by JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, July 26, 2006 3:52 P.M. EDT

War on Words
Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki spoke this morning to a joint meeting of Congress, and some Democrats seized an opportunity to burnish their credentials as supporters of Israel, CNN reports:

In a letter to al-Maliki, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois and Sen. Charles Schumer of New York called the Iraqi leader's comments troubling.

"Your failure to condemn Hezbollah's aggression and recognize Israel's right to defend itself raise serious questions about whether Iraq under your leadership can play a constructive role in resolving the current crisis and bringing stability to the Middle East," the letter said.

The senators said some Democrats are considering boycotting al-Maliki's speech before Congress.

"I want the prime minister to denounce what Hezbollah has done," Reid said at a news briefing. "I will lose a lot of confidence in al-Maliki if he does not denounce what Hezbollah has done."

Well, what exactly did al-Maliki say? Here are some quotes:

1. "We call on the world to take quick stands to stop the Israeli aggression."
   
   
2. "[Israel's] excessive use of force is to be condemned."
   
   
3. "What is happening is an operation of mass destruction and mass punishment and an operation using great force that Israel has--and Lebanon does not."
   
   
4. "While Israel has stated its military objective is to hit Hezbollah's infrastructure and physical strength, it has, in the words of the Lebanese prime minister, torn the country to shreds."

In fairness to al-Maliki, we should note that he didn't say all these things. Only the first and third quotes are from him; the second and fourth are from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. We'll agree with Reid, Schumer and Durbin, then, that al-Maliki is as bad as Annan, and we look forward to their condemnation of Annan.

Still, cervine blogger Marshall Wittmann offers some useful perspective:

A recent Iraqi leader launched real, deadly missiles against Israel. An earlier ruler of Iraq paid the families of suicide bombers a princely sum after their relatives strapped explosives to their bodies and killed and mutilated Israelis. Perhaps, these Congressmen who lament the words of the new Iraqi leader, will now celebrate the fact that Saddam is behind bars instead of issuing verbal orders to kill Israelis and slaughter his own people.

The Moose harbors no illusions about a dramatic transformation of Muslim attitudes toward the Jewish state. But, it is a dramatic improvement when words cannot kill.

Wittmann might have added that Saddam provided a haven to anti-Israel terrorists like Abu Nidal.

Anyway, one of the three signatories of the letter, Durbin, in 2002 voted to leave Saddam in power. So did Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who according to the Associated Press "hinted she . . . would boycott the speech." Now, all of a sudden, they're standing with Israel--but they're willing to wage war only on words.

We Take It Back
OK, al-Maliki isn't as bad as Annan. The New York Sun reports on the secretary-general's latest pronouncement:

The United Nations yesterday suffered casualties in the fighting, and Secretary-General Annan immediately accused the Israeli Defense Force of a "deliberate targeting" of four blue-helmeted U.N. observers.

Military sources said the incident occurred during an air and artillery attack near Khiyam,at the eastern region of southern Lebanon, where the IDF was preparing a large ground assault meant to create a Hezbollah-free buffer zone on the area north of Israel's border. Four members of the United Nations's interim force in Lebanon, identified as being from Canada, Austria, China, and Finland, were killed.

"I am shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces of a U.N. observer post in southern Lebanon," Mr. Annan said yesterday in a late-night statement released in Rome, where he is attending a meeting of top players steering attempts to find solutions in the Lebanon war.

The Sun offers some context for Annan's baseless and almost certainly false charge:

Mr. Annan, who according to diplomats was accompanied by the U.N. peacekeeping chief, Undersecretary-General Jean Marie Guehenno, as he released the statement, believes he could not promote placing an international force in southern Lebanon if he does not appear to support his troops, according to a source familiar with yesterday's statement.

But is he really supporting his troops? IMRA quotes Lewis MacKenzie, a retired Canadian general, who in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. today lamented "the tragic loss of a soldier yesterday who I happen to know and I think probably is from my Regiment." Gen. MacKenzie continued:

We've received e-mails from him a few days ago and he described the fact that he was taking [fire] within--in one case--three meters of his position "for tactical necessity--not being targeted." Now that's veiled speech in the military and what he was telling us was Hizbullah fighters were all over his position and the IDF were (sic) targeting them and that's a favorite trick by people who don't have representation in the UN. They use the UN as shields knowing that they can't be punished for it.

(Hat tip: Daniel Freedman.)

All this raises the question of why the U.N. hasn't evacuated its "peacekeepers." The irony is that while they have failed to keep the peace, Israel is carrying out the U.N.-mandated disarmament of Hezbollah. Annan ought to be thanking, not condemning, Jerusalem.

Funny Money?--II
Thanks to blogger Charles Johnson, we now have an image from the NBC report we noted yesterday, which appears to show uncut sheets of U.S. $100 bills in what NBC's Richard Engel describes as Sidon's "financial district." Noting Hezbollah's history of counterfeiting American currency, we wondered if Engel might unwittingly have revealed a terrorist funny-money factory.

Some readers have speculated that the sheets may be photocopies of bills deposited at a bank, made to record their serial numbers as an anticounterfeiting measure. (Another NBC report notes that Israel has been targeting the banks that make up Hezbollah's financial infrastructure.) The low resolution of the image makes it hard to tell, but it'd be nice if Engel's curiosity is sufficiently piqued for him to go back and find out.

What Would We Do Without Aid Agencies?
"Aid Agencies Warn Crisis Looming in Lebanon"--headline, Reuters, July 25

Dense as a Black Hole--II
OK, now we're sure that, as we speculated Monday, someone is holding a competition to see who can get the most ridiculous letter published in the New York Times. Check out the fourth letter at the link atop this piece:

For 50 years, the great powers have failed to enforce agreements in the Middle East, where the parties seem unable to keep any agreement. The powers should have done so by force if necessary.

In that context, the invasion of Iraq was an expensive and disastrous diversion. Look at the cost and sacrifice involved. "Nation-building" has not worked. In fact, it seems to have made the problem of terrorism worse.

A cease-fire in Lebanon would be a step toward establishing the stability that is necessary for the development of national cohesion and indeed democracy.

John Wilson
New York, July 25, 2006

So according to Wilson, "great powers" should "enforce agreements" "by force if necessary"--except when they actually do, as in the case of Iraq.

'Jobs Americans Won't Do'
Reader David Hoffman makes an interesting point in response to a Michael Dukakis op-ed we noted yesterday:

Dukakis is clearly wrong, as you point out, but he raises an interesting point: How is it that there wasn't "mass illegal immigration" earlier in history if Americans aren't willing to do these jobs?

The answer, I fear, is one that liberals will not enjoy. While there was always some illegal immigration over the nation's southern border, it achieved the current order of magnitude only as the achievements of the civil rights movement began to be felt in the job market and as the welfare state expanded.

In the old days when "hotel beds were made, office floors were cleaned, restaurant dishes were washed and crops were picked--by Americans," many of those Americans were of African ancestry or otherwise the object of discrimination. And they did them, in spite of low pay, because getting a better job by investing in education was not a reasonable option, nor was collecting a welfare check.

From the British Raj in India to the apartheid era of South Africa to the American South in pre-civil-rights days, the recipe for getting plenty of workers into low-status jobs at an "affordable" wage has been to maintain a class of people for whom those jobs were the best available option. Today this is being accomplished via a porous southern border. It goes without saying that a guest-worker program would be a more humane alternative.

Homelessness Rediscovery Watch

"If George W. Bush becomes president, the armies of the homeless, hundreds of thousands strong, will once again be used to illustrate the opposition's arguments about welfare, the economy, and taxation."--Mark Helprin, Oct. 31, 2000

"Homeless Tent Camps Draw Ire in Paris"--headline, Associated Press, July 25

BUSCH RIDE, PEOPLE DIED!!!!
"Man Dies After Riding Busch Gardens Ride"--headline, Associated Press, July 25

Life Imitates the Movies

"A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television. After a run in with a limousine, he ends up a guest of a woman (Eve) and her husband Ben, an influential but sickly businessman. Now called Chauncey Gardner, Chance becomes friend and confidante to Ben, and an unlikely political insider."--plot summary for "Being There" (1979)

"An article on Sunday . . . said that William M. Gardner, secretary of state for New Hampshire, was reached at his home on Saturday and said, 'Do not call me here,' and hung up the telephone when the reporter tried to get comment on how these changes might affect his state's first-in-the-nation primary. On Monday, Mr. Gardner called the reporter and said he had never spoken to him Saturday. He also said the phone number the reporter had used was not his home number. The reporter had identified himself to the person who did answer the phone, had asked 'Is this Mr. Gardner?' and had been told 'Yes, this is Bill.' Later the reporter left a message at the same number, explaining why he was calling, but received no response by deadline. The reporter assumed he had reached the correct Bill Gardner, who lives in Manchester, but had actually called a Bill Gardner who lives in Rochester."--"Editor's Note," New York Times, July 26, 2006

Network for Intellectuals
"Daniel Schorr is used to producers popping into his Washington, D.C., office at National Public Radio to ask, on deadline: Which war came first, Korea or Vietnam?"--USA Today, July 25

The World's Smallest Violin
"Is access to graduate education in America exclusively for the upper class? As a first-year graduate student struggling to make ends meet, I believe the answer is yes. In my experience, searching for funding to pay the extensive costs of my higher education has been an upward climb leading only to dead ends. I am a single mother who qualifies for the maximum amount in federal aid for graduate students. But this amount barely covers my tuition; paying for housing, books and living expenses is up to me. I have no college fund, trust or inheritance."--Sui Lang Panoke, op-ed piece, Washington Post, July 25

The South Will Rise Again?
"Georgia Sends Force to Rebel Area"--headline, BBC Web site, July 25

They Send a Man to the Moon, but They Can't Make a Safe Fatal Tour Boat
"Fatal Tour Boat Unsafe"--headline, Times Union (Albany, N.Y.), July 26

We Still Don't Understand the Rules of the Old Kind
"Researchers Discover New Type of Cricket"--headline, Associated Press, July 25

Her Stage Name Is 'Cookie'
"Hand in Jar Found in Nude Dancer's Home"--headline, Associated Press, July 25

Bottom Stories of the Day

• "Ohio Fans Upset With Ashlee Simpson"--headline, KPNW-AM Web site (Eugene, Ore.), July 26
  
  
• "Pothole Repaired on Judson Road in South Richmond"--headline, Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 26
  
  
• "Poll: Bush's Approval Rating Remains Low in California"--headline, Associated Press, July 26

Friends Don't Let Friends Dial Drunk
"The assault trial of a man accused of shoving a cell phone down a woman's throat has begun," the Associated Press reports from Independence, Mo.:

Prosecutors say 24-year-old Marlon Brando Gill was angry and jealous when he forced the phone into Melinda Abell's throat in December. But defense attorneys insist the 25-year-old victim swallowed the phone intentionally to prevent Gill from finding out who she'd been calling. . . .

She testified yesterday that she couldn't remember how the phone got in her throat, saying she drank too much that night. Court records show that her blood alcohol content was three times the legal limit.

What exactly is the legal limit while swallowing a cell phone?

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Abe Beyda, Mark Meyer, Don Stewart, Bernard Levine, Ed Lasky, Evan Slatis, Glenn Rowan, Mark Van Der Molen, Nicholas Kerr, Brent Baker, Bryan Williams, Sue Pierpoint, Paul Woods, Ethel Fenig, Danny Tesvich, Samuel Merritt, Ron Ackert, David Van Hecke, Steve Edwards, C.E. Dobkin, Ronald Hatcher, Neal McCluskey, Eric Winter, James Everett, John Neal, Greg de Mocskonyi, Dan O'Shea, Robert LaFleur, Jeffrey Stoner, Fred Furia and Jay Halbert. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: The ABA's political payback against a judicial nominee.
• Josh Manchester (from TCSDaily): By liberating Iraq, the U.S. set the stage for the destruction of Hezbollah.
• John Miller: The precursor to "1984" wasn't published in its author's land until 1988.