man.

JF: Well, actually, al Qaeda and the Taliban were one and the same thing. I just spoke with the AP bureau chief in Pakistan yesterday, and she said the Taliban Defense Ministry was controlled completely by Osama bin Laden. The meeting with the ambassador Hashemi was bizarre. I mean, he was defending the destruction of these 1,500 year old archaeological treasures, the Buddhist statutes, he was defending the whipping of women. It was astonishing. And of course, he did it in a very cultured and a very sophisticated way. And I have to tell you, at the end of the 90 minute meeting, Hugh, I felt as if I was looking into, directly looking into the face of evil.

HH: And this is what the background...a very fine piece today on the commonalties between totalitarian liars, and the non-excuse that Yale can have for embedding them. But there is some Yale history here. Explain Yale's attitude towards past facists.

JF: Well, in the 1970's, it was discovered that the senior lecturer in the Russian Language department had been a Nazi propagandist at a low level during World War II.

HH: They pursued him.

JF: His name was Vladimir Sokolov. He was pilloried.

HH: Yup.

JF: There were demonstrations. There were outcries. People threatened to resign from the faculty if he didn't go. He was finally bullied into resigning, he was later deported. Well, that was then. Flash forward thirty years, 2006, the Taliban is the functional equivalent of the Nazis in our era. These were people...Do you know, Sebastian Junger, the author of The Perfect Storm?

HH: Yup.

JF: He has a piece in this month's Vanity Fair, in which he talks about current Taliban atrocities. They skin people alive and leave them out in the sun to die.

HH: And this is...again, the Yalie that we're talking about, their former deputy foreign minister. Now John Fund, you wrote today that nearly a dozen former and current officials have contacted you privately about they're concerns. By this, do you mean former senior officials at Yale?

JF: Officials, faculty members, also separately, some people at the State Department who are upset that for some reason, the State Department let this guy in. Look, this fellow is not currently allied with any terrorists. He hasn't been with the Taliban for five years. I'm not saying that he is now. But he is unrepentant, he does not really believe that they did anything that wrong. In fact, just the other day, he referred to Israel as America's al Qaeda, aimed as a dagger at the Arab world. This is clearly someone of unreconstructed views, and someone...look, I think Yale should just quietly decide that next year, he should, shall we say, study abroad.

HH: But in fact, John, the Taliban in their midst has occasioned just a good stonewall from Yale, one of the more effectively executed stonewalls that I've seen in many recent years. Talk about the non-response of Yale University.

JF: Well, you know, Yale is famous because just last week, it lost, unanimously, a Supreme Court case in which is was trying to bar military recruiters from full access to its law school. And the irony of keeping out ROTC, keeping out military recruiters while letting in the Taliban has not been lost on some people. But Yale has responded to this with a public relations strategy that I call their version of don't ask, don't tell. They refuse to answer questions, they refuse to comment, they refuse to defend themselves. They issued a 144 word statement, which is a masterpiece of gobbledygook.

HH: Also, the pseudo-liberal New Haven Advocate, which I assume is an alternative weekly along the lines of most weeklies?

JF: Like the L.A. Weekly, right.

HH: Right. And so, typically you would expect them to be on the side of the people who are distressed here, the victims of the Taliban, the women who...

JF: The homosexuals, the gays...

HH: Yeah.

JF: I mean, the women.

HH: But here they are, standing with the Taliban.

JF: It's astonishing. What you have here is people automatically assuming that something is on a right-left continuum, that because I happen to be a conservative and I'm outraged about this, because I met this fellow, that somehow this is a right wing issue, and therefore it's illegitimate. Hugh, there are some issues that aren't right or left. Some issues are just up or down, as Ronald Reagan said.

HH: Yeah, human rights are typically in that category. Now Amy Aaland...

JF: I was a member of Amnesty International. It's a great group.

HH: Exactly. I mean, human rights...well, they do some stupid things occasionally, but generally speaking, the campaigns for the people in prison around the world are good campaigns. Amy Aaland is the executive director of Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale, where Mr. Rahmatullah takes his meals?

JF: Well, Islamic dietary constraints are very similar to those of orthodox Jews, so therefore, he gets the best food that is traditional for him there.

HH: Well, I understand why it's great to have ongoing Israeli-Arab relations, and ongoing Jewish-Muslim dialogue. But the Taliban was among the fiercest of the Islamists, were they not?

JF: They were so brutal, and so vicious, they would literally yank the fingernails out of women who were wearing nail polish. And that's why a bunch of Yale alumns have started a campaign to mail in red press-on fingernails to Yale as a protest for having let this guy in. And what is the response of Yale? One of their officials in the law school sent an anonymous e-mail accusing them of being "retarded."

HH: We talked about that last week in the update.

JF: And he was suspended.

HH: Mr. Rahmatullah recently called Israel an American al Qaeda. In what circumstance did he do that, John Fund?

JF: An essay last year which was posted on the foundation that is subsidizing him, the International Education Foundation. Mysterious things have happened since this story has created controversy, Hugh. Not only has that essay been wiped off the website, although I kept a copy of it, but today, the Yale Daily News reported that the three members of that foundation, who were subsidizing Rahmatullah Hashemi's education, have yanked their funding from him. One of them told someone well, "We didn't know everything about him." So if he's approved for next Fall at Yale, the only way he can stay is if Yale gives him financial aid.

HH: The relatives of U.S. soldiers...I'm quoting from your piece today, killed in action in Afghanistan are appalled. "It's not like the Taliban ever signed a peace treaty," Natalie Healey, the mother of a Navy SEAL killed by a Taliban rocket last year told me. "They're still killing Americans." John Fund, what's the end game here? Are you going to continue to cover this story?

JF: Absolutely, and in fact, this Thursday, by happenstance, the 27 year old woman who is a member of the Afghan Parliament, is going to be speaking at Yale. It looks as if she is going to repeat the comments that she made to me in my article today at Opinionjournal.com, in which she said Mr. Rahmatullah Hashemi knew about the crimes of the Taliban. He was not too young, and he should be held responsible. And better that he would be in front of a court of law than being a student at Yale.

HH: You know, John Fund, after the Demjanjuk decades...we were chasing John Demjanjuk when I was in the Department of Justice. Recently, he just finally...did he die? Or did he finally get deported...something like that. 25 years, we never let them go. We never gave up on the Nazis, and here we are asking a Taliban to matriculate at Yale. I'm astonished.

JF: Well, I think the pressure has gotten to Yale. I think they are going to have to respond eventually. And look, I don't wish ill for this fellow, other than the fact that I think he should study somewhere else.

HH: I actually think he ought to be obliged to answer some questions if he's going to be in the United States, about where his loyalties lie, and what he thinks about the regime which he formally represented with such enthusiasm. John Fund, always a pleasure. Opinionjournal.com for the latest on Sayed and de Man at Yale.

End of interview.

Posted at 6:27PM PST

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Sunday, March 19

Josh McDowell on how to respond to the DaVinci Code.

HH: I'm joined now by perhaps one of the most easily recognized names in all of Christian evangelical circles, Josh McDowell has been doing what he's been doing for more than thirty years, he's authored more than 77 books. He is an itinerant, and an always-influential speaker on behalf of the Gospel. But now, he's taken on the DaVinci challenge, and talking about the DaVinci Code. Josh McDowell, welcome. It's good to talk to you.

JM: Hey, it's good to finally be with you.

HH: Yeah, you and I have never met, though we've probably crossed paths a hundred times within one day of each other.

JM: I can tell stories about you, your listeners would believe.

HH: Then, that's...best me move on quickly, though. But Josh, I just learned today looking over your bio at Josh.org, you have the unfortunate distinction of having been born in Michigan.

JM: You know, I wanted to be close to my mother, so that's where I was born.

HH: But I'm a Buckeye, and so you've grown up with the tradition of losing football, and I hope you've overcome that. Now you're down in Texas, so you might...

JM: Well you know, our quarterback got his varsity letter, and he couldn't read it.

HH: That's exactly what I was referring to. Now Josh, why a book about the DaVinci Code?

JM: Well, for this reason. The DaVinci Code is fiction. Maybe 4%, maximum 4% truth. Like he says, Professor Langdon went to Paris. Well, it's true that Paris exists. But it's done in a marvelous way, and I commend Dan Brown. Every novelist would love to take a little tiny bit of truth and spin it into imagination, where people cannot tell where the truth leaves off and imagination begins. Well, what has happened is people...I mean, this is unbelievable...have taken it as truth. I've had twelve students in universities say they were assigned to read the book to see how corrupt Christianity was for a religion. In Phoenix, in one of the big high schools, the English department assigned it to read, to see how religion lies. And it's fiction.

HH: These universities in which this book is being assigned as some kind of guide to faith, how in the world do they defend that choice? Because it's just a novel.

JM: That's right. I have no idea. It's like back when the...remember the movie "The Hawaiians?"

HH: No.

JM: It was the story about how horrible Protestant missionaries treated the natives?

HH: Okay, sure. Okay.

JM: Well, it was all just fiction. It was just a story. It had nothing to do with reality. So I'm lecturing at Memphis State University, in three history classes. And it was two sessions right in a row. In the first session, I pointed out the movie was out then, and how it was fiction, but people quoted it and everything. In the second session, the chairman of the History department walked in, knew I was a Christian, and he interrupts me and says, well, have you seen the Hawaiian movie? Well, you see, just because you have a PhD or in a university, doesn't mean you're any smarter or more rational or objective, than the people that mow my lawn.

HH: So now Josh McDowell, the movie is coming out on May 19th. You've written a new book entitled...what's the actual title of it?

JM: The DaVinci Code: A Quest For Answers.

HH: That's it. The DaVinci Code: A Quest For Answers. It's available at Josh.org. Now do you encourage people to see the movie?

JM: No, not at all. I don't even encourage them to read the book. Now I think the movie's probably going to be the biggest blockbuster of the Summer by far, but no, I don't encourage people to go. But I definitely encourage people to be aware of the issues, because everyone's going to be talking about it. Issues like...yesterday, a woman said to me, did you know that Jesus was married? I said no, because he wasn't. And I try to tell people that you know, you should be ready to answer issues that come up in life, and these are some of the issues that are going to come up, and that's why I did the book.

HH: All right. Now in your book, what's the first question that you pose an answer for people?

JM: I don't really pose and answer a question. I did the book in dialogue between two university students, a graduate student, and a professor who had just walked out of the movie.

HH: Okay.

JM: And they bring up the 8-10 different issues throughout the whole dialogue, the drama. But probably one of the biggest issues, the first thing that jumps out, it says that all the events, the artwork, the secret societies and all, are all historical and accurate. And the first thing they say is well, in the Louvre, that pyramid right outside the Louvre Museum in Paris, where a lot of the drama takes place, that there's 666 panes of glass. And in the DaVinci Code book, it says and this represents Satan, you know, and all. Well, there's 673 panes of glass in the pyramid. It says the Madonna on the Rocks painting is five foot tall on canvas. It's six and a half feet tall and wood. But those are just little things. But like the Mona Lisa, people...they travel all over to see the Mona Lisa, to see secret things that he painted into it, using the name and all. And here's the issue. Leonardo never, ever, ever, ever, ever referred to the painting as Mona Lisa. It wasn't even known as that name, anything. He always referred to it as the woman in the painting. And then his biographer, Vasari, in 1550, wrote in his biography of Leonardo, referred to the woman as Lisa, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, and often referred to the painting as La Gioconda, which it is now in France and in Italy. And then in the 1900's, it was named Mona Lisa. And they're saying that he was passing on this secret in the name that Mona means the god Amman, and Lisa means the god Isis, and it was diguised as a secret to pass on that there's not only a god, there's a goddess, etc.

HH: You know, I was...

JM: It wasn't even until the 1900's, and Mona simply means madam, and Lisa's the name of the model that posed for the picture.

HH: Right. I was over at the DaVincichallege.com today, where you've contributed and I have contributed. And there is an Art History professor by the name of Lisa DeBoer from Westmont College, a wonderful school up in Santa Barbara, California, and she was writing about the Last Supper, and how in his etchings, Leonardo DaVinci made sure that everyone knew who was what in the painting, and he made sure that John was marked as John.

JM: Right.

HH: I didn't know that until today. It's kind of dispositive of the whole book's idiocy.

JM: Yeah.

HH: But I guess my question, which I want to...we'll expand on it after the break...

JM: Yeah, because I have all those, the etchings that he did before, when he placed them in the Supper, he named them all. And you can take...you get one of the oldest prints, and you put a mirror to it, and the names'll be backwards above the heads. He did that a lot.

HH: And so, when we come back, I want to ask you what the most important couple of factoids are for anyone who wants to puncture the idea of historicity. I think that's the most important thing someone does, and then how to use the opportunity that's presented by that.

---

HH: Josh McDowell, okay. Someone comes up to you and says it's not fiction. Dan Brown refuses to call it fiction. You've got to have the killer ap right out of the box. What do you bring back?

JM: Well, what you bring back is, since I'm a Christian, I always rejoice in the truth. If anyone ever shows what I am teaching is wrong, I'm the first one to rejoice in it, because as a Christian, I'm supposed to rejoice in truth. So when it comes to the DaVinci Code, I don't attack the book or Dan Brown. All I do is point out in the conspiracy, the historical fallacies, and incorrect...and inaccuracies and all. And when you do that, I believe ultimately, the truth will win out.

HH: All right.

JM: For example, it says that Constantine coalated the Bible, that until Constantine put the bible together, whether the Old Testament, the New Testament, there was no definitive version whatsoever, and that they voted on it at the Council of Nicaea, of what books to include in the Bible, in 325AD. Well, first of all, that is crazy. Historically, anyone would know that. Diocletian, the previous emperor, gave his famous edict that every Bible...now listen, definitive Bible in the empire should be destoyed. And they went from house to house and everything, Churches destroying Bibles. Well, how do you come just a few years later with Constantine, and say well, there's never been a definitive Bible?

HH: Right. Well put.

JM: And Diocletian did. But here's the other issue. With the Old Testament, you have about 200, 185-200BC, you have the Septuagint, which is the Greek title given to the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. And that became the definitive Bible what? 1,700 years before Leonardo, 3, 4, 500 years before Constantine. And you had the definitive Bible. But here's what's interesting. In researching out the Council of Nicaea in 325, they did 20 verdicts, where they voted on things, whatever. And not one of them had anything to do with the Bible, what should be in the Bible, or anything. So that's just pure fabrication.

HH: Now Dan Brown...today, the Wall Street Journal, page W-4, has a lengthy story on DaVinci damage control. This is today's paper, How Sony Hopes To Deflect Book's Religious Critics, Calling In The Scholars. And it details how you and I and a number of people have participated in these two Sony websites, the DaVincichallenge.com, and the DaVincidialogue.com. But it also says the makers of the film don't really want anyone to think of it as other than a story. It's just a novel, and just a story, and they make stuff up. But Dan Brown really doesn't have that attitude, does he, Josh McDowell?

JM: No. With Matt Lauer, Matt asked him, and I got all the transcripts of it, everything, said how much of the story and the details and the claims in there are true? And literally, he said absolutely all of it is accurate and historical.

HH: You see, that's what's so astonishing.

JM: And then with Gibson, which is what? ABC?

HH: It's ABC. You're right, Josh.

JM: ABC, asking if you had this book as fictional. If you had to write it over as a non-fiction book, what would you change? And I've got the transcript, and Dan Brown said none of it.

HH: Okay. You see, that's where the challenge comes.

JM: So...but you know, here again, he doesn't really believe that. He's selling books.

HH: Let's take a quick call before the break. Kevin in Atlanta, you're on with Josh McDowell. Go ahead, Kevin. Be quick, please.

Kevin: Josh, I guess I'm just surprised that...how much energy is wasted debunking the work of fiction. I know you've talked about this before, but it's a work of fiction. And I just...to waste 128 pages...we don't go and put 128 pages on the work of Star Wars, and the inaccuracies of that. So I'm just baffled why people of faith find this, a work of fiction, so offensive?

HH: Josh, you've got about thirty seconds to the break.

JM: We don't find it offensive. I'm amazed you don't see the point, because...like one woman came to me, said my son, 17 years old, has been brought up in Christian schools his whole life, a good Church, everything. He read the book, has totally walked away from his faith, and saying nothing in Christianity is true.

HH: You see, yeah, that's the challenge.

JM: Well, see, when you have fiction that can cause that, you address the issue.

---

HH: Josh McDowell, is this selling well? Are people taking this? Do they see the challenge out there?

JM: Yes, they are. And the reason is, so many people are asking questions, like this caller who called in, said why all the to-do with this? Well, very simple. People are asking questions, and as Christians, we're supposed to be ready to answer the question, not ignore them, whatever. And when you say to a person reading the book, well don't you see it's just fiction, all that says to that person is I'm dumb or stupid, because they don't see it that way. And this is why I wrote this book in the easy reading style, and documented to help believers, when they're asked questions, to intelligently share the answers that will affect the other person's life. We owe that to people to do it.

HH: All right. Let's go to the phones. Elena, San Diego. Hi, Elena, you're on with Josh McDowell.

Elena: Hi, Hugh. Hi, Josh.

JM: Hi, Elena.

Elena: I'm calling because I can relate to that mother whose son walked away from the faith after reading the book. And first, let me preface that by saying that I read the DaVinci Code, and I thought it was one of the worse-written books I've ever read. I thought it was terrible as a novel. But I was...I came back to the Catholic Church after many, many years of being away, and I was in that Church for oh, about five years, when I was in a bookstore, and I came across Holy Blood, Holy Grail. And I read it. I was captivated. I couldn't...could this be true? It was so convincing.

JM: Yup.

Elena: And I lost my faith, and I haven't gotten it back. I think I need your book.

HH: That's interesting. All right, Elena. That's...well, Josh, there's your market.

JM: That's the same story that I'm hearing on the DaVinci Code.

HH: And Elena...

JM: If that lady could give you her address, I'd love to send her a couple of books as a gift.

HH: All right, Elena. Stay on hold, and we'll get that from you and we'll do that. Let's go to Minneapolis, talk with Janet. Hello, Janet. You're on with Josh McDowell and me, Hugh Hewitt.

Janet: Hi, Hugh and Josh. Boy, I'm starting to change my mind here as I hear these callers, but I was going to challenge you as a Christian, shouldn't I see the movie so that I have credibility when I'm discussing it with somebody who's actually believing, thinking that it's true?

JM: That is your decision.

Janet: Okay.

JM: And it might be a right decision. But publicly, I just can't go public and just say to people, well, just go see the movie.

Janet: Right, right.

HH: I can. I believe...

JM: You sound like a very intelligent person...

Janet: Thank you.

JM: ...who really seeks the truth. And so you know, that's your decision.

Janet: Okay.

JM: But if my wife and I were there, we'd probably buy you popcorn.

HH: Yeah, my theory is I can't talk about on the air, I won't be able to persuade anyone. I read the book, I thought it was amusing. I didn't think it was a bad thriller. It wasn't very good. It wasn't anything like a LaCarre novel of the old days, but I am very disturbed that Dan Brown is trying to con people into thinking it's the real deal. Janet, thank you. Tommy, Houston, you're on with Josh McDowell. Go ahead, Tommy.

Tommy: Hugh, Josh, thanks a lot for what you do. Your relentless pursuit of the truth is just something that lifts a lot of us up out here.

JM: Well, thank you.

Tommy: What Dan Brown has done is really cowardly, because it's a big lie. And what I've seen over the years, most big lies have a whole lot of truth, and they're infected with just enough of a lie to make them very dangerous, and very believable by people who are not grounded in what they believe about the most important aspects of our life.

JM: You know, I like what you just said, because for me, this is a beautiful, wonderful opportunity to be positive, winsome, and wholesome, and to be able to share my faith and share the truth with those who I believe have truly inquiring minds, and can meet their needs.

HH: All right. Thank you much, Tommy. Let's go to David in Glendale, California. Go ahead, David. You're on with Josh McDowell and me, Hugh Hewitt.

David: Yeah, two things. First, the 150 year traffic jam. That's a long time on the road. He implies that the Knights Templar, who were driven out of France, went up to Rosslyn Castle, or went up to Scotland and built Rosslyn Castle. Okay, the persecution of Philip the Fair happened on Friday, October 13, 1307. They broke ground for Rosslyn Castle in 1462. That's a long time on the road. Second, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the main author of the book that was the source for that, a French author, he wrote a subsequent book debunking what he said, because the guy who did it, his two friends, wanted to make it a bit of theater by making him the heir of King Dabobert. But when they started the heir of Jesus and everything, they got scared. He wrote another book debunking it, and Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln better shut. You know, they're suing Dan Brown. Well...

HH: All right, David. What do you think of that, Josh. More stuff, Josh McDowell, that just plays into your premise that this is an easily exposed fraud.

JM: It is. But the key is this. The people that are reading it and coming out with questions, I believe for the most part, they're sincere. And what the book does, it reinforces your skepticism. What I am committed to is reinforcing your beliefs,...

HH: Well put.

JM: ...and taking them to proper beliefs.

HH: One more call from Richard in Seattle. Richard, you're on with Josh McDowell.

Richard: Yeah, Hugh and Josh. Just read this morning, Blythe Brown is apparently the one that did all the research on this...

JM: The wife did.

Richard: And she's his wife, about 15 years his senior, according to the article, and very much into feminist religious...I can't remember the name of it, Gaia, goddess worship, or something like that. A very interesting kind of commentary.

HH: Let me focus that in a question with 30 seconds left, Josh McDowell. Do you think there's anti-Christian hostility in the book?

JM: I think maybe. Now I'm speaking blindly here, that maybe he's had a real bitter experience with the Catholic Church, and it's now coming out in his writings. But I'm not speaking authoritatively on that. But he's trying to sell books, and he's really selling books.

HH: 40 million. And The DaVinci Code: A Quest For Answers is Josh McDowell's book. You can order it from Josh, www.josh.org, or www.josh.davinciquest.org. Josh McDowell, a pleasure talking with you, friend.

End of interview.

Posted at 9:50PM PST

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Saturday, March 18

The Beltway Boys

HH: Joined now by the Fox News Channel Beltway Boys, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard, Morton Kondracke of Roll Call. Together, they are the Fox News Channel Beltway Boys. You can watch them tomorrow night at 6PM, 3PM in the West, and again, it repeats later in the evening and on Sunday. Gentlemen, let's start with the most important news this week, the NCAA Tournament. I want to get your pick to go all the way, Fred Barnes.

FB: Well, once I saw that UCONN was becoming a prohibitive favorite, I went with Duke.

HH: Very good, and Morton, with you?

MK: Duke. Duke.

HH: No, you're both wrong. It's Ohio State, and they triumphed easily in the first round today, and will...

MK: Yeah, right.

HH: Ohio State all the way. Let's start, gentlemen, I was on Neil Cavuto's, your colleague at Fox, show earlier today to do the obligatory "No, Bush isn't dead, the presidency isn't over." I think this story is out of control, writing the President's obituary at this time, Fred Barnes. You know the President better than most. You wrote the book, Rebel In Chief. What's your assessment of the state of his political troubles?

FB: Well, he's got some now. When his polls get down in the 30's, Republicans start to attack him. You know, he had Norm Coleman of Minnesota talking as if he knew everything that was going on in the White House's staff, and there needed to be a shakeup, and they had a tin ear at the White House, and all that stuff. But to some extent, actually, to the greatest extent, this is just the second term doldrums. And I certainly believe that when a few things stop happening, like hurricanes, the President...and he's made some mistakes as well. Obviously, Harriet Miers was one. But I think with this new series of speeches on Iraq...Iraq is a problem, because all people see is explosions, and they don't see the fact that a new government may be formed soon, and the Iraqi army is really building into a battle-ready and sizeable force. So I think the President is going to have a recovery, beginning right about now.

HH: Morton Kondracke, I made the point this is a semi-annual story, and has been since 2001, as the President plays politics like he does cards. You don't have to win every pot, you've just got to win the game. What's your assessment?

MK: Yeah, I agree with that. I don't think it's over yet. I mean, presidents do become lame ducks often, and he is clearly in trouble. You know, his polls, they bounced up to the lofty figure of 43% approval at one point, and now they've descended again. So he's got to turn this thing around, and I think talk doesn't do it anymore, frankly. I mean, I don't think speeches, I don't think people are listening to him. I think it's events that are going to have to do it, and if the events don't happen, then he's going to keep descending.

HH: But if in fact there is a new government in Iraq, and it does become a government of all parties, that's the real deal.

MK: Absolutely. If that happens, and if the Iraqi security forces go into battle and actually fight somebody, which they don't seem to have done this week. You know, this offensive seems to be like a practice exercise. But you know, they start winning battles, and they start governing their country, and they control their militias and all that, if, if, if, if, then he's good. He's good. He's bet his presidency on the outcome in Iraq. If the outcome in Iraq is good, he's golden.

HH: Fred Barnes, there is one cliff that we're getting awfully close to. It's immigration reform. Ted Kennedy appears to have the momentum in the Judiciary Committee, Bill Frist trying to block it. What's the President's role in this? And how much danger does the Republican Party have with this issue?

FB: They have a lot of danger, but it doesn't come from President Bush or Teddy Kennedy or John McCain. It comes from Republicans that will so overdo border security as to make Hispanic-Americans feel unwelcome in the United States. I mean, you start building a 2,000 mile wall, or even a 700 mile wall there, you're telling Hispanics in America who have increasingly become Republican voters that we don't want any more of your people here. You know, we're not welcoming them anymore, and I think that's a mistake. We do need more border enforcement, but we also need to find a way for immigrants to come into this country legally, and become American citizens. And we have to do something about those that are already here.

HH: Morton Kondracke?

MK: Look, I don't think that Frist actually opposes what McCain and Kennedy are doing.

FB: No, not at all.

MK: I think...I mean, he clearly wants to have the reputation of being a border security guy, but on the other hand, what he did this week in saying that he was going to produce this bill, is to get the Senate Judiciary Committee off the dime. They were...Specter seemed to be slow-walking the thing, and the minute that Frist said look, something's going to be on the floor the week after next, that got Specter going, and they're going to produce a bill that's a comprehensive bill.

HH: Gentlemen, last night, I was at a fundraiser for Bill Morrow, who is seeking one of 18 Republicans, he's a state senator seeking the seat vacated by Duke Cunningham. Much of the conversation about illegal immigration, and I've got to say, both of you guys sound like beltway guys, when out here in the land of the borders, there is no other issue besides border security. It's not nativist, it's just an impossible security problem, Fred Barnes.

FB: It is a security problem, but look. Think about it politically, and that's one of the ways I think about it, although I think we are a country that has always welcomed immigrants, the Statue of Liberty symbolizes that. But think of it this way. Books were written about the emerging Democratic majority. And they were based on a high percentage of Hispanic voters being Democrats, because it's the biggest growing, fastest growing voting bloc in America. Bush has changed that. Now they've turned and become Republicans. He got 45% of the vote. If Republicans blow that, if it dips back to 20 or 15% of Hispanics voting for Republicans, Republicans will no longer be the majority party in America. I'm for border enforcement, but I think you have to really be careful about you rhetoric, and what you do. Hispanics are for border enforcement, but a lot of the language that's used, and some of the things that are proposed, just make them feel unwelcome, and they won't be Republicans.

HH: All right. Let's turn to the Russ Feingold fiasco, the Feingold folly, Morton Kondracke. Never has a gift been more widely welcomed as Russ Feingold's gift to the Republicans. Bill Frist said on this show two days ago, he guarantees it will come to the floor, and there will be a vote and a debate on it. Good thing for Republicans?

MK: Yes, I think so. I mean, this is the Democrats contriving to help the Republicans whenever they get themselves into trouble. And it was Jack Murtha, is was Nancy Pelosi, and then it was Harry Reid accusing his colleagues of being corrupt and having to apologize for it. You know, it's one thing after another. And I think the more the Republicans warn their base that you stay away from the polls, and you let the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives, and you're going to have an impeached president. Do you want that?

HH: And Fred Barnes, do you agree with that analysis?

FB: I do agree. If the Democrats...I mean, you know who's behind all this? You know who makes Harry Reid say those things, and Russ Feingold, and all of them? It's Karl Rove.

HH: (laughing)

MK: (laughing)

HH: You know, MoveOn.org has generated 200,000 signatures this week in favor of Feingold. I compared them to the old Soviet commissars who threatened to shoot anyone who retreated before the Germans, because they won't let the Democrats do anything except go over the cliff, Fred Barnes. Will they let up? Will they let them do anything remotely acceptable to the middle of America?

FB: Of course not. They're killing the Democratic Party. You see all...Nina Easton of the Boston Globe wrote a great story about how all these bloggers and everything are being hired by Democratic presidential candidates, all of whom, Mark Warner, Evan Bayh, even the centrist ones are all moving to the left, and the lefty ones like John Edwards and John Kerry and so on, they're moving further to the left.

HH: It is really remarkable.

FB: They're getting into territory where a Democrat cannot possibly win.

HH: Coming up after this segment, gentlemen, I'm interviewing Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, the subject, sort of, Morton Kondracke, of a story this week, because a Chuck Schumer staffer is going to go...the feds are going to go get her for breaking into this credit records. Does he have a chance, in your estimate, in Maryland?

MK: Yeah, he does. He definitely does. You know, it's a hard road. It's a very Democratic state. I think Steele said something really stupid when he compared stem cell research to murder, or something like that. I mean, that's just off the charts. But I think he's got a prayer. I wouldn't say much more than that.

HH: Now Fred Barnes, we've got Lynn Swann, Ken Blackwell, Michael Steele, three high-profile African-Americans, who are likely to be their nominees, and all three, two governors and one Senate race, what's that say about the future of the Republican Party, and the African-American vote?

FB: Well, it says that blacks are much more included than ever before. You know, it used to be, Hugh, as you know, that blacks could get a nomination for an unwinnable seat.

HH: Right.

FB: But now, all those are winnable seats. Blackwell could be elected governor of Ohio, though it will be tough. Swann is matching Rendell in Pennsylvania in the polls, and I agree with Mort. It'll be tough for Steele, but he's a smart, tough candidate, and could win in Maryland.

HH: Last question for both of you. Have either of you been subpoenaed by Scooter Libby? Fred Barnes?

FB: No, but I hope he gets off.

HH: Morton Kondracke?

MK: Not yet.

HH: All right. Just be careful who you talk to when you get off the airplane, Morton. It could be a process server. Fred Barnes, Morton Kondracke, the Fox News Channel Beltway Boys. They're on tomorrow night at 6PM on the East, 3PM in the West.

End of interview.

Posted at 2:30PM PST

Return to top

Friday, March 17

So, Congressman John Campbell, why are all of you spending money like drunken sailors?

Remember it is St. Patrick's Day, so there was an Irish bumper playing, and these two know each other pretty well - RB

03-17campbell-1.mp3

HH: I'm a real Irishman, but I'm here with one of my English forebears, oppressors, Congressman John Campbell.

JC: English? Campbell, Campbell.

HH: Well, Scots English. You were oppressors.

JC: Scots English?

HH: And you were one of the black Campbells.

JC: Have you ever said that in Scotland?

HH: No, I wouldn't dare say that...

JC: Oh, they'd kill you.

HH: Yeah, but you were with the crown against Charlie.

JC: That's true. That's true. We were.

HH: You were a black Campbell. I know all about you. You're Royalists.

JC: We were.

HH: Down to the sole of your toes.

JC: And we did bad things to McDonalds in their sleep, too. Yeah.

HH: Welcome back. John Campbell's back from D.C., our freshman Congressman extraordinaire. I almost cancelled this segment because he's wearing a USC sweatshirt. How is USC doing in the NCAA Tournament? Oh, that's right. They're not in.

JC: I so expected this.

HH: Ohio State won today.

JC: You know, I am not a fair weather fan, but Georgetown will beat Ohio State what is it? Tomorrow? Next day?

HH: Well, two days.

JC: Two days.

HH: We'll see about that.

JC: Georgetown will beat them.

HH: Is USC doing well in the NIT?

JC: Uh...

HH: Oh, they're not even in the NIT.

JC: (sigh)

HH: I don't know any team in America that isn't in either the NCAA or the NIT, except USC, and they signed...all of their professionals are going professional. They're in bad shape. Hey listen...

JC: It's so unfortunate that you...

HH: I appreciate your flying back from D.C. to do this show, because now finally...I can talk with Dreier about the rules, but you're on Financial Services, you're on Veterans Affairs, and you're on the floor voting on these things, not yet in the leadership. And so, I am confounded, befuddled, by what happened this week on the spending stuff, and I want you to walk our people through. What is going...why are you people spending money like drunken sailors?

JC: I think it's actually just...I'm going to give you the conclusion before we get to it. We need a spending limit, and we need a line item veto. And I'm not sure that anything else is going to stop it, just because of the way that Congress works with individual...with so many members and so many interest groups. Let me just give you a few examples. I've been in Congress now just over 90 days. Not a long time, right?

HH: Right.

JC: Brand new guy. Just came in. Had 63 requests for earmarks.

HH: No.

JC: 63 requests. And they only had 60 days to get to me.

HH: Where do they come from?

JC: Everything from a number of private contractors looking for defense money. You know, we have this thing and it's really good, and it'd be great for the national defense. The Department of Defense unfortunately doesn't recognize that. So if you can get us $3 million or $4 million dollars, we can create this thing.

HH: Explain to people what an earmark is. I always make that mistake.

JC: Sorry. Okay, I've assumed that the listeners of the Hugh Hewitt show have been educated by you, but I guess not.

HH: I try, I try.

JC: All right. Okay.

HH: There are Pittsburgh Steeler fans listening.

JC: What an earmark is, is members of Congress and the U.S. Senate have the opportunity to direct specific money to something in their district. So rather than its...let's say you have a transportation bill, and it's got however many billion dollars in it, and it gets sent to the states to spend on transportation things. But let's say you want to do a particular transportation project in your district. You can earmark and say I want this $4 million dollars to go specifically to the interchange of the 5 and the 22 freeway. You know, whatever it may be. Something like that. So that's what earmarks are. Most of the earmarks requests I got were from public agencies. But I mean, you get things like that. The point is, is that the easiest way as a member of Congress to make friends is to spend money on people. And there's lots of opportunities to do that. I would say 80% of the meetings I've had in my office thus far have been people asking for money. Either earmarks or simply in the budget, make sure we increase this. Or in the budget, we need to put money for this. Or in the budget, we need to increase the money for this. And one of the things I've asked every single person that's come in thus far, is I've said you know, we have a budget issue. We have deficits. There's...money isn't endless, even for $2.7 trillion dollars, which is the federal budget amount, even...is a finite number. You want us to spend $10 million on this. Could you bring me a suggestion of something we can spend $10 million less on, so that then, we can spend $10 million on the thing you want. And people kind of don't want to come in with that. But something I've been asking. But because of this whole...I mean, the number of people, constituents, non-constituents, whatever, that come and ask you for money is amazing. And it's frankly, it's hard to say no to everybody, to 80% of the people who come to see you. It's easy to say yes, and so that whole impetus creates...and that impetus times 535 people, members of the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, creates a whole wave of wanting to spend more money on things. So that's basically, I think, what's making it happen, plus the reality of votes. You know, well, gee, I won't vote for the budget unless we increase this by $100 million, or that by $50 million, or that by $150...and you see that dynamic going on as well.

HH: I'm going to quote you, and Radioblogger's going to put up with interview. I've been in Congress a little more than 90 days, and I have received 63 requests for earmarks, is that correct?

JC: That is correct.

HH: What did they total? Are you keeping a running total?

JC: Actually, I didn't add up the numbers. It'd be in the hundreds of millions.

HH: That is just incredible.

---

03-17campbell-2.mp3

HH: John Campbell has been a frequent visitor before he was an Assemblyman, then when he was an Assemblyman, then when he was a State Senator. Now he's the least senior member of Congress, though that's going to change pretty radically in a year, because there are a lot of retirements, including Martin Sabo today from Minnesota.

JC: Another one.

HH: Another one, and more upcoming.

JC: We're now up in the high 20's, and so the Class of 2006 in the House is going to be 30 plus members, depending on how many incumbents lose.

HH: And so one of my themes is going to be, over the years that this show, if we're blessed and continue on, is that you're going to listen to how John Campbell becomes an inside the beltway creature...hopefully not.

JC: (laughing) Oh, yeah. I hope. No! How about a no on that?

HH: We're giving him...we're taping him at the beginning, that he's down on...

JC: Hugh Hewitt listeners, that's part of your job. Kick me if it sounds like I ever am becoming that.

HH: But at the very beginning of your career, you're 90 days into this thing. You've already had 63 earmark requests, but you also got your committee assignments.

JC: I did.

HH: Tell people how that happened, what your on, and what you're supposed to do.

JC: I'm on three committees. I'm on Financial Services Committee, the Budget Committee, and Veterans Affairs. Financial Services, I mean, everyone has a pretty good idea what a Budget Committe does, and what Veterans Affairs does. Financial Services handles all matters related to finance, banking, securities markets, and insurance. And housing, actually, as well.

HH: Encrypted data now, right? I mean, you're going to be into all sorts of strange stuff.

JC: Yeah, there's all kinds of things, like we had a bill we passed out of the committee just two days ago, having to do with data security breaches. All this talk about if a company, a bank or somebody that has...well, let's see. Choicepoint, I think, wasn't it that had a...

HH: Yeah.

JC: They believed that someone might have entered their computer and released some data. So what's been happening is every state has been passing all kinds of laws, so we now have this patchwork of 50 state laws. Well, these sorts of things are inherently interstate commerce, because you're talking about large companies, large data that's spread across computers all over the country. So what we're trying to do is establish a national standard of what companies need to do when there are these data security breaches, when they need to notify consumers, and what they need to do to respond. So I mean, that's just an example of what we did on Wednesday, in addition to flood insurance, which was an insurance thing, which obviously, the flood insurance...

HH: It's a really bad idea, flood insurance.

JC: National Flood Insurance Bank, okay? But it's bankrupt now, or not bankrupt, but it's in trouble. So we had to do...and move some things around. But when you look at it, gosh, it's got a lot of...we subsidize every house in America that was built...

HH: In a coastal zone.

JC: No, built before 1974. Why?

HH: I'm not for that.

JC: And second homes.

HH: I'm not for that.

JC: Why?

HH: Well, change it.

JC: So...

HH: We do it because there are a lot of people living in those homes.

JC: We tried, but couldn't get quite enough votes to change that part of it.

HH: But Financial Services is not one of the big three. The big three are Rules, Ways and Means, and Approps. But it is...it may become an exclusive...

JC: Actually, Energy and Commerce.

HH: Energy and Commerce. Are there four?

JC: Well, the exclusive committees, which where you can only be on that committee, and you can't be on there as a freshman...and by the way, they're determined by party. For example, Financial Services is an exclusive committee if you're a Democrat.

HH: Oh.

JC: But not if you're a Republican. So on...it's basically Appropriations, Rules, Ways and Means, and Energy And Commerce.

HH: Energy and Commerce. But Financial Services may become one, because of the amount...

JC: On the Republican side, it may become one next year, yes.

HH: And you're on two subcommittees?

JC: I'm on two subcommittees.

HH: And so, give the people...forget the specifics. How much time are you spending in committee?

JC: You can spend almost all of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in committee if you want to, because the committees are going on. But they are hearings, where you don't vote. That's the things you see on TV, where somebody sits at a table, and they get asked questions back and forth. And those are hearings where you're collecting information, but you don't vote. An awful lot of members don't actually attend those. They watch on their TV, their staff watches on the TV, they go somewhere else. They generally show up if they want to ask a question, and then they go back, whatever. And then there's things called mark-ups. And a mark-up is when you're actually voting. A bill is there, people offer amendments, changes to it, and you vote on the bill, or you don't. So you could be there all day Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. But if all you wanted to do was show up when you're going to ask a question and when you're going to vote, then it can be only a matter of a few hours a week.

HH: Again, last night, you were at the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee dinner, right?

JC: I was...with the President.

HH: And how much did that raise?

JC: I think they said $9 million dollars.

HH: Nice...good night. Good gain.

JC: It was a very nice night. It was at the Washington Hilton, and there were I think 2,500 people there.

HH: And so, between mark-ups and committees, and meeting the 63 requests and moving to D.C., are you exhausted?

JC: Yeah, I don't have a lot of...there's not a lot of free time.

HH: And you're running for re-election.

JC: Yes.

HH: You campaign in June. There's a Democrat, and there's a Libertarian. But you drew no primary opponent?

JC: No primary opponent. That's right.

HH: And so, you're in like Flynn as the Republican nominee?

JC: For the primary. That's correct.

HH: Then you're going to have to work hard on this. So that's a good week. Now back to the budget, because we've got two minutes now, and two minutes after the break.

JC: Okay.

HH: Republicans split over the budget this week. A bunch of...maybe 30...

JC: No, it wasn't as many as that. There were...you're talking about these supplemental...

HH: For Katrina and the war.

JC: And the war. And also a thing called LIHEAP, which I'll explain in a minute, which is just a ridiculous expenditure of money, in my view. But actually, only 19 Republicans voted no on this. There were about 54 Democrats who voted no. It was an interesting group of noes. There were 70-something no votes total on this bill, and the anti-war Democrats voted no, and the strong fiscal conservative Republicans voted no.

HH: And there were only 19 strong fiscal conservative Republicans?

JC: Well, I would like to think there are more, but there were not more than 19 that were willing to make this vote, which some could perceive, some were worried could be perceived as voting against the war in Iraq. That's obviously why the Democrats voted against it. But that's not why I voted against it.

HH: But you're prepared to answer people who say you're against the war?

JC: And that's not why any of the other 19 did. Because...yeah, I am, because I...clearly, every other vote I've made, every public statement, everything I've ever done shows that that's not the case, but...and this is what happens in a lot of these bills. Bill in Congress are huge. They have lots of things in them. And in the end, if the majority of things you agree with, you vote for it. If the majority of things you don't, you vote against it. I did not agree with the majority of things in this bill, so I voted against it.

---

03-17campbell-3.mp3

HH: He voted against Katrina relief this week, and I want people to know why.

JC: I voted against Katrina relief...I voted against this bill for a number of reasons. Part of it has $19 billion dollars more for Katrina relief. We've already sent them $60 billion dollars, and we haven't spent that particularly well. Many of you heard about the homes in Hope, Arkansas, and the fraud that's gone on, and the $20 billion that hasn't been spent, because people haven't claimed it, and we're giving people up to $150,000 dollars per house for houses that they've left. I don't know whether you know that or not.

HH: What?

JC: Yeah. Everybody that lost a house can get up to $150,000 dollars just cash out of the pot that's gone before. It's just...

HH: Wait a minute. No, we're not.

JC: Yes, we are.

HH: I have not seen that anywhere. We're giving everyone who lost their house $150K?

JC: Up to. It depends on...

HH: You get the value of your house up to $150K?

JC: Uh, I'm not even sure it's conditioned by the value of the house. But it depends on various different circumstances. It starts at like $50,000, and goes to $150,000, based on certain types of things.

HH: Do they have to give the government the deed?

JC: I'm not 100% sure how the whole system works. But the point is, it's...

HH: Out of control.

JC: It's out of control. And there's all kinds of money, and there's all kinds of this. It hasn't been spent well. Why do we...to me, it was good money after bad. Why do we want another $19 billion dollars? In addition in this bill, was a thing, an acronym called LIHEAP, which stands for low income heat energy assistance...

HH: Heating oil subsidy.

JC: Energy assistance program, right. Okay. What's the date today? It's March 17th.

HH: Right.

JC: We passed this today...yesterday. It will need to go to the Senate, be passed, and signed by the President. The people couldn't get the money before probably the end of March, to the beginning of April at the earliest for heat assistance, okay? $750 million dollars. And what was this year?

HH: The warmest record on...

JC: The warmest year in the history of, like, since they've been keeping this stuff. And we're going to send $750 million dollars in low income heating assistance, starting with April. I just don't...I can't get this. Plus, in the Defense...let me just finish. Just to show you there's a bunch of stuff...in the Defense bill, there's a plane and an engine for jets that the Defense Department said we don't want this. We don't do this anymore, this is not what we need for the war effort. But they're in there. And why are they in there?

HH: Well, Duane would like you to earmark a house for him. He says he had a home in New Orleans, and he's lost it.

JC: Ah. I see. Well, he...

HH: Where does he sign up for his $50K?

JC: Get in line.

Emmett of the Unblinking Eye: In fact, nobody can find it.

HH: No one can find it.

JC: Yeah, get in line.

HH: I may have lost a couple.

JC: Yeah, I know.

HH: Can I earmark a couple...would you take my earmark back there and get me a couple of New Orleans houses that I don't have to have in order to get my $300K?

JC: You might as well just...

HH: Congressman John Campbell, how long are you on recess for? A week?

JC: Wait. It's not recess, now. It's a district work period. That's what we call them now.

HH: Yeah.

EOTUE: It's like a teacher conference week.

HH: It's a teacher conference day.

JC: I am in my district for a week, yeah.

HH: For a week. Well, we'll talk to you from D.C. in a couple of weeks. John Campbell, great to have you back, USC sweater and all.

End of interview.

Posted at 11:59PM PST

Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, the next Senator from Maryland.

03-17steele.mp3

HH: I'm joined now by Michael Steele. He's the Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, and he is also a candidate for the United States Senate. Just today on Neil Cavuto's show, I was touting the Maryland Senate seat as one of the possible pickups for the Republican Party. Lt. Gov. Steele, great to have you on the Hugh Hewitt Show.

MS: It's great to be with you. How's it going?

HH: Good, good, good. Now this is the first time we've chatted, and I really must confess. Though I'm a political junkee, when I lived back there, I was a Virginian. And I really don't know your state, and I didn't think Republicans were allowed to live there.

MS: Generally, they're not.

HH: Okay. (laughing)

MS: But I managed to sneak in, in the dead of night, and place camp, and I've been going ever since. And now, we're up to about 30 or 40 of us, and we're making a lot of noise.

HH: Michael Steele, tell people about this race, your likely opponent, and how Maryland came to be in play, previously a dark blue state, but a lot of people are looking at that and saying Michael Steele's the guy to make it slightly red.

MS: Well, you know, we're working for the color purple here. And that's the goal.

HH: That's very good.

MS: And Maryland is really much a state in transition. I've been Lieutenant Governor for about three years now, and we were elected, Governor Ehrlich and I were elected in 2002, first Republican ticket to be elected in 40 years. And I currently serve as the first African-American elected statewide in Maryland. And so, that dynamic, with that election, really began to change the ground a little bit. So Sarbanes retires, announces his retirement a year ago, and immediately, the speculation was well, who are the Republicans going to run? And a lot of my friends in Washington, and in the state, started talking to me about the potential of this race. And I'm a political junkee like you, so I know the numbers, I know the realities. And I evaluated it, and what I saw was something in the people that said they were ready for something a little different. They're ready for a change. And I think I represent that change, and I think that's why the Democrats have been so afraid of my getting into this race, and have been relentless in their pursuit of me. About eight months before I even announced that I was going to run, they were already at their typical usual tactics.

HH: In fact, yesterday, federal prosecutors announced that they would proceed against a Chuck Schumer staffer...

MS: Yeah.

HH: ...working at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who rifled your personal files, broke into your credit records. I hope she does some time. I hope they don't give her a slap on the wrist.

MS: Well, you know, they're...I doubt it at the end of the day. She'll do about 150 hours of community service, and then they'll look to expunge her record at the end of that, as long as she doesn't do anything else. But the question for me is what signal are you trying to send? In an age when everyone is clamoring at the President about wiretappings, and privacy, and protection thereof, here we have the Democratic Senatorial Committee, under the leadership of Chuck Schumer, stealing my credit report.

HH: Yup.

MS: And what's even worse...I mean, at least the government, the President's talking about wiretapping those who want to kill us. I mean, these guys are stealing my credit report for purely political gain.

HH: Right. Michael Steele, they don't try to slime people they're not worried about, so you must have the profile and the achievement behind you that makes them sweat at night. Have you got a likely opponent yet? Do you know who the Democrat's going to be?

MS: Ben Cardin, Congressman Cardin, is the number one choice. He is the darling of the leadership of the Democratic Party here in the state and nationally. The problem they have is a gentleman by the name of Kweisi Infume, who is African-American, former head of the NAACP, and former Congressman himself. And they've all but kicked him to the curb, so it's created an interesting tension within their base, in how they treat their only, and first and only African-American to run statewide here in Maryland against how the Republicans have responded to my candidacy. It's like night and day.

HH: I've interviewed Mr. Infume a number of times back in my television days with PBS. He's a tremendous orator, very charismatic. I doubt he'll go quietly into the night.

MS: He will not go quietly into that good night, trust me. And he plans to stay in this race right through the end. And so, they've got an interesting little pickle to work through. And my attitude's very simply this. I will be ready for whoever shows up the day after the primary.

HH: Now when you were Governor Ehrlich's running mate, how did you two do? Did you win by 500 votes, 5,000, 50,000? What was the race?

MS: We won by 66,000 votes.

HH: Okay, that's a good margin in Maryland.

MS: And it was...again, it was a shocker for folks, and we had about 9% of the African-American vote in our election, 2002. Right now in this race for the United States Senate, and this is what got the Democrats so worried, I'm carrying 31% of the black vote.

HH: Well, of course you would be. I mean, you've been out there talking about opportunity and achievement.

MS: Yup.

HH: And doing so without condescension, or without the tired old rhetoric of those people who've been around leading the civil rights movement for 40 years. Instead, you're out there actually talking opportunity. Michael Steele, how much do you have to raise to win this race?

MS: I've got to raise somewhere between eleven and fifteen million dollars.

HH: Man, that's a lot of dough.

MS: It's a lot of change, and we're working hard to do it. This is a national race, Hugh. You're going to be talking about this race, you're going to be following this race. Right now, it's the number 6 race in the country, and it's one of the best, as you noted on Neil Cavuto's show, one of the best opportunities for a pickup that Republicans have in this cycle. It's a dynamic race. We're going to make it a lot of fun, but we're all over the country, we're here at home working hard to raise the dollars that we're going to need. And a lot of people are responding. I've been very pleased with that. And we've picked up in the last...probably since last October when I officially announced, some 4,500 new donors to our campaign.

HH: Wow. How many of those are using the website, Steeleformaryland.com? Are they all...

MS: We're beginning to see that, and one of the things I'm looking for are opportunities where I can promote, let people know we're here, because a lot of people are calling my state offices saying hey, I hear he's running. How do I find out? So the website is www.steeleformaryland.com.

HH: And it's steel-e for Maryland. Yeah. Steele with an e for Maryland.

MS: Right. Steele with an e for Maryland.com. You go there, you can log on, you can follow what the latest is on what's happening in the race. You can donate, you can volunteer. I had a gentleman call, send an e-mail to the office, to tell me that he just contacted his buddy who lives in Bethesda here in Maryland, and he said he told his friend for the months of September, October and November, I'm planning to come and stay with you, because I want to work on the Steele campaign. He's from Wisconsin.

HH: You know, I hope everyone in that city as well, all those young Republican staffers, and all those young independent people down there, and government workers know they've just got to break with Maryland's past. I mean, it's really tough there. It's been such a culture of corruption in Maryland for so long, that you and the Governor are breaking rocks. But they're not going easily, are they?

MS: They're not going easily, and as they're putting up a fight, they're fighting us at the legislative level here in the state capitol. Certainly, they've put a big target on my back. I mean, I've already had a Democrat member of our Congressional delegation tell me that after the primary, in this general election, they will have every national Democrat in the country coming in here to take me on.

HH: When is their primary?

MS: September 12th.

HH: So they have a late primary, though, so they're going to be slugging it out right...

MS: Yup. Exactly.

HH: And they can't really come in against Infume until after that, can they?

MS: Right. It's all...and it's an interesting dynamic, because if Infume somehow wins this nomination, the politics in the state kind of shift, because he is very liberal, he is very left, and very extreme. And so, the moderate conservative, the Reagan Democrats in the state, of which we have quite a few, and the independents who tend to lean Democrat, aren't necessarily going to warm up to that, and I'll be there waiting.

HH: And you know, we'll be there covering it. Michael Steele, Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, a great pleasure to have you on. We'll be back in touch repeatedly between now and November, as we look for the Turps to go red like their school colors in November.

End of interview.

Posted at 3:56PM PST

Return to top

Thursday, March 16

Mark Steyn's position on commissions.

03-16steyn.mp3

HH: I begin this Thursday as I do most with Mark Steyn, columnist to the world. Mr. Steyn, we begin a story that centers on you. What has happened to the Sunday Telegraph and the Spectator? The Hugh Hewitt listeners want to know where the Mark Steyn material is.

MS: My relationship with the Telegraph group, which the Spectator also belongs to, deteriorated over the last year, and became adversarial, which I don't think is particularly healthy. And I don't mind...I've been the token conservative on liberal newspapers. I don't mind an adversarial relationship in terms of your position on the Gulf War, or Afghanistan, or the European Union or whatever. I don't mind having differences with editors and so forth on that. But when it gets into, when the whole relationship just becomes generally toxic, then I think it's best to hang out your shingle somewhere else, which I will do in the United Kingdom at some point.

HH: That's the important part. You will be back writing in the UK. Any time frame set for that, Mark Steyn?

MS: Well, I would hope sooner rather than later. One of the things, if you're a controversial writer, when I parted company with the National Post up in Canada, I thought well, every newspaper's going to start calling me, because I was the hottest columnist there, according to some of their reader surveys and things. And of course, instead, these editors think oh, well, good riddance to that right-wing wacko. We don't need a crazy guy like him. And after a couple of years of the phone not ringing, they all came kind of slinking back and made me derisory offers of one kind or another. And I would bet on the same thing happening over in London.

HH: Now isn't this sort of suicidal behavior on the part of newspapers, Mark Steyn? And we'll take you out of it. But we just had a Pew report showing they're in terrible condition. Nobody cares about their in-house tubas that go on, boom, boom, boom on the old, same notes. They're killing themselves if they deny their readers what their readers want.

MS: Well you know, one of the things I find, and I'm sure you do, too, you travel a lot around the country. And the thing about American newspapers in particular, but it's also true of Canada and certain others, is that if you get off the plane at almost any airport on the continent, and you'll pick up the local paper which will be a monopoly daily, published by Gannett or some other similar company, and it will just have like the world's dullest comment page, the world's dullest op-ed page. This is a great riveting time of war, and say what you like about crazy folks on left or right, but there's a lot to say about it. And in fact, the newspapers, and their monopolies, have made them dull, and that's the danger, I think, in much of the United States, that you want someone, whether you agree with him or not, that you want something that will be riveting and thought-provoking. And some of these guys have been just holding down prime op-ed real estate for decades. It's amazing to me.

HH: Mark Steyn, last question on this. One of the Telegraph suits sent out an e-mail to someone questioning, saying we hope to have Mark Steyn back within the Telegraph family soon. Is that just shining on their distraught readers?

MS: Yeah, I don't quite know why they're saying that, because (laughing)

HH: You're not coming back soon. All right.

MS: I'm not...that's certainly something that...there's no reason for them to be sending that out to readers.

HH: Oh, except to get the readers to go away for a while. Let's turn to international affairs, but beginning in the domestic side. Yesterday, there came word, Mark Steyn, that the Iraq Study Group had been formed. Now I cannot find the statute that authorized this, and I suspect it's a John Warner/Frank Wolfe gambit. But it's got James Baker and Lee Hamilton, and a bunch of the usual suspects to study the war. I can't believe we're going to do the 9/11 Commission again. What's your reaction to the formation of this group?

MS: Well, the 9/11 Commission is the...I mean, you know me. I'm a foreigner, but I'm pro-American. And yet I must say, the 9/11 Commission is everything I loathe about the United States, in that its legalistic, retrospective, showboating blowhards, pompous people going on TV round the clock. And in effect, it becomes something in and of itself. It's not just commenting on something like a play by play guy is, but it actually changes the course of the something its commenting on. And that's what's bad about this. You know, Iraq isn't a Broadway play in previews. The show has opened, and it's on now. So it's too late to have arguments about this little weak spot in the first act, and we should get it re-written. The show has opened, and the responsibility of these people involved in this, James Baker, Lee Hamilton, Rudy Giuliani, all these people, is that they should now be saying let's win it, and then have the arguments.

HH: But do you suspect the White House attempted to stop this? Or are they at this point reeling on so many fronts, they didn't think they had the ability to say no?

MS: Well, I think there is a danger in the last couple of weeks that they have lost control of they...not what's going on in Iraq, but in a sense, the rationale behind it. Now I would imagine that James Baker, who's very close to the Bush family, I can't imagine him taking this, if he didn't at least have a tacit approval from the Bush family. But at the same time, I think this is an example of just what we don't need with Iraq. We do need a refreshing renewal of war rhetoric, but we don't need to argue, you know, have a big commission on where the WMD are and all the rest of it, and all that hooey.

HH: Now speaking about the renewal of war rhetoric, yesterday, General John Abizaid, commander of United States Central Command, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. It's available on the web. It is hard-hitting. It is actually fierce, and quite unsparing in the protrait that he paints of al Qaeda, and what they will do. And then today, the National Security strategy comes out, which is equally unsparing about Iran and the necessity of defensive action against them, if they refuse to abandon this. Is this what you're talking about, Mark Steyn? Getting back to basics on the stakes?

MS: Absolutely. I think we have to take these guys at their word. You know, the fact of the matter is that Saddam behaved as if he had weapons of mass destruction. And the basis of American policy in this world should be that if you go around claiming to have weapons of mass destruction, and threatening to use them as the Iranians are currently doing, then it shouldn't be a matter whether you're just bluffing or not. We have a responsibility to take you at your word and do something about it. And that's really the issue in Iran. Iran, actually, does generally walk the walk as well as talk the talk. They are people who have blown up Jewish community centers in Buenos Aires. And it's hard to, even by the biggest stretch, it's hard to say that's a legitimate grievance because of Israeli occupation of Palestine. I mean, they are people with a long reach, and a 25 year history of extra-territoriality. Why would they have nuclear weapons if they didn't, at the very minimum, intend them for serious nuclear blackmail?

HH: Let's turn to the domestic side of the attack on national security. Russ Feingold wants to censure the President. How should the GOP in the Senate respond, Mark Steyn?

MS: Well, I would very much hope that the only reason he's doing this is because Karl Rove has opened up a big bank account in the Cayman Islands for him, because it's hard to see how this can be of any advantage to the Democrats. It's amazing to me. Just as they've found this sort of rather shrill opportunist bit of good news for them on the Dubai ports deal, where they found a national security angle that somehow in crude political terms worked for them, then they go and blow it all back to...Russ Feingold, basically demanding that we censure the President for eavesdropping on al Qaeda phone calls. There is no good that can come for the Democratic Party out of that, and if Russ Feingold wants to pursue it, to shore himself up with the party base, good luck to him, because it's only going to make things worse for Hillary Clinton. Hillary will have to run to the left to avoid him peeling off significant support for her.

HH: But do you think Bill Frist will be successful in pushing this through the Judiciary Committee, onto the floor for a debate, and should he?

MS: Yes, I think he should, because I think every time the Democrats come up with this joke...these joke talking points, censure, impeachment, withdrawal from Iraq, timetable for withdrawal now, we need to set a timetable for withdrawal on April 17th, I think you should call them on it, and say fine, let's get it to a vote, and let's see how many of you, how many of you trinners and weather vane politicians, the John Kerry's and all the rest of them, how many of you are actually prepared to put your vote where your party's big mouths are.

HH: Well put. Now I want to close with a cultural question. The Rock And Roll Hall of Fame had its induction this week. James Lileks has been on this program defending, and will be later again, Black Sabbath and Sex Pistols, as pretty much the summit of American culture. Your reaction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a general proposition, Mark Steyn, and if you have any thoughts on this year's inductees?

MS: One of the most disgusting examples of the bloated federal budget is that federal money goes to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

HH: Oh, I didn't know that.

MS: And if rock and roll is not even self-supporting, nothing in America is.

HH: Mark Steyn, always a pleasure. I will put my note to the Sunday Telegraph's editor, and call him a man of not great precision or truth when he's communicating with his e-mailers. Talk to you again next week, Mark Steyn.

End of interview.

Posted at 4:09PM PST

Lileks: No blue ribbons, lots of Scott Tissue, and how Peshawar, Pakistan did nothing musically for America's Dan Peek.

HH: Vile slander issued from my mouth an hour ago at this very time, a horrific sliming of James Lileks for being late and out of touch, when in fact, only three days earlier, he had told Producer Duane he would be here at this hour (sigh - RB). Oh, James, I am sorry.

JL: You know, it's unusual, because now my daughter thinks it's completely normal to turn on the radio and have the man in the radio say I suppose Lileks is just coming back from Chuck E. Cheeses.

HH: (laughing)

JL: Which is precisely what we were doing. She thinks now that the radio somehow narrates her entire life, and she's going to be so disappointed when she...

HH: Well, of course it does. Now James, you must tell me a little bit about the snow conditions there. We were worried about the garage door. Have there been any accidents?

JL: (laughing) No, as a matter of fact.

HH: All right.

JL: I no longer need worry about that, because I've installed one of those devices that emits a loud shriek if you back into the door. I have a camera that tells me what's behind me, and I also removed the door.

HH: All right. Very good.

JL: No problems.

HH: Now I would like to discuss both matters cultural and political with you. I want to begin with the Iraq Study Group.

JL: Yes.

HH: I asked Mr. Steyn about this earlier. He agreed with me that this is a damnable bad idea. What say you, James Lileks?

JL: I think it's a tremendous idea, Hugh. I think this is the commission that's finally going to win the war.

HH: (laughing)

JL: You know, we've all been waiting for them to step up to the plate and I think what really worried me at first was whether or not it was a blue ribbon commission. I didn't hear anybody mention the color of the...

HH: There were no blue ribbons.

JL: I didn't hear any mention of the color of the ribbon. You know, it could be one of those chartreuse ribbon commissions, which just doesn't dig deep enough. But I think this is going to be the one. I think if we take this commission, and we strap them all with about 50 pounds of Semtex and drop them in Tehran, there's a good shot they're going to have an effect.

HH: All right. Number 2. Today, it's announced that Ted Kennedy has successfully pursuaded Republicans on the Judiciary Committee to sign on to the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill. I know you're not really a big anti-illegal immigration fellow. You just leave that one alone. But politically speaking, would this be the stupidest move of the past four years? Or merely one of many bad moves by the Republicans?

JL: Merely one of many. There are just so many. This is one of those arguments that is infuriating, because when you start to talk about illegal immigration, immediately, everybody then assumes that you're talking about immigration period. And then you spend all of your time talking with your leftist friends about how the fact that you don't really mind if smart and capable people come into the country. It is an argument that's just going to generate more heat, and the Republicans will never really look good on this, because to the other side, they're just racists anyway, who will want them to pick their oranges and grapes, as we're told.

HH: Thank you. Now, Number 3. Laura Lee Donoho is a very fine blogger at the Wide Awake Cafe. But you have scared her.

JL: How so?

HH: Because you wrote about Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds in the context of the Avian Flu, and that creeped her out. And frankly, it creeps me out, too.

JL: (laughing) I did no such thing. When did I do that?

HH: She said...

JL: When you write 14 columns a week, you sort of forget what you've said.

HH: Well, something about Bay tuna.

JL: About what?

HH: Bay tuna and the Bird Flu.

JL: Good Lord, this...Oh! No, no, no. This goes back to the remarks that were made by a government official a couple of days ago, saying that when you go to the grocery store, and you buy three cans of tuna, you might want to buy a fourth one and tuck it under the bed. That was the column that I wrote for Newhouse, also in the Screedblog, about whether or not you can depend on the government to help you, should the Bird Flu strike. It was a sort of semi-annual Bird Flu column, and I'd like to keep it at the semi-annual phase, which is...

HH: But you know it's coming.

JL: Yes, I do. But I don't know whether or not it's going to mutate. I mean, they always say that if the Bird Flu mutates into something that could affect humans, the effects would be catastrophic. That's true. And if the human body mutated so that oxygen was suddenly toxic, that would be very bad as well.

HH: But people...

JL: We'll cough up that quart of phlegm when we get to it.

HH: But you remember pig flu, or whatever they called that flu...

JL: Swine Flu.

HH: Swine Flu.

JL: Right.

HH: And you remember Y2K.

JL: Yes, I do.

HH: The panic people can't always be wrong. (laughing)

JL: (laughing) No, of course they can't. Listen, I'm the stockpiling kind of guy. I have enough...

HH: You've got a tunnel in your house, for goodness sakes.

JL: I've got a bunker under there. I have enough Scott Tissue that if we should not only be quarantined for six months, we're fine if we have dysentery. So I'm not worried about that. I tend to err on the side of stockpiling and being very careful about this. But I'm not going to freak out until people all over the world start to get it. And at that point, you know, kid's coming out of school, we're wearing face masks around the house, and all the chickens get slaughtered.

HH: All right. Now I have a business question. The Fetching Mrs. Hewitt, while I was off in Colorado in the middle of my vacation, took in a performance by David Barry.

JL: Yes.

HH: He did two hours of stand-up.

JL: Yes.

HH: Have you ever done anything like that?

JL: Oh, no. No, I haven't. No, I just confine myself to babbling on the radio, when I had my own show, and doing the Podcast. But Dave's very good at that. Dave is an absolute natural. He's...

HH: But I think you could do that.

JL: Well, you know, put me on...I would like to join his band, but of course, he has a band that always seems to be out of town when I...

HH: But humorists who are funny are actually quite rare. I mean, Garrison Keillor gets paid to do that, and he's not funny.

JL: That's right. He writes a newspaper column, incidentally. And I think when people signed up to get the column, they were hoping for some of that Keilloresque, small-town whimsy?

HH: Yeah.

JL: And they're getting columns about why it's necessary to impeach Bush, which I don't really think is what they bargained for.

HH: It's not what they wanted, no. They wanted Erma Bombeck with a Mid-Western drawl.

JL: Well, most humorists in person are just sort of dour, miserable creatures.

HH: Okay, last subject, I hesitate to return to it, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

JL: Yeah, and you told Mark Steyn that I believed that the Sex Pistols and Black Sabbath were the apogee of American culture. Thanks, Hugh.

HH: That's how I understood your remarks from Tuesday.

JL: Yeah, thanks, Hugh.

HH: Now you do support the induction of the Sex Pistols, right?

JL: I absolutely do. Horrible band, couldn't play their instruments, crucial to what punk rock became in '76-'77.

HH: Well then, if you want them in the Hall of Fame, then you think they're at the summit.

JL: I don't want anybody in the Hall of Fame. I think a V For Vendetta movie should be made, in which the entire thing is dynamited on general principle.

HH: Are the Carpenters in the Hall of Fame?

JL: If they are, then they're right next to the Herb Alpert...

HH: Well, Herb Alpert got in because he was impresario music.

JL: Everybody's going to be in it at some point. Barry Manilow's going to be in it.

HH: Well, of course.

JL: Some little kid with a Casio keyboard who put out one little cassette tape in 1984 is going to be in it.

HH: Have you been there?

JL: No, I've not. I've not been to...

HH: Have you any interest at all?

JL: None. None whatsoever.

HH: All right. Now the question I asked on Monday is, if any Rock and Roller were to write their memoir, which one would you read.

JL: That's a fascinating question, he says, stalling. I don't know. I'd like to read Elvis Costello's, because he's a very smart man when it comes to music, and he's also a bit of a wanker when it comes to a man. So I'd like to know how he reconciled the two. Usually, they have no problem. He's sort of the Woody Allen of the punk rock scene.

HH: I'm reading Dan Peek of America's memoir.

JL: Of America?

HH: Yeah.

JL: Good Lord. If it's anything like the music, it's just one vowel that goes on for 14 pages.

HH: But know this. At the age of 14, he was taking 12 hour truck rides from Peshawar, to the remote areas of Pakistan, to play gigs with his brother and a couple of G.I.'s.

JL: Remarkable how that informed his music, didn't it?

HH: (laughing)

JL: To the tune of zero.

HH: (laughing) Lileks, thank you. www.lileks.com. It's true. This guy, before...you should just read...it's wild. He's driving around, all over the places that no American would be caught in, in a thousand years now, in the first chapter.

End of interview.

Posted at 11:58PM PST

Orange! Grape! Orange! Grape! Orange! Grape!

03-16orange-grape.mp3

HH: Earlier today, if you're just tuning in, I told you about a story in the Rocky Mountain news. Representative Tom Tancredo and Luis Gutierrez engaged in a nasy exchange after a CNBC show yesterday, and the report says Gutierrez, who was visibly upset, began to scream at Tancredo, "Have you ever eaten an orange? A Grape," an apparent reference to illegal farm workers. He then repeated the same phrase several times as Tancredo tried to answer, "An Orange, a grape, an orange, a grape, an orange, a grape." Joining us now to add more light on this orange grape controversy is Will Adams, press secretary to Tom Tancredo. Hi, Will. How are you?

WA: (laughing) I'm doing well, Hugh. How are you doing?

HH: Do you have this on video?

WA: Oh, gosh, I really wish I did. (laughing) I really wish I did, because the story, even though it's accurate in the Rocky, doesn't quite do it justice. You should have been there to see both the physical signals that Gutierrez gave off, and the inflection. I don't know if I will do it justice, either.

HH: Was his voice high-pitched at this point?

WA: Oh, my gosh. Well, let me walk you through it very briefly.

HH: Okay.

WA: They were on CNBC's Power Lunch, and as often happens, you know, it get a little bit heated. But my experience is in the past, you know, two members get heated, there's a bit of theatricality to it when you're on TV, and then afterwards, they kind of slap each other on the back and say hey, colleague, let's go do lunch, or something like that.

HH: Yup.

WA: Well, this time was an exception to that. We showed up about 30 seconds late. Gutierrez gets on there, does his spiel, Tancredo does his spiel, back and forth. We end it, and Gutierrez makes what I thought was a friendly and pretty funny joke, saying, "Hey, look. The immigrant shows up on time, the gringo shows up late, and you wonder why we get the jobs." So I kind of laughed, and Congressman Tancredo laughed a little bit. Tancredo asked him, "So are you an immigrant?" And he goes, "Yes, yes. My family immigrated here from Mexico, etc." By the way, as an aside, he actually was born in Chicago in the 1950's, so he himself is not an immigrant. But that's neither here nor there.

HH: Okay.

WA: So anyway, we're walking pretty slowly. Gutierrez has some sort of cast on his leg, and we're going around this rotunda. Mind you, we are in the House office building where most of the visitors come to visit. So you've got Mom and Pop, and kids on vacation taking pictures and so on, and hearing all of this. So Gutierrez starts walking away, he goes, "Tancredo, have you ever been to a restaurant?" And Tom goes, "Huh? Excuse me?"...kind of perplexed.

HH: (laughing)

WA: Gutierrez then, and this is where I can't do justice, and I don't think radio can. He kind of squints his eyes, and takes his shoulders up a little bit, and goes, "You mean with those illegal aliens who are wiping your dishes? How can you eat from those plates?" Tom goes, "Well, hold on for a second." And just as he was saying that, Gutierrez says, "Have you ever had an orange? Or a grape?"

HH: (laughing)

WA: Congressman Tancredo, again perplexed, looks at him and goes, "Uh, what do you mean?" (Gutierrez), "An orange? A grape? An orange? A grape? An orange? A grape? An orange? A grape?"

HH: (laughing)

WA: And so on and so forth. I swear I haven't seen that since I was in 3rd grade on a lunch break or what have you. So at this point, it escalates a little bit, and Gutierrez calls him a racist and a bigot, and starts to walk away. And of course, Tom, not one to take a punch sitting, walks after him and says, "Hold on for a second," and taps him on the shoulder as he's walking away. Gutierrez says, "Get your hands off me," in a very raised voice. Again, mind you, this place is a marble interior, so this thing's echoing for the entire area with all these kids, (laughing), and there's children and families coming in. "Get your hands off me. Walk away, Tancredo." And Tancredo says, "I will not." And then Gutierrez then proceeds towards the elevator bank with his three staffers in tow. Mind you, I'm with another staffer. We have Gutierrez'...

HH: It could have been a rumble!

WA: Yeah!

HH: It could have been like the Jets and Sharks.

WA: Well, we look at each other, Gutierrez' gal looks at me, her eyebrows are raised, and (laughing) oh my gosh, because at this point, they're about the same height, and they are, I swear, nose to nose, about six inches apart. And Gutierrez is angry and, you know, he's cussing, and he goes towards the elevator. And so we have to go down the stairs. We're exiting...you know, there's only one exit to this particular side of the building. And Gutierrez holds the door open for his staffer, and says, "hey, hurry up before the racist gets in."

HH: Oh!

WA: So the elevator door shuts, and I sit there with Tom, and we're walking down the steps, and I'm like oh my gosh. And you know, Tom's pretty shaken up at this point. He's never seen an adult...well, he may have seen an adult act like that, but I have never seen one act like that. So we're walking down the stairs. It turns out that Gutierrez is only going down one floor. He's taking the elevator because of his leg.

HH: Oh, lovely.

WA: So just as he's getting off the elevator, we're about five paces behind him down the stairs. And we have to both exit the same exit to the exterior. He goes, he opens up the door for his staffers, "Hey, hurry up, hurry up before the KKK comes." And Tom restrains himself, we go outside, and we're taking a right, he's taking a left, but he stops, and supposedly is talking to his staffers, but you can tell he's aiming this at Tancredo. And he's looking over at us, and shouts at us, he says, "You know, I almost decked him, but then I thought to myself, what if I blankety-blank kicked his blankety-blank." (laughing)

HH: Now tell me something. We've only got 20 seconds left, Will Adams. How old is Luis Gutierrez?

WA: He was born in the 50's, so you know, he must be...

HH: Well, he's my age.

WA: Yeah, exactly.

HH: How old is Tom?

WA: He's in his early 60's. Don't tell him...

HH: You know, middle-aged men should never fight. It's just not a good thing. Middle-aged men should not fight or yell at each other. Will, I appreciate the blow by blow. And if there's a Part 2 of Grape-Adam/Adam-Grape/Orange-grape/Grape whatever, I want it here on the Hugh Hewitt Show. I want to set up Round 2. Gutierrez-Tancredo: The rumble in the jungle should be here on the Hugh Hewitt Show.

End of interview.

Frank Gaffney's sobering trip to France, and his reservations about the coming Iraq Study Group.

HH: Now joined by Frank Gaffney, he of the Center For Security Policy, www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org, and of Warfooting.com, and a book by the same name, just back from France land. Hello, Frank.

FG: Hello, Hugh.

HH: What took you to France?

FG: The Center For Security Policy co-sponsored a conference with an organization called the Institute for Defense of Democracy, a very impressive, courageous, small, young organization in France trying to fight against Islamo-facism, and the anti-Semitism, and other trials and tribulations that are increasingly evident in France today. And we put on an all-day conference to address those topics, and what they portend, not just for France, but for the free world.

HH: Interesting. I'm sure that was planned long and in advance, but of course, France has been riveted and revulsed by the torture/murder of a young Jewish man, by some of the Islamo-facists. Did that come up in the course of your deliberations?

FG: Yeah, it was very much on people's minds. And Hugh, I must tell you, that in the course of the conversations, both during that day and on the margins of the meetings, even I, who in our book, War Footing, talked about how far gone Europe is, and how necessary it is for us at this point, basically, to try to salvage what we can of it, which is basically sort of what Rumsfeld calls the New Europe, the countries of the former Eastern part that were under the Soviet's domination for so long, and Britain. But even I, I must tell you, was unprepared for how really grim things look. And you know, we had people talking with real trepidation about the 1930's returning in a fashion that few could have seemed to imagine at that time.

HH: You know, Frank, in October of 2003, Encounter Books published The Return of Anti-Semitism, by Gabriel Schoenfeld. And I talked about it at the time, but no one really believes it. The modern world has trouble believing that the sort of viciousness and virulant anti-Semitism that marked the 30's could be back, but it's back, and it's in France.

FG: Yeah, and it's not confined to the Islamo-facists. This was one of the really stunning things, is that it appears that the many of the larger population are now feeling unconstrained any longer by memories of the past, or any sense of morality for that matter, and are indulging in this sort of thing, which may well, as you say, have contributed to this brutal murder of a young man who is Jewish. Though the perpetrators were seemingly of this Islamo-facist stripe, the attitudes towards this attack, and what it portends, do speak a larger anti-Semitic phenomenon than I certainly would have believed possible.

HH: Well now, I want to talk to you a little bit, Frank, not just about Europe, but also about what happened here. And we can come back to Europe in the weeks ahead. But yesterday was announced an Iraq Study Group. Have you had a chance to see this yet?

FG: Well, I've seen some reporting on it.

HH: Headed by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, Rudy Giuliani is on it, Alan Simpson is on it, Sandra Day O'Connor is rumored to be joining it, Chuck Robb, just some of the usual suspects. And I'm dumbfounded that not long after the 9/11 Commission, and the politicization it brought with it, it looks like we're set to go around again on this. What's your reaction?

FG: I must say, I'm not wildly enthusiastic about Congress constantly contracting out its oversight responsibilities to unelected, unaccountable people, some of whom have, as in the case of this commission, held senior positions in the U.S. government in the past. But this particular lineup, with the possible exception of former Mayor Giuliani, is pretty much the usual suspects, who have been assembled for the purpose, it appears, of giving a pretty predictable critique of what President Bush has been trying to do, and is doing, with the liberation of Iraq and the efforts to try to help bring a non-status quo outcome, both to that effort in Iraq, and to the Middle East more generally, something that in my experience, the usual suspects, the establishment, if you will, has always regarded with antipathy.

HH: But Frank, what could they possibly say? One of two things. Either they will say this is the only thing we can do, what the realists believe like you and me, and then it will not be worth a dime in the media. It will be ignored. Or they can critique what we've done, in which case it will be the most important study of all time. This is all too predictable.

FG: It is, and in fact, I think that Option A is predictably out of the question, so what we really have to look forward to is another salvo being leveled at the administration, including from Republicans, that will further, I'm afraid, undermine the President, and the sense we desperately need to impart to our adversaries, that we are in fact committed to seeing this thing through, and have every intention not only to stay the course, but to prevail with the Iraqi people.

HH: But do you know...they said it's got $1.3 million in funding. Did you ever see anything about this? A proposal? Frank Wolfe and John Warner are mixed up in it, but it just came out of nowhere, and I'm just surprised that it got through without opposition from serious people.

FG: Well, I'm afraid it's $13 million, at least according to what I've seen.

HH: Oh, my gosh.

FG: So it's considerably more than that. And no, it may have appeared in Frank Wolfe's musing, or perhaps even in some report language on an Appropriations subcommittee mark-up. But the first I heard of it was when it was sprung upon us. And again, it has become all to common, and I have high regard for Frank Wolfe, by and large. I think he's done an awful lot of very courageous and important things. This particular one might even have been an important and courageous thing, had it been something that involved people that are going to look at this a little bit more rigorously.

HH: Serious people. Frank Gaffney, we're out of time. I'll talk to you again next week.

End of interview.