Iran Stands By President's Vow

Thanks to Little Green Footballs for the link to this story in Gulf News. Is this surprising? No. What is disappointing is that some in the West still make apologies for Iran and Islamism.

Scooter Libby Indicted

You can read the indictement here, on Patrick Fitzgerald's website.

200,000 Russians Move to London

According to today's Washington Post, London is now a major Russian city, home to the elite of Moscow and St. Petersburg...

Israeli Bomb Victim Came From Uzbekistan

According to Haaretz, Michael Koifman was a recent Uzbek immigrant:

Michael Koifman, 68, from Hadera immigrated to Israel from Uzbekistan in 1993. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, their two children and four grandchildren.

Koifman's son, Alex, said on Wednesday that Michael "went to a routine medical examination at the clinic, which isn't far from the market. His appointment was moved up, tragically, and he left the clinic and went to buy grapes."

"He apparently was buying grapes at a stand near Falafel Barzilai, when he was injured and killed. If his appointment hadn't been early, he would probably still be alive," he added.

Family members recalled that in Uzbekistan, Koifman was a senior manager in an auto production company. He had difficulty finding work in Israel that matched his skills.

"We will remember his as a warm and loving father," Alex said. Koifman is to be buried at 2 P.M. Thursday in the new cemetery in Hadera.

Israel Responds to Hadera Suicide Bombing

With airstrikes in Gaza, according to Haaretz.

Judy Miller's Wikipedia Page

Well, now Judy Miller is eternal...

NY Times Throwing Judy Miller Overboard?

That's the drift of this Wall Street Journal story.

If they fire her, I hope she sues. The legal case for wrongful dismissal itself would make a nice chapter for her upcoming book.

BTW, if there never were any WMD in Iraq, and everyone knew it before the war, what were those UN inspectors looking for, exactly? And why did opponents of the war want to give the inspections more time?

What is America Doing to Afghanistan?

The Scranton Times-Tribune speaks truth to power in its editorial on resurgent Taliban-style Islamism in Afghanistan:

The power of the Islamic state was brought to bear upon Mr. Nasab for his magazine’s publication of two articles that, according to the prosecutor, put the editor in the position of having abandoned the Islamic faith. One article argued that Muslims who convert to other faiths should not be stoned to death; the other argued that people who commit adultery should not be subjected to 100 lashes.

Democracy advocates were left to ponder that U.S. allies within the government noted that Mr. Nasab was given just two years in prison, whereas the prosecutor had argued for the death sentence. And, of course, the magazine itself was removed from newsstands.

This cannot be what Americans are fighting, dying and paying for in Afghanistan.

I wonder who made the American decision to let the Taliban back into Afghan government--instead of completely crushing them--and why?

Thank You, Patricia Cardoso...

Sometimes, strange things turn up in an IMDB search. For example, I learned that director Patricia Cardoso was kind enough to give me credit (though the spelling isn't quite right) for working on her short film as assistant production manager a long time ago--Cartas al Nino Dios (1991). We went to UCLA film school together, and she went on to become a big-time director. According to IMDB, her films include The Jane Plan (2006) (announced);Nappily Ever After (2005) (announced);Real Women Have Curves (2002); Reino de los cielos, El (1994);... aka The Kingdom of Heaven ;The Water Carrier of Cucunuba (1994);Cartas al niño Dios (1991);The Air Globes (1990); and Aisle of Dreams (1989).

It's nice when people who don't need to remember you, show that they do.

Is Today the Day?

Jim Vandehei and Carol D. Leonnig are reporting in The Washington Post that indictments might come as early as today in the Valerie Plame case that's spooking the Bush administration:

WASHINGTON -- The prosecutor in the CIA leak case was preparing to outline possible charges before a federal grand jury as early as today, even as the FBI conducted last-minute interviews in the high-profile investigation, according to people familiar with the case.

Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald was seen Tuesday in Washington with lawyers in the case, and some White House officials braced for at least one indictment when the grand jury meets today. Several people in the case say I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, is a main focus but not the only one.

One Woman Who Made a Difference

Roger L. Simon tipped us off to the passing of Rosa Parks, aged 92 years. You can read about how she changed America, here.

Daniel Pipes on Islamaphobia

Daniel Pipes says the term is being used by some extremist groups in a way that does harm to traditional Islam. Money quote:

Muslims should dispense with this discredited term and instead engage in some earnest introspection. Rather than blame the potential victim for fearing his would-be executioner, they would do better to ponder how Islamists have transformed their faith into an ideology celebrating murder (Al-Qaeda : "You love life, we love death") and develop strategies to redeem their religion by combating this morbid totalitarianism.

Sons of the Conquerors

Nathan has posted my book review of Hugh Pope's wonderful survey of the Pan-Turanian world on Registan.

NY Sun Defends Judith Miller

Who has been the better journalist - Judith Miller or those attacking her in her own paper's pages? Ms. Miller was sounding the alarm about the Iraqi threat and working her sources and fighting not to get beat. Ms. Dowd was parroting unsubstantiated smears, and Mr. Wilson was falsely downplaying Iraq's effort to obtain weapons of mass destruction, without disclosing to Times readers his wife's institutional interests. And huge numbers of Times reporters have been complaining about her to competing news companies. To which we can only say that if Ms. Miller is to be run out of the Times in favor of Ms. Dowd and Mr. Wilson and those who believe, falsely, that the Iraq war was all just an elaborate con job by Mr. Chalabi and his neoconservative allies - well, then the Times is in even worse straits than we thought.

But if she is let go by the Times, will the NY Sun editors offer Miller a job? (It might help the Sun become a better paper).

There is Nothing Inevitable About the Triumph of Islamism

In a rebuttal to those who would have America work Islamists, Martin Kramer points out Islamism can be defeated by its own fundamental intolerance:

So smart people, many of them with experience "handling" Islamists, have been wrong about them time and again. They have told us they know how to talk to Islamists, how to channel them away from violence, how to find common ground. And leaders, governments, and everyday people have paid the price for their errors. It has been the worst precisely in places where Islamists were given the most space to organize, preach, plan, and operate. So when old intelligence hands tell us that they have a bright idea on how to engage Islamists, we should first ask them to give us an accounting for errors past, and tell us the lessons, if any, they've learned.

One of the lessons we have learned these last 25 years is that there is nothing inevitable about the triumph of Islamism. Way back when I wrote Political Islam, many people feared that a tsunami of Islamist revolution might sweep the region. But the progress of Islamism has been erratic. It has been most potent in places that have been subject to war and occupation, and where the state is weak: Afghanistan, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, and Iraq. Where states are stronger, regimes have kept Islamists in check or at bay. Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Algeria–all of them have faced Islamist challenges, which they have turned back. Islamism has faltered in these settings for two reasons: first, Arab rulers were more resolute and ruthless than the Shah; and second, the Islamists were less adept at forging alliances than Khomeini.

They have been less adept at forging alliances because they have been unwilling to compromise on their core values or their insistence that they dominate any system in which they participate. To put it in a word, they are intolerant, and so they stir deep misgivings among other opposition groups and potential sympathizers in the West.

Judy Miller v Byron Calame & Jill Abramson

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan's link, I read the email from Judy Miller on Byron Calame's NY Times blog. She says that she told the truth, and Andrew Sullivan says that means she is calling Jill Abramson a liar (though all she really says is that they remember events differently).

I think she's calling Calame an unfair reporter.Here's an excerpt from Miller's letter:

I fail to see why I am responsible for my editors’ alleged failure to do some “digging” into my confidential sources and the notebooks. From the start, the legal team that the Times provided me knew who my source was and had access to my notes. I never refused to answer questions or provide any information they requested. No one indicated they had doubts about the stand I took to go to jail.

Your essay clearly implies that the Times and I did something wrong in waging a battle that we did not choose. I strongly disagree. What did I do wrong? Your essay does not say. You may disapprove of my earlier reporting on Weapons of Mass Destruction. But what did the delayed publication of the editor’s note on that reporting have to do with the
decision I made over a year later, which the paper fully supported, to protect our confidential sources? I remain proud of my decision to go to jail rather than reveal the identity of a source to whom I had pledged confidentiality, even if he happened to work for the Bush White House.

The Times asked me to assume a low profile in this controversy. I told everyone that I had no intention of airing internal editorial policy disputes and disagreements at the paper, as a matter of principle and loyalty to those who stood by me during this ordeal. Others have chosen a different path, ironically becoming “confidential sources” themselves.

You never bothered to mention in your essay my decision to spend 85 days in jail to honor the pledge I made. I’m saddened that you, like so many others, have blurred the core issue of that stand and I am stunned that you refused to post my answers to issues we had discussed on your web site at the critical moment that Times readers were forming their opinions.

Judith Miller

I think Miller appears to be right. Unlike Andrew Sullivan, I don't think she's digging a deeper hole for herself, even if she gets fired by her editors. All the evidence points to Times editors digging holes for themselves, due to political pressure...

Editor and Publisher: Off With Judy Miller's Head!

E & P columnist Gregg Mitchell calls on the New York Times to fire Judy Miller. For protecting her source? Or because her source was a prominent Republican?

Mitchell is showing his devotion to partisanship over principle.

Disgraceful.

BearingPoint CEO Explains Company's Math Problem

Sometimes the news really forces you to smile, recalling Puck's line in A Midsummer's Night's Dream...

One example, according to this story in today's Washington Post business section, KMPG spinoff BearingPoint apparently can't do its own math--sort of embarassing for an accounting consultancy firm.

Because the company did not know how many errors might have been made in the months it was using its new system, it had no choice but to recheck every accounting entry.

The process has been laborious, involving not only the hundreds of accountants, but forcing many of the company's 17,000 employees to retrace the hours they worked on each project and verify their billing information. It was a factor in what has been a troubling talent drain, You said. In the first nine months of the year, about one-fourth of BearingPoint's workers left the company.

New employees have been hired, but You has had to put a premium on retention. He implemented a new merit-based compensation system for the top 800 employees and made it fully open so that each knows the salaries of all the others. He also began holding company-wide conference calls every other week so employees can ask about everything from vacation policy to You's vision for the company.

Not all who follow the company have accepted You's description of BearingPoint's problems or think he has done enough to fix them.

William R. Loomis, an analyst at Legg Mason Wood Walker Inc., said You's explanation about the source of the accounting problems makes sense. But he added that if the financial system the company created "wasn't user intuitive and you have to spend a lot of money to train people, then the system probably wasn't installed right."

In recent months, the company announced it was closing operations in Peru and Thailand, strengthening its presence in India, and focusing on landing larger, more profitable projects. You told analysts two weeks ago he expects BearingPoint to turn a profit next year.

Reviews from Wall Street have been mixed. After a meeting with analysts two weeks ago, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. issued a report saying it was "optimistic the turnaround is gaining steam." Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., however, said its analysts believe the "risk/reward on [BearingPoint] shares remains unattractive."

According to the article, some 40 percent of BearingPoint's business comes from government contracts. According to this September 29, 2005 article in Consultant News:

BearingPoint has been awarded a three-year contract to support treasury operations and implement efficient business processes within the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan's Ministry of Finance.

BearingPoint will help the Ministry build its accounting and financial management capacity as well as manage incoming funding from international donors.

Valued at $6.85 million, the new engagement calls specifically for BearingPoint to strengthen the Ministry's cash management capabilities and to develop strategies for treasury processes and human resources management.

BearingPoint was first engaged by the Republic in 2002 to provide a benchmark for a fully functional financial management system.

The scope of the current work includes managing the existing Afghan Financial Management Information System (AFMIS, which was implemented by BearingPoint), and continuing the deployment of AFMIS functions.

BearingPoint has handled similar projects in post-conflict environments including Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo and South Sudan.

(The Washington Post story on this deal can be found here.)

Just think, the company America sends to advise other countries on how to improve financial management--and which just got a contract for improving security at the Port of New York and New Jersey--is unable to keep its own books straight.

Which raises the question: After this sort of revelation, who would hire BearingPoint, and why?

Buy Your Copy of Scooter Libby's Book Here

From Powell's Books catalog description of The Apprentice:

A gripping novel of suspense, "The Apprentice" takes place in a remote mountain inn in northernmost Japan, where a raging blizzard has brought together wayfarers who share only growing suspicion of one another. It is the winter of 1903 and the apprentice, charged with running the inn during the owner's absence, finds himself plunged headlong into murder, passion, and heart-stopping chases through the snow.

Wolfowitz Recites...

I heard BBC World News anchor Katty Kay on Chris Matthews today refer to this religious episode, and had to watch it -- the video in which World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz recites from the Koran during a visit with the Dongchuan village Imam in a Chinese mosque. (Wolfowitz smiled like a bar mitzvah boy reciting his Haftorah portion.)

Here's the link to the Realplayer video clip, so you can see and hear the scene for yourself.