by JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, August 14, 2003 3:23 P.M. EDT

Paris Is Burning?
Does anyone else find this claim suspicious? "France's worst heat wave on record has killed an estimated 3,000 people across the nation, the Health Ministry said Thursday, as the government faced accusations that it failed to respond to a major health crisis," the Associated Press reports from Paris.

Three thousand deaths? In a Western European country? Because of the weather? This is the kind of death toll usually reserved for Third World natural disasters--Chinese earthquakes, Bangladeshi floods and the like. Has the heat really killed 3,000 Frenchmen?

As it turns out, the AP dispatch gives ample reason to regard the French claim as fishy. For one thing, the Health Ministry says the 3,000 figure includes deaths "linked directly or indirectly" to the heat. Who knows how tenuous the link would have to be to say a death was "indirectly" linked to the heat? And it turns out the claim rests at least in part on a correlation without any proof of cause and effect:

In a statement, the ministry said its estimate was partly drawn from studying deaths in 23 Paris regional hospitals from July 25-Aug. 12 and from information provided by General Funeral Services.

According to 2002 figures, the Paris regional hospitals that were surveyed could have expected some 39 deaths a day, the ministry said. But Tuesday, they recorded nearly 180, it said.

"We note a clear increase in cases beginning Aug. 7-8, which we can regard as the start of the epidemic of deaths linked to the heat," the statement said.

Morgues and funeral directors have reported skyrocketing demand for their services since the heat wave took hold. General Funeral Services, France's largest undertaker, said it handled some 3,230 deaths from Aug. 6-12, compared to 2,300 on an average week in the year--a 37 percent jump.

Might it be noteworthy that the French are claiming almost the same number of deaths from the heat as America suffered on Sept. 11? A popular lunatic conspiracy theory on the "European street" has it that George W. Bush is to blame every time the weather is bad. (This cartoon from Le Monde hints at the idea.) Don't be surprised if the America-haters' next talking point is that by renouncing the Kyoto Protocols Bush killed as many people as Osama bin Laden did.

New World Man
The New York Post's Ralph Peters has a nice summary of the cultural divide between America and Europe:

Strategically, Europe is in danger of becoming the greatest impediment to positive change in the world. Europe clings to the international status quo, no matter how dreadful, simply because risk has been bred out of its culture. This leaves the United States (and Britain) with the choice of doing that which is necessary and just without Europe's support, or accepting the rules that made the 20th century history's bloodiest.

Europeans are correct when they insist that America has become a danger. We are, indeed, a tremendous threat to their self-satisfaction, to their dread of change, to their moral irresponsibility and to their dreary, state-supported cultures.

Since George W. Bush became president, and especially since he made clear he was taking the offensive in fighting terrorists and reforming the Muslim world, even we Americans have been subjected to a lot of tiresome tut-tutting about the need to cater to European and even Arab public opinion. But really, isn't it better to be right than popular?

Flight Risk
"British Airways has suspended all flights to Saudi Arabia until further notice, in response to a specific terrorist threat to its planes in the country," reports the BBC, which offers this anecdote of a frustrated traveler:

Nadia Talpur, 20, a student from Toronto, Canada, who was also flying to Jeddah to see relatives said: "I have been passed round three different people so far and I still don't know what's going on. I'm about ready to explode. . . ."

Which, come to think of it, is exactly what British Airways is afraid of.

Stupid Journalist Tricks
So we woke up this morning to hear WCBS-AM, a radio station here in New York, touting an ABC story--that's right, a story by a rival network--that purports to debunk the government's case against Hemant Lakhani, the British national who stands accused of agreeing to sell a surface-to-air missile to an FBI agent posing as an al Qaeda terrorist. The ABC story quotes unnamed "law enforcement officials" as saying, in the network's words, that "much of the alleged missile plot was a government setup from start to finish."

Well, yeah, it was a sting operation. ABC's dumb journalism seems to be intended to "correct" other news outlets' dumb journalism in initially reporting the story. As blogger Josh Marshall points out, an MSNBC report (since edited) actually contained this sentence: "It was not immediately clear whether the plot was connected to al-Qaida or some other terrorist network." Since the purported al Qaeda operative in the "plot" was actually an FBI agent, it should have been immediately clear to anyone with a brain in his head.

Lies of the Bush-Haters
Back in June, we noted that Bush-haters and Saddam-defenders were seizing upon a vague comment by Wesley Clark, a retired general and prospective Democratic presidential candidate, to justify their contention that BUSH LIED!!!!!! and said Saddam Hussein was behind the Sept. 11 attacks. Clark told NBC's Tim Russert that he'd received a phone call on Sept. 11--he didn't say from whom--urging him to argue publicly for such a link.

Anti-Bush fantasists simply assumed that Bush was behind the phone call Clark described. Here's former Enron adviser Paul Krugman:

Gen. Wesley Clark says he received calls on Sept. 11 from "people around the White House" urging him to link the attack to Saddam Hussein.

That Krugman column ran July 15. Yesterday the Times published this letter from Clark:

I would like to correct any possible misunderstanding of my remarks on "Meet the Press," quoted in Paul Krugman's July 15 column, about "people around the White House" seeking to link Sept. 11 to Saddam Hussein.

I received a call from a Middle East think tank outside the country, asking me to link 9/11 to Saddam Hussein. No one from the White House asked me to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11. Subsequently, I learned that there was much discussion inside the administration in the days immediately after Sept. 11 trying to use 9/11 to go after Saddam Hussein.

In other words, there were many people, inside and outside the government, who tried to link Saddam Hussein to Sept. 11.

So Krugman turns out to have been engaging in a bit of dowdification. Also odd about this, as blogger Donald Luskin notes, is that the letter is dated July 18, but the Times didn't get around to publishing it until yesterday, 26 days later.

Pound Foolish?
This seems like a bad idea: "The Pentagon wants to cut the pay of its 148,000 U.S. troops in Iraq," the San Francisco Chronicle reports. It seems the servicemen in Iraq, as well as their 9,000 counterparts in Afghanistan, have been receiving a pair of bonuses--"$75 a month in 'imminent danger pay' and $150 a month in 'family separation allowances' "--which expire Sept. 30 unless Congress renews the appropriation before then. The Defense Department wants to drop the extra pay, "saying its budget can't sustain the higher payments amid a host of other priorities."

"Sometimes, you just have to shake your head and wonder--what can they be thinking?" writes Empower America's Terri Phifer, who also notes that the families of soldiers killed in action receive a death benefit of only $6,000. "When Congress returns," she says, "their first order of business should be to take action by making the pay increases permanent and increasing the death gratuity. Anything less would be a slap in the face to military personnal [sic] and their families and just plain wrong."

The amount of money here isn't trivial: $225 a month for 157,000 troops amounts to $423.9 million a year. But surely the Pentagon can find better places to cut.

Why Not Just Buy a Butterball?
"Iraq Resumes Pumping Oil Through Turkey"--headline, Associated Press, Aug. 14

Who's Distracted?
"The CIA has captured a major al Qaeda leader who is believed to have planned bombings in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia," ABC News reports. The man, Riduan Isamuddin, "was arrested as part of a CIA undercover operation in the last 24 hours. He is currently being returned to Indonesia to face terrorism charges there. The CIA has called the Indonesia-born Hambali the 'Osama bin Laden' of Southeast Asia."

By the Way
Presidential candidate John Kerry incessantly reminds Americans that he served in Vietnam, so he must think that this somehow is a qualification for the presidency. Yet John DiStaso of the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader points out that 11 years ago Kerry, the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam, had an entirely different attitude:

In the final weeks of the '92 New Hampshire primary campaign and for two weeks following it, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska contrasted his own record of U.S. Navy service in Vietnam to Clinton's opposition to the war and alleged draft-dodging.

John Kerry, on the Senate floor on Feb. 27, 1992, lamented that Vietnam had been "inserted into the campaign."

He told his fellow senators, "What saddens me most is that Democrats, above all those who shared the agonies of that generation, should now be re-fighting the many conflicts of Vietnam in order to win the current political conflict of a Presidential primary. . . . We do not need to divide America over who served and how . . ."

Now, though, Kerry just won't shut up about Vietnam. "I believe I bring a life's experience as a fighter," the Boston Globe quotes him telling a union audience yesterday.

There's actually an argument to be made that Kerry's Vietnam service make him less qualified to be president. Consider this anecdote from a June Globe profile of Kerry:

On a summer day in 1986, members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee gathered behind closed doors off the chamber floor to hear the sales pitch of a brash freshman, Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.

Fifteen years earlier, Kerry had appeared before the same committee to denounce the Vietnam War, challenging the senators to answer the question: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

Now, at age 42, Kerry was a senator himself, the US was embroiled in another anti-communist crusade in a distant land, and Kerry was determined to prevent a repeat of Vietnam.

He had spent the spring conducting an unauthorized investigation into reports that the Reagan administration was illegally providing aid to the rebel Nicaraguan Contra armies, which were attempting to overthrow the left-wing government of that Central American nation. At this closed session, he planned to urge the committee to launch an official probe.

On this and related issues, Kerry's relentless drive "came largely from Vietnam veteran syndrome," said former aide and investigator Jack Blum, describing the disillusionment that returning soldiers often felt as a result of that divisive war. "You come home and discover that people who are running the war are just interested in covering their ass; meanwhile, real people are dying real deaths. . . . This was a very searing business."

It in no way disparages Kerry's service to his country to raise the question: At a time when America faces the need to defend itself from a kind of threat completely different from the one we faced in Vietnam, can we afford to have a president who is timid about using U.S. military force because he fears "another Vietnam"?

This Just In
"Veteran Kerry Touts His War Experience"--headline, Des Moines Register, Aug. 14

Great Orators of the Democratic Party

• "One man with courage makes a majority."--Andrew Jackson
  
  
• "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."--Franklin Roosevelt
  
  
• "The buck stops here."--Harry Truman
  
  
• "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."--John Kennedy
  
  
• "You know there's an old saying about a wannabe cowboy: all hat, no cattle. Well, with George W. Bush I think it's all hat, no jobs. All hat, no healthcare. All hat, no clue."--Dick Gephardt

What Would We Do Without Strategists?
"Schwarzenegger Outcome Could Affect Bush in 2004: Gubernatorial Win in California Would Bring Potential Risks as Well as Rewards, Strategists Say"--headline and subheadline, Washington Post, Aug. 14

Dept. of Redundancy Dept.
"Extraordinary Man Lived Extraordinarily"--headline, (Nashua, N.H.) Telegraph, Aug. 12

What Did the Ordinary Tuesday Briefing Say?
"Health, Age, and Income Factor Into Americans' Self-Image"--headline, Premium Tuesday Briefing, Gallup.com, Aug. 12

Oh, Let's Not Nitpick
Yesterday's New York Times carried this correction: "An article in Circuits on Thursday about Oyez (www.oyez.org), a Web site that distributes audio recordings of the United States Supreme Court, misstated the frequency of justices' speeches from the bench. They occur every time an opinion is handed down, not rarely."

Maybe Someone Should Hold a Hearing
"Debate Rages Over Deaf Attorney"--headline, Orlando Sentinel, Aug. 14

Not Too Brite--CVI
"French police held a 62-year-old woman in custody Wednesday on suspicion of manslaughter after discovering the skeletal remains of her mother hidden at her home," Reuters reports from sweltering Paris.

Oddly Enough!

(Note: For an explanation of the "Not Too Brite" feature, click here.)

Some People Call Him Maurice
The antismoking fanatics have really gotten out of hand up there in Michigan, we thought when we read this headline in the Detroit Free Press: "Suspension Over, Smoker Reinstated at MSU." Is Michigan State really suspending students just for smoking? Maybe not. It turns out the headline refers to MSU quarterback Jeff Smoker, who is returning to the team just in time for the start of football season.

Then again, the article says Smoker was suspended for "substance abuse," and it doesn't say what substance, so it's possible Smoker is a smoker, or even a midnight toker.

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