Northman's Fury

The Environmental Protection Agency's pursuit of criminal cases against polluters has dropped off sharply during the Bush administration, with the number of prosecutions, new investigations and total convictions all down by more than a third, according to Justice Department and EPA data.

An important story, and one worth noting, though it did make me ask a different question when I first saw it. You see, I had already posted a blog entry about this very issue two months ago. How much do I want to repeat myself? Wider than that, is it still news when somebody has already reported on it? It does explain a lot of the culture of posting stories before all of the facts are known. Everybody wants to be first, but you can lose some of the detail that way as well.

The current story does have more context and as a result, has a few other points I think are worth discussion, so no repetition in necessary.

But environmental prosecutions by U.S. attorneys' offices have sharply dropped as prosecutors facing new pressures on issues such as terrorism and immigration take away resources for environmental prosecutions and try to divert cases to the main Justice Department, EPA agents said.

"Environmental crimes are simply not in the U.S. attorney top 10 priorities," said one senior EPA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the news media.

Prosecutors counter that the EPA has fewer agents and is bringing them fewer cases. "We're not turning away environmental crimes in order to prosecute other crimes. They are just not being presented in the first case," said Don DeGabrielle, the U.S. attorney in Houston.

EPA memos show that investigators also have encountered new obstacles to their long-standing practice of directly referring cases to federal or state prosecutors. A new policy distributed May 25 requires agents to seek prior approval from the head of their division and establishes new paperwork procedures. This has slowed agents' ability to make referrals, congressional investigators said.

It always strikes me how much this Republican administration, despite their traditional position of limiting the size of government, has managed to increase the size and scope of the bureaucracy in every area. On the other hand, they do it in ways that reduce the government's effectiveness, which I guess gives them more arguments in favour of its complete abolition.

Well, except in cases where it can help. Help the polluters, that is.

The Justice Department in August also touted a plea bargain with IMC Shipping Co. that required the Singapore ship operator to pay $10 million in connection with a massive oil spill in 2004 that killed thousands of birds in Alaska's Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.

Prosecutors told the court they had enough evidence to indict the company for criminal negligence under the Clean Water Act and for making false statements early in the investigation. But the deal they reached called for guilty pleas to two counts of violating the Refuse Act and one violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Prosecutors cited the company's cooperation for the leniency.

The decision to drop the negligence charges could be valuable to the company, which as a result remains eligible to seek reimbursement from a special government fund for $77 million of the more than $100 million it has spent cleaning up the spill.

After all, we wouldn't want these polluters to be responsible for paying their own clean-up costs when there are tax dollars available for the job.

Shorter Michael Medved:

Slavery in America really wasn't that big a deal and besides, it probably helped those poor black people become civilized.

I'm not actually kidding about that last. Here it is in his own words:

6. THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT TODAY’S AFRICAN-AMERICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THEIR ANCESTORS HAD REMAINED BEHIND IN AFRICA

Sadly, No! takes care of the entire column in appropriate fashion.

Rick Perlstein does a comparison of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to the visit of Nikita Khrushchev in 1959 and discusses what the reaction to the latter "most evil man on Earth's" visit says about the American character these days.

Today's America doesn't come out all that well, and the headline and the story reminds me of another post I linked to earlier this month about bedwetters explaining why the term became popular.

Fear and its promotion is all some of these people have left.

The Kyl-Lieberman Iran Amendment passed overwhelmingly today in the US Senate. It designates the Revolutionary Guard as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorists".

All I can say, is that Zbigniew Brzezinski's recent warning sounds more and more accurate:

"If we escalate the tensions, if we succumb to hysteria, if we start making threats, we are likely to stampede ourselves into a war, which most reasonable people agree would be a disaster for us," he said.

"And just think what it would do for the United States, because it would be the United States which would be at war. We will be at war simultaneously in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. And we would be stuck for the next 20 years."

Of course, the guys who are going to start it will be out of office and on the lecture circuit in less than two years, so what do they care?

I don't know if the allegations of the NDP about Karzai's speech are true, but it does make one curious about the more recent comments Karzai made to Canadian journalists during a recent conference arranged by the Department of National Defence.

For all those who were bitching about Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia, it gives me great pleasure to see that allowing him there saw him getting raked over the coals by the university president and students. Face up to the guy and his message instead of trying to hide and censor him, and he looks ridiculous and foolish instead of a noble sufferer of prejudice.

I'm with T-Steel on this; apologies are in order, not that I expect them to be forth-coming.

Two fairly good blog posts regarding the proposed vist of Mahmoud Ahamadinejad to the University of Columbia for a speech and Q & A session. One by Jason Steck at the Van Der Galien Gazette and the other by Shamanic at the Newshoggers.

Both note that the vast majority of the conservative net is in an uproar over the visit, and that as a result they are missing the point to some degree; this is a chance to confront the guy about all that you don't like about him and Iran, not an endorsment of his views by the university.

From Steck's post and the comments, the conservative argument is apparently justified because of the treatment given to highly-conservative speakers,and the hypocrisy of this move. I have never been to a US university campus, so I can't personally say if this argument carries weight, and I don't normally take the word of people who claim bias in their opponents, but I do know from reading David Brin, that this scenario isn't too far off the mark. He regularly scolds his readers for driving out the conservative thinkers from the university circles and into "think tanks", where they were able to create the echo chamber effect we so know and love today.

Considered as a whole, what strikes me, is that given most of Ahmadinejad's views, if he were an American, most of the critics and defenders would have their roles reversed. I mean, if you look at the list of questions shamanic would like to challenge him on, they all fit right into the Christian Conservative movement, (which I believe is her point). And Steck is right to point out that such a "scholar", stripped of the world leader status Ahmadinejad has, would face massive resistance and protests from the left were he to be invited for a talk.

The lesson? Hypocrisy comes in many guises, but the free exchange of ideas is important, particularly those you don't agree with, for it is by this means and this means only, that they can be challenged and robbed of their importance if they are found wanting.

Fester picks up on the same trend I noted when it was announced Chafee had quit the Republican party. Namely that the GOP is increasingly losing its more moderate members and moving further towards its far-right base and as a result, faces being marginalized on the national scene.

As I said before, while this is good news in the short term for the Democrats, over the long-term, its bad news for American democracy.

Well, no actually. Supporting the war is too important to let a little thing like the troops' mental health interfere with it.

Senate Republicans have blocked a bid by Democrats to give US troops in Iraq more home leave - a plan strongly opposed by the Bush administration.

The Democrats wanted US troops to have time off between tours in Iraq equal to their 15-month deployments.

The measure needed 60 votes to pass in the Democratic controlled Senate but received only 56 votes with 44 against.

With the lengthening tours and shorter rest periods, the soldiers fighting in Iraq are facing more combat deployment time than any previous American army, mainly because there are no reserve force available. It's a combination of bad planning and poor leadership. Despite rhetoric of this being the great battle of our generation, a new World War or "Clash of Civilizations", there's been no call for greater sacrifice except for the small minority of people serving in the military.

On Sunday I linked to an article by Glenn Greenwald about the revolting arrogance of the war supporters who oppose lessening the burden on the troops without any knowledge of just what that burden entails. They've succeeded, and America's suffering will continue apace.

Israel's security cabinet voted Wednesday to declare the Gaza Strip an "enemy entity," a move that gives Israel the power to cut off all vital supplies to the region.

Shipments of electricity, fuel and goods will be affected, although the cabinet has not decided when such sanctions will be put in place.

. . .

Most of Gaza's 1.4 million residents live in poverty and are almost entirely dependent on Israel for the supply of electricity, water and fuel. Sanctions could deepen their hardship and spark international condemnation.

I would add that a good part of the reason the Gaza Strip's residents are dependent on Israel for electricity and the rest is because the Israeli bombing campaign targeted the Strip's generating capacity, plus the fact that the region has been living under a virtual siege.

Like so much else with the Israeli-Palestinian situation, this is ugly. A form of collective punishment that forces innocents to suffer for the actions of extremists, who target and kill innocent civilians on the other side. The cuts may work to stop or at least slow down the rocket attacks, but it won't win the Israelis any friends.

And the worst part of it, of course, is that the Israelis really don't have any good options here, Doing nothing while rockets land in their territory is unacceptable. Easing up on the sanctions and air strikes makes them look weak, and tightening the sanctions and increasing the attacks makes them look like monsters. Textbook asymmetrical warfare, and a bloody mess.

What are the Iranians pursuing?

Well, if you ask the Iranians themselves, the answer is they are looking for a civilian power program. Say what you will about their honesty, their message discipline on this point has been nothing short of remarkable. Not only do they consistently say the program is for civilian use only, but the Supreme Leader has stated that nuclear weapons are forbidden by Islam and therefore the Iranian regime will never pursue them.

Of course, governments lie. If I don’t trust my own government to be honest about what they’re doing, I certainly have no reason to trust the Iranian government about their intentions. So what other information is out there?

The IAEA inspectors have been unable to find any evidence of a weapons program and even appear confident that the Iranians will end the year having answered all of the inspectors concerns. Many of the “Bomb Iran” crowd don’t want to trust the IAEA because they were unable to find any evidence of Saddam’s non-existent nuclear weapons program, which makes about as much sense as a lot of what that crowd believes. For people like myself, where credibility is earned through actually being right on occasion, the IAEA’s word carries a fair bit of weight.

“Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence” may be true. It is used pretty often by the SETI crowd regarding intelligent life on other planets, but they use their funding to keep looking, not to build landing pads for alien spacecraft. Acting on an absence of evidence is just plain foolish.

And if you don’t want to believe the IAEA, you could just listen to President Bush and what he said in his speech on Aug. 28th.

“Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.”

So Bush isn’t accusing the Iranians of pursuing nuclear weapons, but of pursuing technology that could lead to nuclear weapons. Technology that could lead to nuclear weapons covers a very broad number of possible activities, which means Bush is almost certainly technically correct, but showing an interesting reluctance to accuse the Iranians outright of pursuing nuclear weapons. In other words, Bush is implying a great threat while eloquently demonstrating that the US doesn’t have any actual evidence of a weapons program either.

Absence of evidence aside, there are other reasons to speculate on Iran’s intentions. The first is that Iran is sitting on a great sea of oil and natural gas and has no need for nuclear power for civilian purposes; therefore they must be pursuing this technology for weapons.

For this, I’ll point to a post at The Van Der Galien Gazette by “Liberal Hawk” Kevin Sullivan, who throws this little line into his argument:

It’s predicted that 80% of the Iranian population will live in the larger urban centers of the country by 2030. This anticipated increase in their urban centers has escalated the nation’s need for two basic resources-water and electricity. The regime’s energy needs have traditionally been beholden to other countries, despite the large reserves of oil and natural gas that they sit atop. In addition to assaults on nuclear facilities, we should consider striking places like Manjil, which holds wind farms and hydro-electric dams that provide water and electricity to certain provinces.

I’ll discuss the strategic sense of such attacks later, but he does make an excellent point for me in that despite their oil and gas reserves, Iran has to import energy and that their energy needs are set to vastly increase over the next few decades. An eloquent argument for the need for nuclear power, no?

Added to that is the fact that Iranian oil production has been declining over the last several years while its population is using more and more of it. Moving to nuclear power plants can free up some of that oil for export, which is one of the few ways the government has to bring money into the country.

Basically, there is a good argument for Iran needing nuclear power to fulfill civilian needs, and even for their insistence at being allowed to produce the fuel domestically, since trading a dependance on one kind of energy imports to another doesn't make much sense. That still doesn't make the program innocent, of course.

The other argument is the point I brought up at the end of yesterday’s post; the fact that it makes a kind of strategic sense for Iran to pursue a nuclear weapon for its deterrent value. Nuclear weapons states don’t go to war with one another, and the treatment of the other two members of the “axis of evil” reinforces this view.

The non-nuclear Iraq, without any WMD’s of any kind to deter the US with, opened itself up to inspections under US pressure to assure everyone its weapons programs were non-existent, and for its trouble was invaded and conquered, remains occupied with many of its cities in ruins, and millions of its people displaced and become refugees.

North Korea, on the other hand, responded to US pressure by kicking out the IAEA, opening its frozen plutonium-producing power plant, and ultimately cobbled together some kind of device. In return, the US is negotiating and offering concessions.

Given such examples, and the un-doubtable fact that Iran finds itself on America’s hit-list, possession of a nuclear weapon seems highly attractive.

Add to that the fact that Iran is surrounded by other nuclear powers, from Russia in the north, Pakistan and India to the east, Israel to the west, and the US itself in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Gulf.

As a long-term strategic goal, there really isn’t anything wrong with this argument. It is all quite logical. Possessing a nuclear weapon would make Iran’s strategic position a lot safer for the regime. What’s missing from the analysis is the fact that Iran is a long way from possessing a nuclear weapon, with all the vulnerability that implies, so one should also consider what makes strategic sense for the Iranians to do now.

Thanks in large part to US pressure, Iran’s nuclear program is under intense scrutiny and already the US is doing everything in its power to isolate and coerce the regime through sanctions and the possible listing of the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization. To stave this off, Iran needs as much support from the rest of the international community as it can get, particularly from Russia and China. Any sniff of a weapons program and that support will disappear and the threat of punitive US action goes up dramatically.

It therefore makes even more strategic sense, at least for now, for the Iranians to keep their noses clean on the nuclear issue. As long as they comply with the Non-Proliferation Treaty, they can continue to argue for their treaty right to civilian power generation and the nuclear fuel cycle that goes with it.

Given the technical difficulties they seem to be having, it will probably take them several years to get to that point, and that still leaves them a long way from being able to build a bomb or having a delivery system for one. In the meantime, there is no shortage of people who can tell you the current regime isn’t exactly winning any popularity contests at home.

Whatever their long-term goals, the current nuclear threat from Iran is nothing I’d lose sleep over.

It seems that the Administration has also realized that thanks to their efforts in regards to Iraq, that people beyond their base aren’t too eager to swallow the nuclear threat without question. As a result, the drum beats for war are beginning to focus instead on the stories of Iranian involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as mention of support for Palestinian groups and Hezbollah. I’ll leave that for Part III.

Part 1 - Can We Live With a Nuclear Iran?

Can We Live With a Nuclear Iran?

In a refreshing change from the, “Iran can’t be allowed to have nuclear weapons at any cost” rhetoric that seems the most common these days, retired General John Abizaid points out that it is actually quite possible to live with a nuclear-armed Iran.

Every effort should be made to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but failing that, the world could live with a nuclear-armed regime in Tehran, a recently retired commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East said Monday.

. . .

"Iran is not a suicide nation," he said. "I mean, they may have some people in charge that don't appear to be rational, but I doubt that the Iranians intend to attack us with a nuclear weapon."

The Iranians are aware, he said, that the United States has a far superior military capability.

"I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear," he said, referring to the theory that Iran would not risk a catastrophic retaliatory strike by using a nuclear weapon against the United States.

"There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."

I’m no fonder of the idea of a nuclear-armed Iran than anyone else, but the argument that we have to attack Iran militarily because they might possibly, someday, acquire a nuclear weapon and such a thing cannot ever, ever be allowed under any circumstances, is one of the more irrational I’ve heard.

The argument that the Iranian leadership would use nukes if they had them attributes qualities to them that would be unique in history. It argues that they are more fanatical and irrational than men like Stalin and Mao. Even Hitler refused to use chemical weapons on the battlefield in WWII. And unlike those regimes or Saddam’s next door, Iran isn’t a run by a single individual whose cult of personality would allow him to act however he chooses. They have a rather Byzantine power structure that would require irrationality not from one person with his finger on the button, but from dozens of competing factions and individuals, which is far less likely.

It also ignores the history of this regime. During the Iran-Iraq War, when Saddam was using chemical weapons with the winking support of western governments and few could have faulted retaliation in kind, and while Saddam actually was pursuing a nuclear arsenal, the Iranians stuck to conventional weapons and never tried to develop the nuclear reactors the US government had happily given the Shah. Despite all this, we are told that as soon as the regime in Tehran gets their hands on nuclear weapons, they will behave in a manner inconsistent with their own history and more irrationally than some of the worst dictators in human history and start firing them off.

The truth is that nuclear weapons tend to be far more similar to white elephants than an effective weapons system. So great is the stigma attached to the weapons, that every country that has developed them has also codified a no first-use policy for them, (with the notable exceptions of the US and Israel). Using the weapon makes you an automatic pariah at best and risks your total destruction at worst. MAD may not be the most pleasant way to live, but it does seem to work quite well.

More to the point, while the possession of nuclear weapons is supposed to act as a deterrent, it only seems to work between nuclear powers. India tested its first device in 1974, but that didn’t stop Pakistan from fighting them over Kashmir. Israel is believed to have had nukes since 1968. It never stopped Egypt and Syria from attacking in ’73, and it certainly hasn’t stopped their other enemies from launching attacks to this day. Even Saddam didn’t mind firing off Scuds at them during the first Gulf War. Argentina didn’t seem too worried when they invaded the Falklands. The deterrent status of nuclear weapons is highly overrated.

As for allowing the Iranians to expand their influence because their opposition would be afraid to fight back, the examples abound. France in Algeria, India in Sri Lanka, the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Russians in Chechnya, Israel in the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon, the US in Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Did having nukes make any of these powers any more capable of imposing their will on an unwilling population? Did it stop opposing powers from supporting the nuclear states’ enemies?

Possession of a nuclear weapon will make the Iranians no more capable of expanding their influence than they are now. Of course, for some, that capability is already far too great, and it is that which is the real reason behind all the war-drum beating.

Because the one real power nuclear weapons seem to have is to make opposing nuclear powers avoid conflict. The Americans and Soviets fought bloody proxy wars like those in Vietnam and Afghanistan, but never went after each other. Now that India and Pakistan both have nuclear weapons, they do a lot more talking rather than risk another war over Kashmir, because they know the consequences of such a conflict would be mutually devastating. Even the US quickly lost its belligerent tone and sat down at the negotiating table when the North Koreans cobbled together a device.

The fear is that if Iran does get its hands on a nuclear device, the US will no longer be able to do to Iran what they did to Iraq. Not that Iraq has worked out all that well for the US, but it has been far worse for Iraqis. Without the ability to break recalcitrant regimes to its will, US dominance of the Middle East is no longer assured, and that is the real problem that they believe can’t be allowed.

Oddly, it is precisely this argument that is used by many to claim that the only possible reason for the Iranian nuclear program is to acquire nuclear weapons. After all, under such circumstance, it makes strategic sense for the Iranians to want to acquire nuclear weapons, so that must be what they’re trying to do. I’ll deal with that argument tomorrow.

Part II - What are the Iranians pursuing?

It is Iran's version of "Schindler's List," a miniseries about an Iranian diplomat in Paris who helps Jews escape the Holocaust -- and viewers across the country are riveted.

While I’m certain the pro-Israel crowd will parse the series to pieces to find bad things to say about it so it doesn’t puncture their “Iran hates Jews” world-view, the fact that the Iranian state-run television network is airing a series about the holocaust and an Iranian’s role in getting Jews out of Nazi-controlled territory is still a significant blow to the preferred story-line of Iranian anti-Semitism, as are those stubbornly loyal Iranian Jews.

Admittedly, I have never followed Congressional politics that closely, and given the fact that even the Democratic Congress seems incapable of doing anything other than what the Executive Branch wants, it'll probably stay that way. Having said that, the loss of someone like Chafee is in my mind bad news in the long term for the Republicans.

With the moderates defecting, the only Republicans left will be the hardest of hard-liners and extremists, and that's a recipe for permanent minority or irrelevance, and frankly, for the extremist version of the right-wing, irrelevance is a good thing for the rest of us.

But democracies thrive on competing viewpoints and actors, not single-party rule. No matter its guise, when one party is in power for too long, it becomes corrupt and incompetent. The Democrats need competition to keep them (relatively) honest, and thanks to the electoral system in the US currently, that means the Republicans are it. If they winnow themselves into irrelevance, it won't be just the conservatives who will feel the pain of the consequences.

Looks like the French are looking to, "get back on the world stage" in the Harperian sense of the phrase.

French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner says the world should prepare for war over Iran's nuclear programme.

War is beginning to look like a distinct possibility these days, so preparing for it might not be the worst advice, unfortunately. I'm just curious what the "Freedom Fries" crowd will do if Sarkozy turns out to be the new Tony Blair?

Glenn Greenwald tears into the Kagan family and their good buddy Bill Kristol, people who deserve the title, "chickenhawk", for attacking Jim Webb's bill to try and relieve some of the stress being endured by US ground troops. The whole thing is well worth the read, but I'll excerpt the last bit.

If troops want more time at home, Kagan says, there is an easy way to achieve that: "win the war we're fighting." Of course, that would not even work, because Kagan and his friends at the Weekly Standard and the American Enterprise Institute have many more wars planned beyond Iraq for other families' sons and daughters to fight. For that reason, Kagan actually had the audacity several months ago to type this:

The president must issue a personal call for young Americans to volunteer to fight in the decisive conflict of this generation.

That's the history of our country for the last six years at least. The Fred Kagans and his dad and his brother and his wife and his best friend Bill Kristol sit back casually demanding more wars, demanding that our troops be denied any relief, demanding that the President call for other families to volunteer to fight in their wars -- all "as an intellectual or emotional exercise," as Webb put it.

That's all revolting enough. But to then watch Fred Kagan sit around opposing Senator Webb's attempts to relieve some of the strain on our troops -- all because it would require too much paperwork to figure out and because they haven't yet won Fred Kagan's war and thus deserve no breaks -- is almost too much to bear. But it is worth forcing oneself to observe it, as unpleasant as it might be, because within this ugly dynamic lies much of the explanation for what has happened to our country since the 9/11 attack, and the personality type that continues to drive it today.

It's hard to come up with anything worse than that, (though this comment I came across this morning about one of the soldiers killed last week who had written in the NY Times a month earlier is rather ugly as well).

It is a weird dynamic where civilian control of the military is one of the founding principles of our form of government, but the US has found itself with civilians in charge who seem to care not at all about the military they are in charge of, destroying it from the inside out while they rail against everyone else for not "supporting the troops".

My guess is that it is because unlike every other war in American history, there has been no sharing of the burden. The suffering has been borne by a fractional portion of the population, and that allows folks like the Kagan clan to keep things at an intellectual distance. A logic puzzle to solve rather than men and women being torn up in a meatgrinder. Bush hasn't even asked Americans for the far less onerous sacrifice of paying enough taxes to pay for the war.

The only way I can think of it is that the US is burning through its national karma at an alarming rate, and restoring balance is going to be a bitch.