Eric Umansky

This is Not Comforting

Looks like former CIA spook Larry Johnson was right on. From the NYT:

President Makes It Clear Phrase Is 'War on Terror'

GRAPEVINE, Tex., Aug. 3 - President Bush publicly overruled some of his top advisers on Wednesday in a debate about what to call the conflict with Islamic extremists, saying, "Make no mistake about it, we are at war."

In a speech here, Mr. Bush used the phrase "war on terror" no less than five times. Not once did he refer to the "global struggle against violent extremism," the wording consciously adopted by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other officials in recent weeks after internal deliberations about the best way to communicate how the United States views the challenge it is facing.

In recent public appearances, Mr. Rumsfeld and senior military officers have avoided formulations using the word "war," and some of Mr. Bush's top advisers have suggested that the administration wanted to jettison what had been its semiofficial wording of choice, "the global war on terror." ...

But administration officials became concerned when some news reports linked the change in language to signals of a shift in policy. At the same time, Mr. Bush, by some accounts, told aides that he was not happy with the new phrasing, a change of tone from the wording he had consistently used since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

They "became concerned when some news reports linked the change in language to signals of a shift in policy"?!?!?  Yeah, sheesh, silly pundits for taking WH seriously and assuming that language actually has meaning. 

In any case, this reversal seems like Bad News Jeans for two reasons: 1) What kind of podunk operation is the White House running? Dropping "Global War on Terror" was a very conscious choice. National security advisor Steven Hadley even chatted up the change to the NYT  (in what seems to have been the formal unveiling of GWOT's now-short-lived replacement: G-Save). Did nobody think to check with the president?

That's the procedural screw-up. But Bush's linguistic pushback suggests a larger problem: Unless he wants  'GWOT'  (or the word 'war') because it's just catchier,  the  president is saying he actually agrees with an old school limited vision of  what the struggle against jihadism consists of. That is, to endorse the term 'GWOT' is to suggest the struggle  is primarily a military fight. 

I'm not the only one skeptical of such an outlook.  Let's recall Marine General Gerson's recent chat. Or the words of that other famous lefty, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers: "If you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution." Indeed, you'd be hard-pressed to find serious observers  who do think it's a mainly military fight--unless of course you include our president in that group.

AWOL Monday

I'll be conferencing. Back Tuesday.

Fascinating

From the WSJ:

People with certain kinds of brain damage may make better investment decisions. That is the conclusion of a new study offering some compelling evidence that mixing emotion with investing can lead to bad outcomes.

By linking brain science to investment behavior, researchers concluded that people with an impaired ability to experience emotions could actually make better financial decisions than other people under certain circumstances...

The 41 participants in the new study included people with and without brain damage, including a control group of participants with brain damage that didn't affect their emotional processing. Players were given $20 and asked to play a simple gambling game that involved 20 rounds of coin tosses. If they won a coin toss, they earned $2.50. If they lost the toss, they had to give up a dollar. They could choose not to play in any given round, in which case they kept their dollar.

Logic indicates that the best strategy was to take the gamble in every round of the game, since the return on a win was much higher than the potential loss, and the risk in each round was 50-50. The players with emotion-related brain damage took a more logical strategy, investing in 84% of rounds, while the nonbrain-damaged players invested in just 58% of the rounds. Emotionally impaired participants outperformed the nonbrain-damaged participants, winding up with an average of $25.70 versus $22.80 at the end of the game...

Yet emotions may play a useful role in financial decision making. While the brain-damaged players did well in the specific game in the study, they didn't generally perform well when it came to making financial decisions in the real world. Three of four of the brain-damaged players had experienced personal bankruptcy. Their inability to experience fear led to risk-seeking behavior, and their lack of emotional judgment sometimes led them to get tangled up with people who took advantage of them. Their life experience suggests emotions can play an important role in protecting our interests, even if they sometimes interfere with rational decision making...

Humans developed this fear response as a survival mechanism to protect against predators. But in a world where predators aren't lurking around every corner, this fear system can be over-sensitive, reacting to dangers that don't actually exist and pushing us toward illogical choices.

"There was no such thing as stock in the Pleistocene era," says George Loewenstein, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University, and a co-author of the study. "But human beings are pathologically risk averse. A lot of the mechanisms that drive our emotions aren't really that well adapted to modern life."

I always figured this, which is why I own some mutual funds that pick stocks not based on hunches by a star manager but by computer algorithm. They've done, eh, fine.

Roberts Was Involved in Florida Recount (not in a good way)

Yes, Roberts appears to have had a quiet role in Florida in 2000--not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that.  A buried graph in the WP:

In the aftermath of the disputed 2000 presidential election, Roberts played a key, if quiet, role in the Florida recount. Although his name did not appear on the briefs, three sources who were personally aware of Roberts's role said he gave Gov. Jeb Bush (R) critical advice on how the Florida Legislature could constitutionally name George W. Bush the winner at a time when Republicans feared that if the recount were to continue the courts might force a different choice.

"Constitutionally name George W. Bush the winner"... no wonder the prez likes the guy.

Why Do They Hate Sunshine?

Yesterday, I noted in TP that Congress was close to extending daylight-saving-time by two whole months. Today, the WSJ burts my bubble:

Facing objections from the Bush administration, church groups and others opposed to extending daylight-saving time, House and Senate conferees on the energy bill postponed a decision on the proposal until tomorrow.

You know what this makes me: SAD.

P.S. Yes, I know they don't really hate sunshine. It's all about the children (who shouldn't have to wait for buses in the dark)...and big airlines (who will get all screwed up with the time differences). Have I mentioned I rarely rise before 11am?

Welcome to the World

My new niece, Lena Jane Gutman.

Weight: 8lbs
Height: 20.5"
Reach: 3"
Record so far: 1-0-0

Lena and her mom (my sister) had a long night Friday. Thankfully, they're due back home in Brooklyn soon, where the grandparents will launch Operation TLC --soup and hanging time offered by Lena's uncle.

Gone Fishing

Or more accurately, a friend's wedding. Back Monday.

Wilson Exonerates Rove (Sorta)

USA Today takes another look at Joseph Wilson's book and sees evidence, of all things, helpful to Rove. Turns out the law says an  agent is only  "covert" if they've worked abroad in the past five years. And Wilson suggested his wife hadn't:

In The Politics of Truth, former ambassador Joseph Wilson writes that he and his future wife both returned from overseas assignments in June 1997. Neither spouse, a reading of the book indicates, was again stationed overseas. They appear to have remained in Washington, D.C., where they married and became parents of twins.

Six years later, in July 2003, the name of the CIA officer — Valerie Plame — was revealed by columnist Robert Novak.

The column's date is important because the law against unmasking the identities of U.S. spies says a "covert agent" must have been on an overseas assignment "within the last five years." The assignment also must be long-term, not a short trip or temporary post, two experts on the law say. Wilson's book makes numerous references to the couple's life in Washington over the six years up to July 2003.

Of course, Fitzgerald isn't a dummy; presumably he knows about Plame's domesticity. So why all the fuss? Because, probably, he's got something else on Rove and/or others:

Fitzgerald must still be pursuing evidence of some type of wrongdoing, said Victoria Toensing, another of the attorneys who helped draft the 1982 act. Like Sanford, she doubts Valerie Wilson, as she now refers to herself, qualified as a "covert agent" under that law... But, Toensing said, "reading between the lines, I'd say he's got a 'Martha Stewart case' " involving perjury or obstruction of justice. In other words, though a crime may not have been committed at the start, one may have occurred during the investigation when someone lied to Fitzgerald or to a federal grand jury.

Camera Time: How London Will Change the Privacy Debate

British police appear to have made some major breaks in the case, thanks largely to surveillance cameras:

The four men arrived together at the King's Cross station and were seen together on closed-circuit television only 20 minutes before the subway explosions, the police said.

As has been widely noted, London's Underground has thousands of such cameras.  New York by contrast has bubkas, cameras at just 17 subway stops.

As a subway rider myself, I know which I'd prefer to have:  plenty of cameras, watching every move of mine and everybody elses.  I have to imagine other people feel similarly. Which is why I'm guessing that concerns like this aren't going to be resonating much nowdays. And in my opinion that's a good thing. *

* Yes, of course  there should be policies guarding against abuse--just create them along with the thousand of thousands installed cameras please.

P.S. This is the kind of paranoid pointelss freaking that  I'm guessing won't have much traction nowadays.

Just a friendly note...

from a reader, reminding me that anti-semitism is, you know, still around.

Thanks for the note!

----- Original Message -----
To: Todayspapers@slate.com
From: c ward <cwardnm@yahoo.com>
Date: Friday, July 8, 2005 3:05 pm
Subject: another Jew comments on evil Islam...

I have a better idea than rounding up Muslims...

ROUND UP THE JEWS who make war on Islam using our
children as cannon fodder.

ROUND UP THE JEWS who control our governments and
newspapers.

ROUND UP THE JEWS who now apologize for the necessity
of the police state....

Muslims are not my enemy - but yours.

I'll take the enemy I can see over the unseen hand of
Jews making war on everyone else.