Duty to Warn

SAN FRANCISCO -- The conventional wisdom in Washington is that it's pointless or reckless for Americans to speak with Iraqi officials. But some on Capitol Hill are beginning to think otherwise.

Last month, for the first time since George W. Bush became president, members of Congress -- four Democrats -- visited Baghdad. Hopefully, more will be making the journey later this fall.

Rep. Nick Rahall, a 13-term congressman from West Virginia, started the trend in mid-September when he joined former Sen. James Abourezk of South Dakota to lead a small delegation of Americans to Baghdad. As a member of that group, I was impressed with the candor of the discussions during several hours of meetings with high-level Iraqi government ministers.

AUSTIN, Texas -- One thing I have always admired about the U.S. military services is their ability to learn from their mistakes. They have institutionalized this ability in the form of remarkable After Action Reviews, which include rigorous dissection of every aspect of whatever operation they were last required to take.

These AARs are both unsparing and illuminating -- I recall the particularly trenchant review of the (SET ITAL) opera bouffe (END ITAL) episode in which they were required to invade Grenada, an exercise so stunningly silly that it is beneath comment. They should have sent a Texas Ranger.

Of course, the military spent years poring over Vietnam, the one it lost. Even now, the feelings of many are still so tender on that one that I feel obliged to point out they didn't actually lose it -- they were sent into an unwinnable situation.

AUSTIN, Texas -- I realize it's early days for this sort of thing, but I already have a nomination for dumbest sentence of the decade. You have a mere eight years to top this one, so you'd better get cracking.

I found it in the midst of nasty little ad hominem attack on Bill Moyers in The Weekly Standard. The writer, Stephen F. Hayes, is laboring under the delusion that Moyers is "dedicated to promoting the views of most extreme elements of the far left in America." One can only conclude that Hayes has never met anyone on the far left: Billy Don Moyers from Marshall, Texas, is actually a Baptist, albeit of the Jimmy Carter school.

Hayes worked himself up into a fine lather of indignation because "Moyers spends much of his time pointing out the conflicts-of-interest of those in government and corporate America." Some would call that journalism, but it was not the inanity of the attack on Moyers that stopped me. It was this sentence, which Hayes stuck in to show how far-left he thinks Moyers is: "Moyers used water rights in Bolivia as an illustration of the perils of capitalism."

AUSTIN, Texas -- The economy is a mess. We are now in the second dip of a double-dip recession. ("Looks like a W," say the economists, another reason why economists are not famous for their humor.) Six and a quarter trillion dollars has disappeared from the stock markets. We have so far to go in cleaning up corporate corruption, it makes the Augean stables look like spilt milk.

In the Sept. 23 issue of The New Yorker is an excellent piece called "The Greed Cycle," examining the effects of stock options on corporate culture. The most depressing thing about it is that even though it is a long article, it doesn't begin to cover the range of iniquities and inanities that have been allowed to flourish.

Robert Bryce's Enron book, "Pipedreams," provides more chilling detail. Mickie Siebert, the legendary and impressive head of Muriel Siebert & Co. (and a Republican) has been calling attention to the dangers of derivatives for years. Nothing was done even after Long Term Capital Management's spectacular failure. How many disasters does it take to get Washington's attention?

You might remember the old movie "Twelve Angry Men," starring Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb and E.G. Marshall. Most of the dramatic film takes place inside a jury room as a dozen people deliberate at the end of a murder trial. It's sweltering hot. At the outset, most of the jurors are eager to render a guilty verdict and go home. As the story unfolds, viewers learn that some are influenced by prejudice against the dark-skinned defendant.

We'd like to think that such bias doesn't hold sway in jury rooms these days. After all, "Twelve Angry Men" came out in 1957, and a lot of progress has occurred since then. But stereotypes and semi-conscious racism are still widespread factors in American society.

An essay in the new anthology "Race and Resistance" notes that "the power of the media is profound" -- and adds that "its most powerful impact is on children, who frame definitions of and draw conclusions about the world through the messages they receive."

BAGHDAD -- When Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz described the box that Washington has meticulously constructed for Iraq, he put it this way: "Doomed if you do, doomed if you don't."

It would be difficult to argue the point with Aziz, and I didn't try. Instead, during a Sept. 14 meeting here in Baghdad, I joined with others in a small American delegation who argued that the ominous dynamics of recent weeks might be reversible if -- as a first step -- Iraq agreed to allow unrestricted inspections.

Despite Iraq's breakthrough decision that came two days later to do just that, I'll be leaving Baghdad tonight with a scarcely mitigated sense of gloom. While the news from the Iraqi capital has been positive in recent days, the profuse signs of renewed acquiescence to war among top Democrats on Capitol Hill are all the more repulsive.

AUSTIN, Texas -- (SET ITAL) "What's so interesting is that he's given in at the ideal moment: really early, when it messes us up." -- Kenneth Pollack, an Iraq expert at the Brookings Institute, on Saddam Hussein's agreeing to weapons inspections as quoted in The New York Times. (END ITAL)

Don't you just hate it when the bad guys agree to do what we want them to? If that's not a good reason to go in and take out Saddam, name one.

But our Fearless Leader, not one to be deterred from war merely by getting what he wants, promptly moved the goalposts and issued a new list of demands Iraq must meet, including paying reparations to Kuwait.

If you step back and look at this debate, it just gets stranger and stranger. For one thing, all the evidence is that the administration has already made up its mind and we're going into Iraq this winter. President Bush went to the United Nations and demanded they back him, he's going to Congress to demand they back him, and there it is. This is not a debate, it's Bush in his "You're either with us or against us" mode. It is not a discussion of whether invading Iraq is either necessary or wise.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Billie Carr, the godmother of Texas liberals, passed last week at 74. Sue Lovell of Harris County Democrats said she knew Billie was gone when she leaned over the bed and said, "Billie, should I get you a mail ballot?" and there was no response.

Billie wanted her funeral conducted in the same political tradition in which she had spent her entire life: "I'll be half an hour late. I want a balanced delegation of pallbearers -- blacks, browns, gays and an equal number of women. And I want an open casket and a sign pasted over my left tit that says: ‘Hi there! My Name Is BILLIE CARR.'"

They did it exactly as she wished. There were voter registration cards by the guest book. Hundreds of us were there, wearing tags pasted over our left tits that said, "Hi there! My Name Is ..." and people wore old political buttons from ancient struggles. I haven't had such a good time at a funeral since Nixon died.

Oh, she was so much fun. Irreverent, and improper, and absolutely fearless. And she had the greatest laugh. She attended her first political convention in 1928, when she was 26 days old. Her parents pinned a credential on her diaper.

If you call the toll-free number on the TV screen during one of those upbeat Army commercials, a large envelope will arrive with a white t-shirt inside. On the back is a slogan in big block letters: "AN ARMY OF ONE."

The only other thing in the package is a videotape called "212 Ways to Be a Soldier." A hard-driving rock soundtrack propels all 20 minutes. Graphics flash with a cutting-edge look (supplied by a designer who gained ad-biz acclaim for working on a smash Nike commercial). Young adults provide warm narratives about their daily lives in the Army. From the outset, the mood is reassuring.

Sometimes, the screen fills with helicopters, intrepid soldiers rappelling through the air, men advancing across terrain as they carry machine guns -- always accompanied by plenty of rock 'n' roll -- all in the service of a country much more comfortable dishing out extreme violence than experiencing it. There's no talk of risk, and scarcely a mention of killing.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Sometimes you have to connect the dots, and sometimes the connections just hit you over the head.

Congress is on the verge of taking a final vote on the bankruptcy bill, the product of a five-year effort by credit-card companies to stack the law in their favor and against average citizens. But you will be relieved to learn that our lawmakers have thoughtfully included a loophole that leaves six states, including Florida and Texas, free to continue providing extraordinary advantages to rich citizens from all over the country who need to shelter their gelt from bankruptcy proceedings. The millionaire protection amendment.

And this is about to happen despite the fact that one of the bill's most important sponsors, a congressman with financial problems, got a $447,500 loan -- as The New York Times genteelly put it, "on what appeared to be highly favorable terms," from (guess who? Right again) -- a major credit card company.