by JAMES TARANTO
Thursday, September 25, 2003 3:22 P.M. EDT

Ho Hum, a Business Seminar
This story will seem boring, but read through and we promise it'll be worth your while:

More than 200 business professionals between the ages of 21 and 35 heard lectures on topics related to entrepreneurship. . . .

Guest speakers from Kellogg, Brown and Root, [and] Bechtel . . . spoke about topics such as obtaining contracts from companies and investing in the stock market.

The speakers also fielded questions from the audience on these subjects.

"Everyone had questions," Barnes said. "We had everyone fill out a comment form and leave any outstanding questions or issues on them."

Who hasn't been to one of these boring business seminars at some time or another? Only this one is in Baghdad: "Spc. Varetta Barnes, a civil affairs specialist with the 354th Civil Affairs Brigade, an Army Reserve unit from Riverdale, Md., hosted the meeting of the Entrepreneur Business Professionals of Iraq." The story appears on the U.S. Central Command Web site:

By helping these businessmen and women, the civil affairs soldiers are helping them to stimulate the Iraqi economy, Barnes said.

"Getting these businesses up and running will create economic development," she said. "We'll get money flowing through Baghdad, and the city will grow."

Once larger companies begin to pour money into businesses here, inflation will go down, and Baghdad will be able to stand on its own feet again, she said.

Between the business center and the meetings, said Barnes, a Boston native, she feels that she has a hand in the reconstruction of Iraq.

"We are a part of history," she said. "We're helping to rebuild Baghdad. To be part of that is a great feeling."

Does this sound like a "quagmire" to you? The Bush administration really must do a better job of getting stories like this one out.

Too American for the Democrats
Democrats on Capitol Hill are demanding that the Bush administration come up with a detailed, un-American plan for rebuilding Iraq. That, at least, is what the lead paragraph of this Associated Press dispatch suggests: "Democrats say a Bush administration timetable for the rebuilding of Iraq lacks detail and seems to impose on Iraqis a U.S. view of what their country should look like."

Here's Sen. Pat Leahy of Vermont:

Leahy also objected to the opening line in the report's summary, which reads, "Now that Saddam Hussein's regime has been removed, the Iraqi people have the opportunity to realize the president's vision of a stable, prosperous and democratic Iraq."

"Some, considering that their civilization is a bit older than ours, might consider that a bit condescending," Leahy said in an interview. "Some might think the Iraqi people might want to be asked if they want an American president to determine what their vision would be."

Perhaps Leahy would like us all to go back to living in caves--an arrangement that is even "older" than "their civilization."

What Would We Do Without Mongolian Colonels?
"Col. B. Erkhenbayar, the commander of the Mongolian forces, noted that much had changed since the last Mongolian mission to Iraq, 745 years ago."--photo caption, New York Times, Sept. 25

HILLARY LIED!!!! (Not Really.)
Is Hillary Clinton a liar? If those on the Angry Left were honest, they would say yes. The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes notes that Sen. Clinton is backing the Bush administration on the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, a matter that has the Angry Left obsessed and everyone else bored silly:

"The intelligence from Bush 1 to Clinton to Bush 2 was consistent" in concluding Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and was trying to develop a nuclear capability, Clinton said this morning. And Saddam's expulsion of weapons inspectors and "the behavior" of his regime "pointed to a continuing effort" to produce WMD, she added.

The senator said she did her own "due diligence" by attending classified briefings on Capitol Hill and at the White House and Pentagon and also by consulting national security officials from the Clinton administration whom she trusts. "To a person, they all agreed with the consensus of the intelligence" that Saddam had WMD.

That President Bush, who is honest, and Sen. Clinton, who is politically calculating, agree on this matter suggests that we've been right all along: The Angry Left's effort to attack the president by trying to exonerate Saddam Hussein is both mendacious and politically foolish.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that Sultan Hashim Ahmed, Saddam's former defense minister, "has been granted immunity from prosecution." Ahmed gave himself up Friday, and "White House officials say they have high hopes he will provide significant information on Iraq's alleged weapons programmes."

Total Recall

"What if we had immediate recall of every teacher, every preacher? What if kids could recall their parents? Don't you think they would have recalled me after a couple years as president? I had to raise taxes on upper-income people and cut spending to balance the budget. What if they had recalled me after I had helped Mexico, when polls showed 80 percent of people didn't want me to help Mexico?"--Bill Clinton, Sept. 14

"Sen. Hillary Clinton's publisher on Wednesday demanded the recall of the Chinese language printing of the senator's autobiography."--Reuters, Sept. 24

Is Our Senators Learning?
Yesterday we noted that Red Chinese officials had censored the Chinese-language edition of Hillary Clinton's book, and that publisher Simon & Schuster had made available on its Web site copies of the redacted pages. Some of our readers actually went and read the pages, and discovered that the original, English-language passages are rife with typos:

At the time of Harry Wu's arrest, my staff and I were deeply involved in planning for the conference. But there were already grumbling from the usual suspects in Congress who felt the United States should not participate. . . . Over the next six week, there was no shortage of opinions about whether the United States should send a delegation to the conference and whether I should be part of it. . . . If I boycotted, I generated had publicity for the Chinese leadership. . . . Our government continued to state privately and publicly that I would not attend if Mr. Wu remained under attest. . . . One happy by-product of the Harry Wu incident was that is generated huge publicity for the UN conference. . . .

I was haunted by the events at Tiananmen, remembering the square as we had seen it in 1989--students constructing a makeshift "Goodness of Democracy" resembling our Statue of Liberty, in defiance of soldiers like the ones in the honor guard lined up in formation, waiting to be reviewed by the President of the United States.

Our Chinese is a little rusty, so we don't know if the errors also appear in the translation.

Dog Bites Man
"Clinton: Bush Re-election Will Be Setback"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 24

Get a Grip
Suddenly, Republicans are in a funk and Democrats are cheerful, thanks to a few polls showing declines in President Bush's approval rating. "Apprehension has seeped into conversations among Republicans in Washington and beyond," USA Today reports. "Confidence is giving way to anxiety." Meanwhile, Democratic blogger Josh Marshall sums up his party's conventional wisdom: "The president's numbers seem to be in something close to free-fall. His approval ratings have fallen roughly 20 percentage points in four months. . . . The president's rapid descent is undeniable. And it's not clear he's hit bottom."

Both sides need to get a grip. About the president's poll ratings, we can say one thing for certain: They will continue to decline unless they level off or start rising. Marshall's analysis represents a triumph of hope over arithmetic. He cites a current poll showing Bush's job-approval rating at 49%. If we extrapolate using his other figure, a drop of 20 percentage points in four months, we see that this is unsustainable:

May 2003	69%
September 2003	49%
January 2004	29%
May 2004	9%
September 2004	-11%

Mathematically, then, Bush's "free fall" has to end at some point, with his ratings at least leveling off. And it seems likely that his "bottom" is a lot closer to the current 49% than to zero, for the simple reason that his own party remains united behind him. Republicans may be momentarily anxious about next year's election, but there has been no talk whatever of a primary challenge. Every incumbent president to be defeated in modern times--Ford, Carter and Bush père--faced an intraparty split before losing the White House.

The Democrats, by contrast, are divided. That's to be expected for a party out of power, but the real sign of Democratic weakness is Wesley Clark's entry into the race. Because he seems a more plausible general-election candidate than front-runner Howard Dean, many Dems see Clark as their party's savior. Perhaps they'll turn out to be right--but a party that's not in trouble doesn't need a savior.

How Pathetic Is This?
"Actor Tony Randall has a fantasy: when he dies President Bush and Vice President Cheney show up to pay their respects but they're turned away--because his family knows he didn't like them," the Associated Press reports.

A Religion of Peace
Muslim moonbats won't get to stone Amina Lawal to death, thanks to a ruling by a Nigerian court. Lawal, whose case we first noted in March 2002, was convicted of adultery by an Islamic court in northern Nigeria after she bore a child out of wedlock. Under shariah, or Islamic "law," a woman is presumed guilty of adultery and must produce four witnesses to prove her innocence. The shariah judge did order the execution delayed until Lawal weaned her daughter.

Now, though, a five-judge panel of an Islamic appeals court has thrown out the conviction, citing various technicalities, "including that only one judge was present at her initial conviction in March 2002, instead of the three required under Islamic law," the Associated Press reports.

One argument her defense lawyer offered was that she had divorced only two years before the child's conception. "Under some interpretations of Shariah, babies can remain in gestation in a mother's womb for five years, opening the possibility her ex-husband could have fathered the child." It would be interesting to hear Pat Leahy's thoughts on all this, given his deference to other cultures' traditions.

Said Dead
Edward Said, a rock-throwing Columbia literature professor known for his virulent anti-Israel and anti-America views, is dead at 67. Said last appeared in this column in May, when we quoted an article he wrote for the crackpot Web site Counterpunch.org:

Wherever you look in the Congress there are the tell-tale signs either of the Zionist lobby, the right-wing Christians, or the military-industrial complex, three inordinately influential minority groups who share hostility to the Arab world, unbridled support for extremist Zionism, and an insensate conviction that they are on the side of the angels.

Charming, wasn't he? Said portrayed himself as a victim of Israeli aggression, but in a 1999 issue of Commentary, Justus Weiner published the results of an extensive investigation that disproved many of Said's autobiographical claims: "The plain, direct and honest truth is radically at odds with the parable he has been at pains to construct over the decades," Weiner wrote. "That parable, designed to augment the passions that have animated the revanchist program of so many Palestinian nationalists, is a lie."

Birds of a Feather
Cindy and Craig Corrie, the parents of the late terror activist Rachel Corrie, visited Yasser Arafat today and presented him with a portrait of their daughter, the Associated Press reports. In March the young Corrie, who was trying to protect weapons-smuggling tunnels in Gaza, died in a bulldozer accident that she herself caused.

The Heckler's Veto
Southern Methodist University has censored an "affirmative action bake sale"--a performance-art piece of sorts, designed to protest racial discrimination in higher education, the Associated Press reports from Dallas:

A sign said white males had to pay $1 for a cookie. The price was 75 cents for white women, 50 cents for Hispanics and 25 cents for blacks. . . .

A black student filed a complaint with SMU, saying the sale was offensive. SMU officials said they halted the event after 45 minutes because it created a potentially unsafe situation.

"This was not an issue about free speech," Tim Moore, director of the SMU student center, said in a story for Thursday's edition of The Dallas Morning News. "It was really an issue where we had a hostile environment being created."

The AP quotes 19-year-old Matt Houston, a sophomore: "My reaction was disgust because of the ignorance of some SMU students. They were arguing that affirmative action was solely based on race. It's not based on race. It's based on bringing a diverse community to a certain organization." Doublethink is alive and well in Dallas.

Meanwhile, the Center for Individual Rights has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Steven Hinkle, a student at California Polytechnic State University, who was threatened with expulsion after he posted a flier advertising a speech by Mason Weaver, author of "It's OK to Leave the Plantation: The New Underground Railroad," at the campus "Multicultural Center." Hinkle "was approached by several African-American students who claimed to be holding a bible study meeting nearby." They told him the flier was "offensive" and called the police when he refused to take it down. The university ordered him to apologize; instead, he sued.

But Civilians Demand Nirvana
"Survey: Soldiers Satisfied With Bliss"--headline, El Paso (Texas) Times, Sept. 24

OK, but What Day Is the Symposium On?
"Institute Offers a Saturday Symposium on Women and Girls With Attention Disorder Saturday"--headline, Los Altos (Calif.) Town Crier, Sept. 23

Forget Wrinkle Cream, Buy Real Estate
"Home Buyers Getting Younger"--headline, Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer, Sept. 25

The Bus Is Recovering Nicely
"Boy, 12, Charged in Bus Stabbing"--headline, Boston Globe, Sept. 25

The Electric Chair Uses Too Much Energy
"Judge Rules in Favor of Stabbing Suspect"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 25

Don't Call Us, We'll Call You--III
Whoever said Congress was slow to act? By a vote of 412-8, the House has approved legislation "to ratify the authority of the Federal Trade Commission to establish a do-not-call registry." Senate action may follow this afternoon. The vote comes a day after a federal judge, Lee West of Oklahoma, ruled that existing law does not authorize the FTC to establish the registry, which is to go into effect Oct. 1. Here's a list of lawmakers who voted in favor of the telemarketers:

• Rob Bishop (R., Utah)
• Chris Cannon (R., Utah)
• Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.)
• Kendrick Meek (D., Fla.)
• Ron Paul (R., Texas)
• Tim Ryan (D., Ohio)
• Ted Strickland (D., Ohio)
• Lee Terry (R., Neb.)

The lead plaintiff in the case was the Direct Marketing Association, a trade group for the telephone-harassment industry. It strikes us that even if Congress had not acted, and even though they prevailed in court, bringing this lawsuit was an awfully boneheaded thing to do. The ruling left telemarketers free to call people who have already gone through the trouble of making their hostility to such calls known. What does this accomplish beyond ticking off the "customers" even further? Perhaps someone will call the DMA at the phone numbers listed on this page and point this out.

Homer Nods
Apologies to those who contributed to yesterday's column, which we mistakenly sent out without our usual credits. We've added them here.

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Jerome Marcus, Robert LeChevalier, C.E. Dobkin, Terry Harris, Michael Segal, Barak Moore, Tee Forshaw, Marshall Smith, Steve Baus, Edward Schulze, Jonathan Stephens, Raghu Desikan, Diane Ravitch, Michael Siegel, Joe Deltoro, Cliff Thier, Sonja Garrett, Carl Sherer, Yehuda Hilewitz, Christian Peck, Peter Shalen, Michael Zukerman, Toby Bronstein, Jason Whitney, Doug Levene, Evan Winer, Joel Goldberg, Rosanne Klass, David Merrill, Erik Moy, Natalie Cohen, Chris Craft, Thomas Conway, Steve Ginnings, Darren Gold, Marc Levin, Paul Cooper, Glen Smith, John O'Donnell, Jim Naso, Nitin Julka, Kevin Burns, David Gordon, Brian Nicholson, Mark Schulze, James Wirtz, Lawrence Weiss, Steve Roberts and Aaron Krakowski. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Rush Limbaugh on Wesley McClellan.
• Mike Gonzalez on the man who sold Europe on missile defense.
• John Anderson: "Art held hostage" may never be free.

Plus: Tune in tonight at 9 EDT and PDT for a special "Editorial Board on CNBC."