by JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, April 24, 2003 3:07 P.M. EDT

La Politique de la Destruction Personnelle
"The White House has started the politics of personal destruction," thunders Sen. John Kerry. With his weaselly positioning on the liberation of Iraq, and now this, it's clear that Kerry is aping Bill Clinton, the last member of his party to win a presidential election. It was Clinton who introduced the phrase politics of personal destruction into America's political lexicon. We did a Factiva search, and the earliest reference was from a March 13, 1992, article by Bill Lambrecht of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

In addition to sharpened tactics by his rivals, Clinton's recent victories have produced jitters among party leaders. The Democratic leaders--often without being identified in news articles--fret that the party is past the point of no return in selecting a damaged nominee.

Clinton's ability to deflect such rumblings grows as the campaign wears on. When a broadcast reporter tried to question him in the cheesecake factory about campaign ads, Clinton said he preferred to continue discussing "something real"--job training.

"I'll talk about politics in a minute, which is increasingly unreal," he said.

"People who don't know me can say all they want to," Clinton said later about the various charges. "But I think that the American people can spot somebody that's on their side. . . . They're tired of the politics of personal destruction."

Lambrecht also quoted Clinton as saying: "The licks I've taken are nothing compared to the licks I've seen." Of course, this was before he met Monica Lewinsky.

But we digress. Here's the Boston Herald explaining why Kerry is on the defensive, Clinton style:

A New York Times report quoted Republican officials and Bush advisers yesterday saying that Kerry's presidential campaign wouldn't play well out of New England because of his "haughty air" and Boston upbringing.

"He looks French," said one Bush adviser, handing the Massachusetts Democrat what is probably the ultimate postwar political putdown.

Saying that someone "looks French" is "personal destruction"? Either Americans hate France even more than we realized or Kerry is really thin-skinned--or both. Kerry's superrich spouse also weighs in:

Minutes after Kerry sped off to a campaign speech in New Hampshire, his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, compared the Bush [adviser's] comment to an insult by "kids in the playground."

"They'll probably say he's French, he's Jewish . . . he's a monkey," Heinz Kerry said of her husband, whose Jewish roots recently became a campaign issue. "I just find it sad."

She added: "They (White House officials) probably don't even speak French."

Hey Teresa, way to combat those accusations of haughtiness.

Will Kerry be the next Bill Clinton? Even if he wins the nomination, it seems unlikely. For one thing, after Sept. 11 national security will be a much higher priority for voters than it was in 1992 (or 1996 or 2000), and that'll work to the advantage of President Bush both because he's the incumbent and because he's a Republican. There's unlikely to be a Ross Perot type on the ballot to draw votes from dissatisfied conservatives. And on the evidence of the campaign so far, Kerry completely lacks a sense of political tone, whereas Clinton's was exquisitely tuned.

There's one other difference. Unlike Clinton, Kerry fought in Vietnam--a fact he reminds us of so incessantly it seems like his whole raison d'être. Come to think of it, aren't the Bushies right to think Kerry is a little Frenchy? After all, the French were in Vietnam before being in Vietnam was cool.

Is Iran Next?
Opponents of the mad mullahs who run Iran "have called a general strike that they hope will expand to topple the government there and bring freedom and democracy to the Iranian people," the New York Sun reports. "The strike is being organized by profreedom student groups to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the last student uprising in Iran that saw thousands of students take to the streets against the Islamic Republic's ruling mullahs." The date: July 9.

"The optimism of the Iranian opposition movement is palpable, despite a lack of attention in the Western press," the Sun reports. If the Iraq experience is any indication, we'll know freedom is imminent when the pundits start predicting disaster. Once Iran is liberated, we won't hesitate to gloat and crow "Ayatollah you so!"

Repent. The End Isn't Nigh.
Three cheers for Chris Matthews, to our knowledge the first Iraq naysayer to admit publicly that he was wrong. (We don't count Nicholas Kristof's grudging, half-assed effort.) In an August column he wrote: "This invasion of Iraq, if it goes off, will join the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Desert One, Beirut and Somalia in the history of U.S. military catastrophes. What will set it apart for all time is the immense--and transparent--political stupidity." The New Haven Register reports on his mea culpa:

"I was wrong about the war," Matthews said in a booming voice, immediately gaining the attention of 600 people at the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale. . . .

"I thought there would be an Arab revolt, a tremendous uproar," he said. "Nothing happened. I hate being wrong, but I'm glad." . . . He also said he thinks that more antiwar critics should admit they were wrong.

Indeed they should. Most of them, however, are even more shameless than Kristof. They claim they knew all along it would be a cakewalk; they demand weapons of mass destruction right now (after arguing that Hans Blix and crew should have forever to find them); they harp on every little bit of bad news coming out of Iraq as if it were a disaster.

Remember all the hysteria about looting of hospitals? Now Agence France-Presse reports (you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the dispatch to read it) that according to Médecins Sans Frontières there is "no large-scale health crisis" in Iraq. "MSF has not found any reason to justify a major humanitarian medical program in Iraq," MSF international president Morten Rostrup tells the wire service.

And what about those revolting Shiites who've been all over the news the past couple of days? "Shias Stage Anti-US Protest" reads a BBC.com headline from yesterday. You have to read to the 10th paragraph to learn that "the anti-US demonstrations were small-scale, involving only a few hundred people."

In the interest of eponymy, we'll give the final word on antiwar doomsayers to The Weekly Standard's Jonathan Last:

Why should anyone take them seriously? They've been proven wrong on the question of the day and then failed to demonstrate any serious capacity for introspection. They're not public thinkers. They're not journalists. They're activists.

Is Scott Speicher Alive?
"A U.S. search team has found Navy pilot Scott Speicher's initials scratched into the wall of a Baghdad prison cell," Reuters reports, citing NBC news. The Iraqis shot down Speicher's F-18 during the 1991 Gulf War and he was listed as killed in action. But information surfaced later suggesting the Iraqis may have taken him prisoner, and in January 2001 the Navy reclassified him as missing. The three initials--MSS--scrawled into the wall of a Baghdad prison cell are the first possible clue to Speicher's whereabouts to surface since the liberation of Iraq.

A Washington Post profile last week noted that in 1992 Speicher's wife, Joanne--at the time, officially his widow--remarried:

[Her second husband's] name was Albert Harris, but he was known to everyone as Buddy. He had been Scott's closest friend, a fellow Navy pilot. Devastated by Speicher's death, Harris began spending more and more time with the Speicher children, playing the role of surrogate father. And, as he would tell NBC's Tom Brokaw in an interview in February, "the light kind of came on around the same time as to the possibilities." . . .

Together, they had two children, and all four siblings started to go by the last name Speicher-Harris.

Harris has led the effort to find out what happened to Speicher. Yet no matter how strong the bonds of loyalty between the two men, if Speicher is found alive, there's no way he won't return home to what the Post understatedly calls "a terribly awkward situation" for all involved. It's another of the human costs of the first President Bush's failure to finish the Gulf War.

Back to Bombay
Among those liberated by the allies in Iraq is Annis Mohammed Saboowalla, a 49-year-old Bombay, India, businessman. The Associated Press reports he returned home today "after serving more than 12 years in a Baghdad jail for 'insulting' Saddam Hussein":

Saboowalla said he was imprisoned because he spoke his mind to fellow travelers fleeing Baghdad after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

He said he'd remarked that if talks with the United Nations did not work, force would be used against Saddam.

"That's exactly what happened in the end," said the father of five children, one of [them] born at Baghdad airport in September 1990, just before his family left Iraq ahead of him.

Had Jacques Chirac, Howard Dean, Howell Raines and all the others who opposed Iraq's liberation had their way, Saboowalla probably would have remained in prison for life.

Reuters Imitates ScrappleFace

"Rumsfeld Sorry for 'Axis of Weasels' Remark"--headline, ScrappleFace.com, Jan. 22

"Anti-War Axis Scrambles to Appease Victorious U.S."--headline, Reuters, April 23

Zero-Tolerance Watch
Ken Rohrer has left his job as principal of Coolspring Elementary School in Michigan City, Ind., after being "criticized for dressing up and acting as an Iraqi official during televised school announcements," the Associated Press reports. Rohrer adopted "the fictional persona of a character he called Niknak-Padiwak Givudogabon"--which actually doesn't sound to us like a real Arab name:

In character, he spoke of lying Americans and of puppets under the control of President Bush. He also announced that an upcoming ice cream social would be held "while the Iraqi people are starving because of U.S. sanctions."

"I don't know if he was trying to be funny or what, but no one took it as funny," Cynthia Schweizer, mother of a first-grader, told the AP in an earlier dispatch. It's not clear if Rohrer was expressing anti-American sentiments or satirizing them--but we have to disagree with Schweizer. The whole thing seems pretty funny to us.

Ditsy Chick
Natalie Maines, lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, produced a pother a few weeks ago when she told a London audience that she was "ashamed" that President Bush is from Texas, her home state. In an interview with Diane Sawyer that airs tonight, she explains: "I'm not truly embarrassed that, you know, President Bush is from my state, that's not really what I care about. It was the wrong wording with genuine emotion and questions and concern behind it. . . . Am I sorry that I asked questions and that I just don't follow? No."

Glad she cleared that up.

That's Entertainment
Meanwhile, here are the latest show-biz headlines from the Muslim world:

• "Egyptian singer Shabaan Abdul Rahim announced that he has discovered the whereabouts of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussain and intends on revealing it in his upcoming song 'Saddam Oh Saddam,' " reports Al Bawaba. Shabaan's previous hits include "Bombing of Iraq" and "I Hate Israel."
  
  
• Al Bawaba also reports that "Lebanese drag queen impersonator Bassim Faghali has temporarily stopped all performance to join the military. Bassim is to serve a mandatory one year in the military according to Lebanese law, which states that all males are to serve in the military."
  
  
• The Associated Press reports that "an Iranian actress was given a suspended sentence of 74 lashes for kissing a young actor on the cheek."

Not Too Brite--LXX: Reuters runs the story about the mad mullahs threatening to beat the actress under its "Oddly Enough" heading.

All in the Family
Salon reports that Lara Jakes Jordan, the Associated Press reporter whose interview with Sen. Rick Santorum set off a kerfuffle about gay rights and sodomy statutes, "is the relatively new bride of Jim Jordan, the presidential campaign manager for Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass." This may explain why Kerry was one of the first Democrats to denounce Santorum for what the French-looking Massachusetts Democrat called "divisive and hurtful comments that have no place in our politics." It also makes us wonder if Santorum meant to say "nepotism" when he said "incest."

Meanwhile, the Salt Lake Tribune reports Santorum is getting qualified support from Owen Allred. "He is absolutely right," says Allred, head of the United Apostolic Brethren. "The people of the United States are doing whatever they can to do away with the sacred rights of marriage."

"But Allred said Santorum's inclusion of polygamy in his list tarnishes a religious tradition whose roots are traced to biblical figures such as Abraham, Jacob and Moses--defiling them as 'immoral and dirty.' " The Tribune describes the United Apostolic Brethren as "the state's largest polygamist clan." Once again, life imitates ScrappleFace.

Bees Discovered on the Moon
"Reluctant Spelling Champ From Moon Heads to D.C."--headline, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 23

Say What?
"Police Shoot, Kill Man With Knife"--headline, Dallas Morning News, April 23

Racism's Many Forms
The city of Boston has rescinded free golfing privileges it had extended to a group of ministers--some from outside Boston--at a city-owned golf course. Some of the ministers are crying racism. Seriously. "The majority of the people on the list are black, and we do feel it's unfair," the Rev. James Allen, pastor of the Shekinah Glory Church of God in Christ in Mattapan, tells the Boston Globe. "I don't want to use the race card, but let's be honest. I don't want to make it a racial thing, but it seemed like that's what it was."

Memo to Jesse Jackson: Get thee to Boston. Clearly this is another Selma!

The Hefty Hooker
The Washington Post's Lloyd Grove reports that an error crept into the closed-captioning of Tuesday's "World News Tonight" on ABC. According to the wayward caption, Alan Greenspan was "in the hospital for an enlarged prostitute." Greenspan's wife, Andrea Mitchell, tells Grove: "He should be so lucky."

XYNYTPDQ
Check out the last correction in yesterday's New York Times:

A movie review in Weekend on April 11 about an aspiring filmmaker misstated the medium in which it was made, and a correction in this space yesterday misstated its title. It was made on film, not on digital video. Its title is "XX/XY," not "XX/YY."

The PC Industry Goes PC
"Novell Inc. Chairman and CEO Jack Messman has issued a written apology and clarification after angering some members of the Linux community when he called Linux 'an immature operating system' in an interview with Computerworld earlier this week," the magazine reports.

Oh well, at least he didn't say Linux looks French.

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Today on OpinionJournal:

• Daniel Johnson: Don't throw the baby out with the Baath water.
• John Fund: With the war won, it's time for Bush to master the Senate.
• André Emmerich: What were all those antiquities doing in Iraq anyway?