Even The Right Says Israel Lost. Got Ass-Whumped, In Fact.

A lot of Blo-Vating and hand-wringing from some of America's most prominent Conservatives in the National Review On-line.

The only comment I could add, I would direct to Canada's pro-Israel cheering section: journos like Andrew Coyne and Warren Kinsella, among many others, the Blogging Tories, and so forth. And that comment would be: I TOLD YOU FUCKING SO, YOU ASS DANCING MONKEY BOYS FOR NEO-CON EXPANSIONISM!

You know, I don't claim to be any kind of military expert (although I play a mean game of A&A), but there were lots of real ones on CNN. After the first twenty got up and said that the IDF's response to Hezbollah provocations was either "troubling" or "obscure" or "not likely to maximalize success", that sent a message to me. No matter what the inherent morality of Israel's response (and I think it crossed the line the moment Beirut airport got bombed), it became immoral as soon as it became clear that it was doomed to failure. And that moment was, by all indications, pretty early in the conflict.

So I think many on the political Right, and even a few progressives, now need to engage in a bout of instropection and, yes, take some of the responsibility for Israeli war crimes. You people goaded Israel on to nothing more than a black eye and a bloody fist! Defeat! Calamity! The Sound of Failure and Cold Water Running, as the Mekons famously sang. Don't blame me or Koffi Annan or the dude at My Blagh or the "MSM"! Quite WHINING! Take some of that personal responsibility you're so eager to foist onto other people!

Speaking of Koffi Annan, The NRO roundtable discussion contains some particularly offensive blithering on this topic by the Hudson Institute's Anne Bayefsky:

Kofi Annan's wide grin, as he stood side-by-side with Secretary Rice on Friday, said it all. He won. But America and freedom's cause lost.

At exactly the moment the reformed U.N. Human Rights Council condemned Israel and only Israel for the third time in two months, America cut a deal with the same U.N. to pin down the arms of the state on the front lines of democracy's war.

Why is the America that guards the right of self-defense so dearly willing to deny it, in effect, to the state of Israel? Why would America permit the U.N., which has systematically sided with Arab and Islamic states in their war against the Jews for half a century, to play-act as even-handed peacemaker?

Since the Summer War began in July, the political Right has been eager to demonize the U.N. in general and Koffi Annan in particular as being anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. However, they neglect to point out his strong support for a number of pro-Israel initiatives at the U.N., in particular his support of Israel's right to their turn at the Security Council table.

How ungrateful! But these people are angry--they've just got behind another disastrous war--and so harsh words are natural.

Is The Science Settled Or What? Notes On A New Survey

A new survey has appeared which claims to show that the notion of a "consensus" existing among climate scientists re the causes/effects of Global Warming is incorrect. This claim seems to be misleading.

The survey, conducted by Fergus Brown, James Annan (FRCGC), and Roger Pielke Sr. (University of Colorado), is entitled "Is there agreement amongst climate scientists on the IPCC AR4 WG1?". In their abstract, they put their findings this way:

An online poll of scientists' opinions shows that, while there is strong agreement on the important role of anthropogenically-caused radiative forcing of CO2 in climate change and with the largest group supporting the IPCC report, there is not a universal agreement among climate scientists about climate science as represented in the IPCC's WG1. Claims that the human input of CO2 is not an important climate forcing, or that 'the science is more or less settled', are found to be false in our survey.

The problem I have has to do with how the phrase "the science is settled" gets employed within the survey as opposed to how it has been typically been employed in the broader debate over climate change. Our three authors state their result in general terms as follows:

No scientists were willing to admit to the statement that global warming is a fabrication and that human activity is not having any significant effect on climate [0%]. In total, 18% responded that the IPCC AR4 WG1 Report probably overstates the role of CO2, or exaggerates the risks implied by focusing on CO2-dominated Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), to a greater or lesser degree. A further 17% expressed the opinion that the Report probably underestimates or seriously underestimates the consequences of anthropogenic CO2-induced AGW and that the associated risks are more severe than is implied in the report. The remaining 65% expressed some degree of concurrence with the report's science basis, of which the largest group [47% of all respondents] selected option 5. The exact response rates are given in Figure 1.

Well, okay, but I would argue that "the science is settled", as it gets deployed in the broader discussion, means something like it is settled that 1) the planet is warming, 2) it is warming because of rising C02 levels which 3) are primarily caused by human activity. In other words, within the broader context, if

Claims that the human input of CO2 is not an important climate forcing...are found to be false in our survey.

...then the science is more or less settled, and the rest is quibbling over detail.

And using my three part explication of "It is agreed that the science is settled." (making reference to the authors' Histogram of Responses), 77% of the survey respondents agree with all three of its parts (choose response number 5 or higher as being representative of their views). I don't know what exactly it takes to make a "consensus", but if over three out of every four climate scientists concur, I would argue that you have a consensus.

And of course the issue is that as the results of this survey play out in the larger political arena, the authors' claim that the "science is not settled" will be interpreted to be a refutation of the claim that climate scientists do not agree with the three elements of my definition (or something more like my definition than theirs).

Which is why, I would argue, that it is already getting quoted with approval in places like this.

(PS. James Annan has noted, in a personal communication that,

Of course the "science is settled" phase has a bit of a life of its own (settled for what purposes? I don't see climate scientists resigning in droves to do other things). For that very reason, I wouldn't have chosen this wording myself, but I didn't think it sufficiently wrong to veto it.

Well, the wording chosen has given hope and comfort to some in the denialist movement...)

U.N. Refutes Lewis MacKenzie

From Edward Mortimer, director of communications, executive office of the Secretary-General, United Nations:

New York -- The United Nations observers who died in Lebanon on July 25 were killed by an Israeli attack. Retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie's criticism of the Secretary-General's remarks that this was an "apparently deliberate targeting" is itself premature and misplaced (Kofi Annan's Hasty Rush To Judgment -- July 27).

Mr. Annan's expression of shock and distress was based on very precise reports received from the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). At least 10 calls were made to the Israeli authorities that afternoon to indicate that Israeli shelling was getting closer to the UN position at Khiyam.

This position, where a Canadian and three other unarmed military observers were later killed, has been well-known to the Israeli army for many years and was clearly marked. The Israelis gave express assurances that UN personnel would be spared. Reports received also showed 21 hits within 300 meters, 12 within 100 meters and four direct hits.

Mr. MacKenzie says that the Canadian observer sent messages implying that "we have Hezbollah fighters all over our position engaging the IDF and using us as shields." This report was sent a full week before the post came under fire. On the day in question, the monitors certainly didn't report that Hezbollah was "all over" their position, or using them as shields. Nor did any of them imply this in any way.

Mr. MacKenzie's extraordinary claim flies in the face of overwhelming available evidence to the contrary. And it does not honor the memory of Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener, who was just one example of Canada's proud contribution to peacekeeping.

Not much to add here. As to the last couple of sentences, I would just remind my Conservative readers not to let their irrational hatred of the U.N. lead them to dishonor the death of Canadian soldiers who chose to serve both Canada and the wider world, as Lewis MacKenzie and PM Stephen Harper seem to have done.

Climate Anomaly Caused By Buckets Of Water!

Just a quicky on what will probably become a fairly large story:

A difference in the way British and American ships measured the temperature of the ocean during the 1940s may explain why the world appeared to undergo a period of sudden cooling immediately after the Second World War.
[...]
The scientists point out that the British measurements were taken by throwing canvas buckets over the side and hauling water up to the deck for temperatures to be measured by immersing a thermometer for several minutes, which would result in a slightly cooler record because of evaporation from the bucket.

This finding actually makes the AGW story go more smoothly:


Professor Jones said that the study lends support to the idea that a period of global cooling occurred later during the mid-twentieth century as a result of sulphate aerosols being released during the 1950s with the rise of industrial output. These sulphates tended to cut sunlight, counteracting global warming caused by rising carbon dioxide.

"This finding supports the sulphates argument, because it was bit hard to explain how they could cause the period of cooling from 1945, when industrial production was still relatively low," Professor Jones said.

Although its perhaps a bit of an embarrassment.

And the weird thing is, Steve McIntyre seems to have got to this one first. Too bad Steve grinds out blog posts rather than writing up a real paper now and again.

Go through the links for details. The James Annan post ( through "a bit of...") is especially good.

No Effect

From James Annan, climate scientist:

Do solar/heliospheric changes affect the earth's climate?

That was the title of the keynote talk at a workshop held here last week. To save you the trouble of reading any further, I should just say now that the answer provided was "no, at least not to any significant extent since the middle of last century".

I may play around later with Inhofe's updated (650 scientists!) list of deniers. But one of the new names on the list is Oliver "Iron Sun" Manuel, who I have previously written about here.

Global Warming: What Will The Next Decade Bring?

Fair bit of blogosphere commentary on this story about a team of German reseachers who

...predict...a slight cooling of Europe and North America, probably related to shifting currents and patterns in the oceans...

...over the course of the next decade, after which they expect AGW to overwhelm natural climate variability.

Climatologist James Annan is not impressed.

And New York Times writer Andy Revkin wonders if our short human attention spans will not drift away from AGW as a political issue if the warming trend is not continually and relentlessly upward. He puts it a bit differently, of course:

One central question I’m exploring with Dot Earth is this: Can a species that evolved as an opportunist (grab those berries, gorge on that fallen antelope) and responder (fight or flee) meaningfully integrate evidence of long-term risks provided by science (on climate) or economics (on Social Security) and act for the sake of the future?

Well, yes they can. The Disney company issues 100 year bonds, and Canadian Pacific

...was paying 4% on a 1000-year bond, issued by the Toronto Grey and Bruce Railway in 1883, and due to be repaid in 2883!

Humans can think long-term in all sorts of wonderful ways when there's money involved. "For the sake of the future"? That's another question.

CRU Cleared Again

Story about Lord Oxburgh's inquiry into CRU practices here. Some excerpts:

The scientists at the centre of the row over the hacked climate emails have been cleared of any deliberate malpractice by the second of three inquiries into their conduct.

[...]

The report concluded: "We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it. Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention. As with many small research groups their internal procedures were rather informal."

[...]

The panel was not tasked specifically with looking at the way CRU handled access to its data and Freedom of Information requests from members of the public but it commented that there were "a host of important unresolved questions" arising from the application of FoI to academic research. "We agree with the CRU view that the authority for releasing unpublished raw data to third parties should stay with those who collected it," the report said. It did criticised the government's policy of charging for access to data. "This is unfortunate and seems inconsistent with policies of open access to data promoted elsewhere in government."

So, this puts Oxburgh's panel at odds with the Parliamentary Inquiry, which seems to want the data handed out willy-nilly. Furthermore, a number of climate scientists have noted and expanded upon the issue raised in this last couple of (bolded) sentences, including James Annan:

Let me introduce you to the NERC policy on Intellectual Property. Short version: "Who owns the intellectual property? We do." The UK Ministry of Defence (who run UK Met Office and therefore the Hadley Centre) is orders of magnitude worse in its defensive and bean-counting approach to the supply of, well, just about anything that they have and anyone else wants. The bottom line is (or certainly was, when I worked there) that NERC employees are under pressure to sell anything that can be sold. And if someone asks for something, that means it must surely be worth something, right? Of course this is an attitude that the scientists - who know that they can't really get any significant price for their work - have always implacably opposed, but we don't really count for much when the politicians are demanding budget cuts and percentage returns on investment.

There were some complaints about CRU's statistical practices:

The panel did raise doubts about the statistical input into scientific papers authored by researchers at CRU. "We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians," it concluded.

...which the University of East Anglia responds to as follows:

The Report points out where things might have been done better. One is to engage more with professional statisticians in the analysis of data. Another, related, point is that more efficacious statistical techniques might have been employed in some instances (although it was pointed out that different methods may not have produced different results). Specialists in many areas of research acquire and develop the statistical skills pertinent to their own particular data analysis requirements. However, we do see the sense in engaging more fully with the wider statistics community to ensure that the most effective and up-to-date statistical techniques are adopted and will now consider further how best to achieve this.

But otherwise, a clean bill of health. Of course, the UEA commissioned this inquiry itself, so there will be cries of "white-wash" from the usual suspects who are, at this very moment (taking into account the Penn State investigation of Mann), batting 0-for-3. That will be nothing but sour grapes on their part.

The entire report can be read here.

On Piers Corbyn: Crazy People Occasionally Get Stuff Right By Accident

AGW denialist and "alternative" meteorologist Piers Corbyn has been much in the news lately, having allegedly forecast (but note Nicks comment in the comments) Europe's current spell of nasty weather. However, FreeD's Peter O'Donnell (another AGW denier and amateur meteorologist pursuing alternative research paradigms) explains the problem:

I can add some inside knowledge on this story -- don't get on this band-wagon because Piers Corbyn has been trying to fit every winter since about 2005 to this "coldest ever" scenario and we can't get any sort of testable information on methodology, even for those of us following alternative research methods, the answers have been too vague to allow any testing, and if we took all known forecasts from his company, the track record would be a lot less encouraging than this one forecast seems to be. Also, any number of other forecasts were saying this would be a severe winter in Europe, it was fairly obvious from the trends and the blocking pattern that caused the Russian fires, that the winter would probably be very cold.

[...]

Now that he's finally hit the jackpot with this coldest winter in living memory forecast, we need to ask, what's the track record going to be in the future, or do we now just get "another severe winter" forecast every year until that hits?

If you want to check out what I'm saying, you could google the names Piers Corbyn, Positive Weather Solutions, and January 2008 which gave a false positive for cold that caused these names to link up with newspaper headlines about a very cold winter to come...

And, as it turned out, I wrote about Corbyn's 2008 performance back in March of that year. He bunged up so badly that any number of other of his fellow AGW Deniers denounced him on the movement's well known Climate Sceptic mailing list. For example, Dutch denier Arthur Rorsch complained:

My problem is, however, that Piers forecasts, which where not sufficient accurate, has been used against me in the national (Dutch) debate on climate change. I did never refer to Piers. But it was assumed that I support his view, (as a sceptic) which weakened my own case, because the Piers forecasts where seriously questioned and he has not as yet been prepared to show the basis for his forecasts.

And Hans Erren groused:

Piers missed today's severe gale. Combined with the absence of a forecast cold winter in holland I think there is not much confidence left....

Its funny that Corbyn should be getting so much play in the MSM when even his own tribe has raised questions about his methodology.

Incidentally, Climate Scientist and general badass James Annan has made a cottage industry of debunking Corbyn. He hasn't written much lately on the topic, but here's some of his older stuff.

And, also incidentally, under his real name Peter O'Donnell is one of the anonymous posters from FreeD that Richard Warman has launched defamation suits against. Warman is not only fighting Hate, he's out there saving mother Gaia.

PS. I note that Stoat has written on Corbyn recently, though in a somewhat scrambly fashion.

A Crap Alberta Government Survey Of Alberta "Rock Scientists" On Climate Change

Given the abuse that James Annan and Fergus Brown took as a result of their good-faith attempt to survey honest-to-god climate scientists (including from me here), zero weight can be given to this ghastly survey of Professional Engineers, Geologists, and Geophysicists of Alberta (esp. given the state of some of the questions, but see below for more on that):

Virtually all respondents (99.4%) agree that the climate is changing. There is also general agreement that the climate is changing both regionally and globally (78.7% agree) and that it may result in both warming and cooling (83.0% agree). There is less agreement as to the magnitude of the change:65.7% believe that there are changes to both the average and variability of the climate, 20.2% believe that there are changes to the average state, and 14.1% believe that there are changes to the variability. There is also disagreement as to the timescale: 55.3% believe that there are both long and short term effects, 28.8% believe there are long term effects, and 11.6% believe that there are short term effects.

There is even less agreement as to the cause: 27.4% believe it is caused by primarily natural factors (natural variation, volcanoes, sunspots, lithosphere motions, etc.), 25.7% believe it is caused by primarily human factors (burning fossil fuels, changing land use, enhanced water evaporation due to irrigation), and 45.2% believe that climate change is caused by both human and natural factors.

[...]

The highest disagreement (68% disagree) with statement “the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled”. It is somewhat reassuring that 66% of respondents do not feel pressured by their peers to take a certain stance on climate change and 59% do not feel like that must base their professional work on factors other their solid scientific principles.

Note that the first couple of sentences in the first paragraph are so vague as to be meaningless. This is what you get when you ask your members to choose between the following assertions:

1) Our climate is not presently changing
2) Our climate is changing.

The Consensus that there is no consensus is similarly crap, since the survey does not make clear whether the respondents are disagreeing with the contention that the cause, or extent, or time scale, or magnitude of climate change is "settled" (or some combination.

And there is interesting data collected but not shared in the document above, such as do APEGGA members think Canada should uphold its Kyoto commitments?

The members of APEGGA have been ill-served by their association. In fact, it looks like they got suckered by the Alberta Environment Ministry (Alberta Environment), which designed the survey. Designed it to give the results they were looking for, no doubt.

Israel Violates Ceasfire

So says Kofi Annan:

"The secretary-general is deeply concerned about a violation by the Israeli side of the cessation of hostilities as laid out in Security Council resolution 1701," said a spokesperson on the UN website.

Note that the usual suspects (read: U.S.) aren't leaping to Israel's defense. Note also that the violation comes in the form of another bungled Commando raid. Entebbe sure was a long time ago, eh?

Israel Snuffs Another Canuck

From The Star:

BEIRUT — An Israeli bomb destroyed a UN observer post on the border in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, killing four peacekeepers, including a Canadian, a UN official said.

UN chief Kofi Annan said Israel appeared to have struck the site deliberately.

Looks like Israel wants the UN off the playing field so they're free to commit atrocities.

Iggy Gets It Wrong, Strike 2

Earlier, I pointed out that Michael Ignatieff has made several inaccurate or downright bizarre statements in defending his stand with respect to Gulf War II and the employment of torture as a method of interrogation. Here is another, particularly egregious example, from his March 14, 2004 article in the New York Times Magazine entitled "The Year of Living Dangerously:

I supported war as the least bad of the available options. Containment -- keeping Saddam Hussein in a box -- might have made war unnecessary, but the box had sprung a series of leaks. Hussein was evading sanctions, getting rich through illegal oil sales and, so I thought at the time, beginning to reconstitute the weapons programs that had been destroyed by United Nations inspectors. If he were acquiring weapons, he could be deterred from using them himself, but he might be able to transfer lethal technologies to undeterrable suicide bombers. Such a possibility might have been remote, but after 9/11 it seemed unwise to trifle with it. Still, I thought, force had to be a last resort. If Hussein had complied with the inspectors, I would not have supported an invasion, but the evidence, at least till March 2003, was that he was playing the same old games.

What concerns me here is the last sentence of the above passage, which is demonstrably false. In fact, the claim it makes has become one of several false contentions that have been put forward by war supporters and architects in their own defense as Iraq has turned into a foreign policy debacle. Now what I have done below is cut and paste a number of passages from the Wikipedia article on the "Iraq disarmament crisis timeline 2001-2003". I am assuming it is generally accurate; certainly, it is in accord with my own memories of the events of those sad days. I have bolded several passages that seem particularly important, and have included some commentary at the end.

- November 8, 2002: The UN Council votes unanimously for resolution 1441, the 17th Iraq disarmament resolution passed by the council, calling for immediate and complete disarmament of Iraq. The resolution also demands that Iraq declare all weapons of mass destruction to the council, and account for its known chemical weapons material stockpiles.

- November 13, 2002: Iraq accepts U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 and informs the UN that it will abide by the resolution.

- Weapons inspectors arrive in Baghdad again after a four-year absence.

- December 7, 2002: Iraq files a 12,000-page weapons declaration with the UN in order to meet requirements of resolution 1441. UN weapons inspectors, the UN security council and the U.S. feel that this declaration fails to account for all of Iraq's chemical and biological agents.

- December 19, 2002: UNMOVIC Chairman Hans Blix tells UNSC members that the Iraqi weapons declaration filed on December 7 "is essentially a reorganized version" of information Iraq provided UNSCOM in 1997, and that it "is not enough to create confidence" that Iraq has abandoned its WMD efforts.

- January 27, 2003: Chairmen of the inspections effort report to the UN Security Council that, while Iraq has provided some access to facilities, concerns remain regarding undeclared material; inability to interview Iraqi scientists; inability to deploy aerial surveillance during inspections; and harassment of weapons inspectors.

- February 7, 2003: The chief United Nations arms inspector Hans Blix says Iraq appears to be making fresh efforts to cooperate with U.N. teams hunting weapons of mass destruction, while Washington says the "momentum is building" for war with Iraq.

- February 14, 2003: UNMOVIC chief weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei present their second report to the United Nations Security Council. They state that the Iraqis have been co-operating well with the inspectors and that no weapons of mass destruction have been found, but that the Saddam Hussein government had still to account for many banned weapons believed to have been in his arsenal. Mr Blix also expresses doubts about some of the conclusions in Colin Powell's Security Council presentation of February 5, and specifically questions the significance of some of the photographic evidence that Mr Powell has presented.

-February 26, 2003: Hans Blix states that Iraq still has not made a "fundamental decision" to disarm, despite recent signs of increased cooperation. Specifically, Iraq has refused to destroy its al-Samoud 2 long range missiles- a weapon system that was in violation of the UN Security Council's resolutions and the US treaty with Iraq. These missiles are deployed and mobile. Also, an R-400 aerial bomb was found that could possibly contain biological agents. Given this find, the UN Inspectors have requested access to the Al-Aziziyah weapons range to verify that all 155 R-400 bombs can be accounted for and proven destroyed. Blix also expresses skepticism over Iraq's claims to have destroyed its stockpiles of anthrax and VX nerve agent in Time magazine. Blix said he found it "a bit odd" that Iraq, with "one of the best-organized regimes in the Arab world," would claim to have no records of the destruction of these illegal substances. "I don't see that they have acquired any credibility," Blix said.

- February 28, 2003: Iraq is expected to begin the process of destroying Al Samoud two missiles on Saturday. Hans Blix, U.N. chief weapons inspector says "It is a very significant piece of real disarmament". However, the spokesman of the White House, Ari Fleischer declares that the Iraq commitment to destroying these missiles is a fraud that President George W. Bush had predicted, and indicates that the United States wants a total and complete disarmament of Iraq. He also repeats that if the United Nations does not act to disarm Baghdad, the United States will lead a coalition of voluntary countries to disarm Saddam Hussein.

March 1, 2003: Under UN supervision, Iraq begins destroying four of its Al Samoud missiles.

March 2, 2003: Iraq destroys six more Al Samoud missiles, bringing the total destroyed to 10 out of an estimated 100 missiles ordered eliminated by the UN. The White House continues to dismiss Iraq's actions as "part of its game of deception." Iraq indicates that it may halt destruction of the missiles if the U.S. indicates it will go to war anyway.

March 3, 2003: Iraqi technicians use bulldozers to crush six more of the banned Al-Samoud 2 missiles, bringing to 16 the number destroyed in three days.

March 4, 2003: Iraq destroys three more Al Samoud 2 missiles, bringing to 19 the number Baghdad has crushed out of 100 ordered destroyed by the UN. Iraq also destroys a launcher and five engines in a rush to prove it is disarming before a crucial U.N. report on March 7. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan calls the new actions "a positive development" while the White House remains unconvinced saying, "Despite whatever limited head-fakes Iraq has engaged in, they continue to fundamentally not disarm."

March 5, 2003: Two days before his scheduled update to the United Nations on Iraqi cooperation with inspection, Hans Blix credits Iraq with "a great deal more of cooperation now", although still expressing some skepticism as to whether or not the cooperation would continue. Among the examples of cooperation that he cites are Iraq's destruction of Samoud 2 missiles, which he called "the most spectacular and the most important and tangible". He added that "here weapons that can be used in war are being destroyed in fairly large quantities." In general, he states, "you have a greater measure of cooperation on interviews in general." These statements have helped to harden the opposition to the US-led war by several other Security Council members.

- March 7, 2003: Hans Blix reports to the UN Security Council. Blix said basically the same thing as he did in previous reports. Iraq has shown some progress, but has still not yet fully disarmed. Blix also filed a 173 page document with the Security Council which said that inspectors discovered an undeclared Iraqi drone, with a wingspan of 7.45 m (24 ft 5 in), suggesting an illegal range that could potentially threaten Iraq's neighbors with chemical and biological weapons. US satellites tracked test flights of these drones, which were mentioned by Secretary of State Powell on March 5. Powell claimed that the test flight far exceeded the legal range agreed to by Iraq under UN resolutions.

- Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, concluded that the documents the US and Britain offered as "proof" that Iraq had attempted to import uranium from Niger were in fact fraudulent. This "proof" was a key part of the US accusation that Iraq was restarting its nuclear weapons program. ElBaradei said, "Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded ... that these documents, which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger, are in fact not authentic." He concluded, "We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded."

What these passages clearly demonstrate is that, in the eyes of the U.N. inspectors (who were, obviously, in the best position to know), Iraq was indeed in the process of complying with U.N. resolution 1441. Further, while at the start of the process this compliance was somewhat grudging, the situation improved during the lead-up to the invasion itself. What they also demonstrate was that no act of disarmament on the part of the Iraqis was going to be good enough for the Bush administration, who were (as has become abundantly clear since) hellbent on launching a war.

And, thirdly, they show that Iggy has, here and elsewhere, been wildly disingenuous in defending his pro-war stance.

So why is it that the war's supporters, especially those of the "Liberal Hawk" variety, have been forced to resort to pretzel logic and obvious untruths to justify their version of events? Well, in Iggy's case, I think it has something to do with the fact that he is a professional intellectual. From my (admittedly cursory) examination of his writings, it would seem to me that Iggy has alot of theories: theories pertaining to nationalism, interventionalism, human rights, and so on and so forth. Iraq was a test case for these theories and, pretty obviously, they have not panned out. And Iggy, like a scientist who has too heavily invested in his own ideas, has chosen to deny the facts rather than abandon the theory--to say, in other words, I was wrong.

Now, in the case of a historian writing histories, such behavior is usually harmless. Trees die, books are written, and the discipline as a whole corrects itself and moves forward: the pretzel logic is proven faulty, and the empirical contentions are refuted. However, in the case of Iraq, Iggy (and the other Liberal Hawks) managed to make themselves dangerous, for they split the Left and offered help and comfort to an American administration that had theories of its own to test out.

And the danger would be even greater if Iggy should manage to ascend to the Liberal Leadership and then to the Prime Minister's office. Do we really want a politician who filters the world through a set of personal theories that must work because, if they do not work, this reflects badly on their architect and creator? Do we want a Prime Minister, in short, who is incapable of admitting error in the face of obvious catastrophe? I think and hope not.