by JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, September 18, 2003 3:19 P.M. EDT

Weasel Watch
Gerhard Schroeder seems to have come to his senses. The Wall Street Journal (link for WSJ.com subscribers) reports from Berlin that Germany's chancellor, who narrowly won re-election a year ago by running an anti-American campaign, "his nation is ready to assist American-led efforts to rebuild and democratize Iraq no matter what happens with a United Nations resolution now being negotiated":

While Mr. Schroeder said Berlin wouldn't provide any funding, he said that Germany was prepared to help train Iraqi police and military personnel and to work on various infrastructure projects.

"Those who favored the war--and that doesn't mean just the U.S. but also Great Britain and other European countries--as well as those who for considerable reasons opposed it, must now all accept their common responsibility," Mr. Schroeder said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal and the German financial daily Handelsblatt. Berlin's willingness to help "exists totally independently of the resolution," which the U.S. has proposed to encourage other countries to contribute funds and troops. Any country staying on the sidelines, he added, "is making a mistake."

Meanwhile, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has declared war on France:

It's time we Americans came to terms with something: France is not just our annoying ally. It is not just our jealous rival. France is becoming our enemy.

If you add up how France behaved in the run-up to the Iraq war (making it impossible for the Security Council to put a real ultimatum to Saddam Hussein that might have avoided a war), and if you look at how France behaved during the war (when its foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, refused to answer the question of whether he wanted Saddam or America to win in Iraq), and if you watch how France is behaving today (demanding some kind of loopy symbolic transfer of Iraqi sovereignty to some kind of hastily thrown together Iraqi provisional government, with the rest of Iraq's transition to democracy to be overseen more by a divided U.N. than by America), then there is only one conclusion one can draw: France wants America to fail in Iraq.

France wants America to sink in a quagmire there in the crazy hope that a weakened U.S. will pave the way for France to assume its "rightful" place as America's equal, if not superior, in shaping world affairs.

To be sure, Friedman follows this observation with a ritual denunciation of the Bush administration ("Yes, the Bush team's arrogance has sharpened French hostility. Had President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld not been so full of themselves . . .," blah blah blah.) It would have been more interesting if Friedman had said a word about those Americans who've made common cause with France in what Friedman aptly dubs "Operation America Must Fail."

Reuters reports that "Sweden's broadcasting watchdog said Wednesday it was censuring an Oprah Winfrey talk show for showing bias toward a U.S. military attack on Iraq." But the watchdog's bark is worse than its bite: "Swedish television network TV4, which broadcast the show in February, must publish the decision but there are no legal or financial penalties." Imagine the outcry from civil libertarians if an official American body issued an official tsk-tsk over anti-American bias in the U.S. media.

Bush: Saddam Helped WTC Attacker
"U.S. authorities in Iraq say they have new evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime gave money and housing to Abdul Rahman Yasin, a suspect in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993," USA Today reports:

Military, intelligence and law enforcement officials reported finding a large cache of Arabic-language documents in Tikrit, Saddam's political stronghold. A U.S. intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity said translators and analysts are busy "separating the gems from the junk." The official said some of the analysts have concluded that the documents show that Saddam's government provided monthly payments and a home for Yasin.

As for the attacks of Sept. 11, Bush said yesterday that "we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved." Apparently he agrees with us and the plurality of Americans who think Iraqi involvement is only "somewhat likely."

The Seething Strib
Yesterday's the Minneapolis Star Tribune, one of America's most left-wing papers, published a fierce yet tiresome editorial blasting American policy in Iraq. Normally this wouldn't even be worth noting, but it prompted an eloquent response from blogger James Lileks. Excerpt:

I can't help but come back to the central theme these edits imply: we should have left Iraq alone. We should have left this charnel house stand. We should have bought a wad of nice French cotton to shove in our ears so the buzz of the flies over the graves didn't distract us from the important business of deciding whether Syria or China should have the rotating observer-status seat in the Oil-for-Palaces program. Afghanistan, well, that's understandable, in a way; we were mad. We lashed out. But we should have stopped there, and let the UN deploy its extra-strong Frown Beams against the Iraqi ambassador in the hopes that Saddam would reduce the money he gave to Palestinian suicide bombers down to five grand. Five grand! Hell, that hardly covers the parking tickets your average ambassador owes to the city of New York; who'd blow themselves up for that.

Would the editorialists of the nation be happier if Saddam was still cutting checks to people who blew up not just our allies, but our own citizens? I'd like an answer. Please. Essay question: "Families of terrorists who blow up men, women and children, some of whom are Americans, no longer receive money from Saddam, because Saddam no longer rules Iraq. Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? Explain."

In short: the same people who chide America for its short-attention span think we should have stopped military operations after the Taliban was routed. (And they quite probably opposed that, for the usual reasons.) The people who think it's all about oil like to snark that we should go after Saudi Arabia. The people who complain that the current administration is unable to act with nuance and diplomacy cannot admit that we have completely different approaches for Iraq, for Iran, for North Korea. The same people who insist we need the UN deride the Administration when it gives the UN a chance to do something other than throw rotten fruit.

The same people who accuse America of coddling dictators are sputtering with bilious fury because we actually deposed one.

Report From the Arab Street
Blogger Eric Olsen publishes an e-mail from a friend of his named Stephen, a musician who's on tour in Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon. E-mailing from Kuwait, the friend recounts his experiences in Damascus:

Syria was pretty strange and surprising in that we never had a SINGLE protest or harsh word or sideways glance--very different from last year when we had protests at every show. I would watch the CNN reporters describing the Middle East and Iraq and think they must be living in an alternate universe--which I expect is called the Al-Rashid Hotel Bar.

There simply was no hostility towards us AT ALL, compared to last year. I remember seeing [Christiane] Amanpour on CNN while I was in Aleppo, telling someone she was interviewing (maybe they were interviewing her, given her desire to throw in subjective statements of her own devising) that "The Iraqis just want the U.S. out of there Right Now!" This struck me as odd given that I had just spoken with a guy in the band I was travelling with's mom (an Iraqi) who had come that day from Baghdad, and had been in Erbil and Mosul, and who said that ALL the Iraqis--while they grumble about things being better under Saddam--have NO desire to see the US go.

Stephen also recounts a conversation with a woman from the U.S. State Department, who observed that, in Stephen's words, "ALL the Iraqis are done with the idea of Arab Unity. They hate all the other states except for Syria. They believe Saddam gave so much money to these other states, and none of them offered any support. They are particularly hateful now to the Palestinians."

Mustafa Alrawi, managing editor of Baghdad-based Iraq Today, agrees: "Pan-Arab nationalists will find that their dreams have died in the dusty streets of Baghdad, and the narrow lanes of Fallujah. Iraqis just aren't interested. They have enough problems of their own and just want to get back on an even keel, to enjoy their country as they hoped they were always supposed to."

Arafat's Suicide Threat
Yasser Arafat is threatening to kill himself, or at least that's how Reuters interprets his comments:

Speaking to Reuters in his partly demolished West Bank headquarters on Wednesday, Arafat pointed to his machinegun lying on the floor and said he would use it to kill himself if Israel tried to deport or assassinate him.

"I am a Palestinian soldier. . . . I will use my gun to defend not only myself but also defend every Palestinian child, woman and man and to defend the Palestinian existence," the 74-year-old former guerrilla leader said.

Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

Cold War Heroes Take on Castro
We keep hearing, thanks to Reuters and other pro-terror outfits, that "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter." It's worth noting from time to time that there is such a thing as a genuine freedom fighter. Three of them--Vaclav Havel, Arpad Göncz and Lech Walesa, who served as postcommunist presidents of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland respectively, have written an open letter, published in today's London Telegraph, urging fellow Europeans to take a stand against Fidel Castro's brutal dictatorship:

It is time to put aside transatlantic disputes about the embargo of Cuba and to concentrate on direct support for Cuban dissidents, prisoners of conscience and their families.

Europe ought to make it unambiguously clear that Castro is a dictator, and that for democratic countries a dictatorship cannot become a partner until it commences a process of political liberalisation.

At the same time, European countries should establish a "Cuban Democracy Fund" to support the emergence of a civil society in Cuba. Such a fund would be ready for instant use in the case of political changes on the island.

"Europe's peaceful transitions from dictatorship to democracy, first in Spain and later in the East, have been an inspiration for the Cuban opposition, so Europe should not hesitate now," they add. Let's hope their appeal doesn't fall on deaf ears.

'A Lot of Enraged Liberals'
We've heard a lot of cant lately from Democrats who claim that the GOP has been waging an "assault on democracy." On Monday Robert Bartley patiently went through the litany--impeachment, Florida, Texas, California--and reached this conclusion: "When Democrats assert that the Republicans will do anything to win, their complaint is relevant only in terms of what psychologists call 'projection,' finding your own faults in others."

Later that day came evidence that Bartley is right, in the form of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' farcical ruling ordering the cancellation of next month's California election on the basis of the Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore ruling. And now Slate's Dahlia Lithwick more or less admits it. She criticizes the Supreme Court--fairly--for its statement that Bush v. Gore is has no standing as precedent ("our consideration is limited to the present circumstances") and continues:

The Supreme Court, seeking to wade into a political catfight yet indemnify itself from ever having to do so again, insisted that their holding was good for one ride only.

The problem was that it was only a one-way ride--in favor of George W. Bush, and a lot of enraged liberals have spent the intervening years grinding their teeth over the unfairness of it all. We couldn't riot, we couldn't hunger strike. And there was no opportunity for payback; no opportunity to really stick it to the Supremes for rigging the election and using bad law to do it. Until now.

There's really only one way to read the panel's decision from Monday. It's a sauce-for-the-gander exercise in payback.

Lithwick's rage seems to have impaired her capacity to use consistent metaphors (the italics in the above passage are, of course, ours), but she gets points for her candid self-assessment. Lithwick thinks the Supreme Court won't dare touch the case and urges the Ninth Circuit, meeting en banc, to do so. " 'They started it,' isn't an answer on the playground," she concludes. "It can't be the answer on the bench."

Mars Attacks!--I
"My vision is to make the most diverse state on earth, and we have people from every planet on the earth in this state."--Gov. Gray Davis, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 18

The World's Smallest Violin
The Texas Legislature is back in session; Democratic legislators have returned after fleeing the state to avoid giving majority Republicans a quorum and thereby block the effort to replace a Democratic congressional gerrymander with a Republican one. The Republicans imposed fines and other penalties on the AWOL legislators, which the Democrats are now demanding they rescind. "One of the penalties deprived the lawmakers of their parking spaces on the Capitol grounds," the San Antonio Express-News notes. Says state Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, an Austin Democrat: "I'm tired of being dropped off at the front steps every morning like an orphan."

Homer Nods
Yesterday's item on Wesley Clark and the ban on homosexuals in the military stated that in order to end the ban, Congress would have to decriminalize sodomy under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That's true but incomplete. Congress has also written the "don't ask, don't tell" policy into law; it's available here in PDF form.

Some readers thought our argument--that Clark ought to be able to give a straight answer to the question of what he thinks of this issue--was weak. "What does it tell us about him that he's so eager to evade it?" we asked. Reader Daniel Skolnick answers: "It tells us that perhaps he views that issue as a rather minor one, and not worth risking his political future over."

Well, fair enough, but that isn't what the man said. First he said, in essence, that he both supported and opposed the policy, and then later he dodged the matter entirely and said he wanted to leave it up to the military brass. Had he had answered the question in Skolnick's spirit--"I don't have a strong opinion on this, and I don't think it's a very important issue anyway"--we'd have cheered. But then again, that's our position.

You Don't Say
"Federal Deficit Could Be Political Issue in 2004"--headline, FoxNews.com, Sept. 17

High Bias
Here's the latest criminal-justice outrage: "A Latino man caught with 2 pounds of cocaine in the trunk of his car may go free today, after a judge found that the State Police troopers who arrested him had routinely searched more cars driven by minority motorists than whites," reports the Boston Globe:

In his ruling, Judge [John] McCann found, first, that [trooper Brendan] Shugrue was within his discretion to stop the car, because the driver was violating the left-lane prohibition.

But regarding the search, McCann agreed with the defense argument that the troopers' pattern in previous traffic stops was relevant.

Now, it's one thing to throw out evidence that a policeman found in an illegal search. Here the judge acknowledges the search was legal but throws out the evidence based on whom he searched over a six-month period. When a policeman unfairly targets minorities, the problem is not that he catches guilty people but that innocent people suffer on the basis of their race. Letting an evidently guilty man go free does nothing for them.

Mars Attacks!--II
"Parks Congress Sets 10-Year Plan to Protect Planet"--headline, Reuters, Sept. 17

Hasn't He Graduated Yet?
"Mayor Says High School Is Too Boring"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, Sept. 18

Great Moments in Public-Sector Marketing
From the Web site of the U.S. Mint:

Hi, everyone. It's Goldie, the Mint Fish. While swimming in my favorite pond, I discovered this cool coin. My friends at the U.S. Mint told me that it's the Susan B. Anthony dollar (1979-1981). Bummer! I thought it might be one of those ancient coins worth big bucks, but the Susan Bs are still in circulation. Look around. Your parents may have one at home. . . .

A Susan B. dollar is well worth finding and saving. Since it didn't gain widespread public acceptance, the Mint stopped producing the coin in 1981. Add one to your collection. Save it so you can show it to your children. You can tell them all about this courageous woman and famous suffragist!

With marketing geniuses like these at work, how the Susan B. Anthony dollar failed to catch on is one of the great mysteries of the ages.

Monkey Antibusiness
New research suggests that monkeys are Democrats, the Associated Press reports:

In a recent study, brown capuchin monkeys trained to exchange a granite token for a cucumber treat often refused the swap if they saw another monkey get a better payoff--a grape.

Instead, they often threw the token, refused to eat the piece of cucumber, or even gave it to the other capuchin after viewing the lopsided deal, said Emory University researcher Sarah Brosnan.

She said the results indicate man and monkey may have inherited a sense of fairness from an evolutionary ancestor.

Next question: If you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, would they eventually write a speech for Howard Dean?

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to T. Norton, Richard Haisley, Robert LeChevalier, Barak Moore, Joel Goldberg, Michael Zukerman, Linda Cooke, Scott Siegel, Alexander Vacca, Eric Sundberg, Jack Williams, Michael Segal, Thomas Castle, Michael Morley, Russell DePalma, Thomas Conway, Daniel Foty, Amir Agam, Chuck Gitles, David Gerstman, Paul Music, Mike Giandrea, Tim Leydon, Harold Durk, Gregory Brunt, Erik Moy, Terry Young, Dan Calabrese, Paul McGrady, Cort Rosholt, Michael Napier and Skip King. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Laurence Tribe defends the Ninth Circuit.
• John Fund: Bill and Hillary line up behind Wesley Clark.
• Tunku Varadarajan: France's leading philosopher asks "Who Killed Daniel Pearl?"
• Matthew Bogdanos on the hunt for Iraq's museum treasures.