Changing Course in Iraq

...It was noteworthy, though, that at a recent Cabinet meeting Bush did not directly express confidence in Rove, who was sitting there with a thin smile on his lips...

...But it didn't work...

...The question is: Will it manage, as it did a half century ago, to adjust to new conditions and come together again...

...The "no more Vietnams" syndrome inhibited the United States from acting in Somalia, in Rwanda and, for the first few years, in Afghanistan...

...In 2002, President Bush, having decided to invade Iraq, was casting about for a casus belli...

...Haldeman and domestic adviser John D. Ehrlichman, to the wolves hoping it would save him from Watergate...

...The AFL and the CIO coexisted for 20 years, until 1955...

...It didn't...

...The decision to jail her for refusing to testify about her source can be regarded as part of a frontal attack on the press...

...Confidential sources have played a vital role in exposing wrongdoing in government, from Deep Throat in the Nixon era to Iran-contra in the Reagan era to Monica Lewinsky in the Bill Clinton era...

...He spent eight days there talking to everybody who could possibly be involved and came back to report no sign of an Iraqi bid for uranium...

...The Sunni Muslims appear to be ready to resist what would, in effect, be a partition of Iraq...

...President Dwight D. Eisenhower's chief of staff, Sherman Adams, was forced out after accepting gifts like a vicuna coat from a friend in the textile business...

...at most, telling an untruth...

...Consider for a moment what the situation would have been if the Nixon Administration had found a way to subpoena Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, threatening them on pain of jail to identify Deep Throat...

...Next, we had the "no more Vietnams" syndrome, the constant fear of being dragged into some quagmire...

...If reporters do not in equal measure enjoy a First Amendment privilege to protect their sources, it is because the public does not in equal measure value their services...

...Wilson declined to maintain a discreet silence...

...In secular Turkey, it is proscribed...

...A1972 Supreme Court decision held, in effect, that journalists do have qualified First Amendment protection...

...Because of our shared values, the relationship between our two countries has never been stronger," Bush said...

...Allawi got no position in the postelection government...

...Five days after the publication of the Op-Ed piece, we now know from the e-mail traffic of Time magazine's Matt Cooper, the correspondent informed his bureau chief of a supersecret conversation with Rove, who alerted him to the fact that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and may have recommended her husband for the Niger assignment...

...Humam Hammoudi, chairman of the Constitutional Committee and himself a Shiite Arab, says, "There is no article to impose the veil, and also there is none to prevent it...

...So was conceived the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO...

...The Iraqi authorities, who until recently were urging Washington not to cut back U.S...

...As one who came close to beingjailed for contempt of Congress in 1976 for refusing to reveal a confidential source, I have an obvious interest in the Miller case...

...The big industrial unions—coal, steel, autos—began to challenge the domination of the long-established craft unions—carpenters, plumbers, electricians...

...Richard M. Nixon threw his two favorite advisers, Chief of Staff H.R...

...The Army surgeon general reports that 30 per cent of the troops returning from Iraq suffer from mental health problems including anxiety, depression and nightmares...

...A generation of hawks was nurtured on the "no more Munich" syndrome...

...These were the best and the brightest, collecting around President John F. Kennedy, who had to live down his appeaser father...

...Ignoring Wilson's report, Cheney talked on television about Iraq's nuclear potential...

...No one in America is," Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, appointed by the Department of Justice to discover who outed Valerie Plame, told the court...

...According to Hersh, whenever the idea of covert intervention in the election was mentioned, the President said, "We will not put our thumb on the scale...

...This August there are signs of a new product in development—a scaling down of U.S...

...My widowed mother was sustained by David Dubinsky's Garment Workers Union...

...Public support for that war seems now tobe waning in the face of an insurgency of unexpected dimensions...

...The Administration talks less about a war against terrorism, more about a global struggle against violent extremism...

...Another factor may be that although President Bush has often hailed the January 30 Iraqi election as a triumph for democracy, it did not turn out quite the way he hoped...

...That is a document signed by the President, shared with the Congressional intelligence committees, that authorizes the President to fund a covert operation he certifies to be in the national security interest...

...The President said he did not want to prejudge the investigation...

...The "no more Munichs" syndrome meant blocking Soviet expansionism...

...And President George H.W Bush fired his chief of staff, John Sununu, for brusque manners and wrongful use of government transportation...

...Labor's House Divided Again ?ine was what you might call a union family...

...Dangerous Syndromes VE Day plus 60 years...

...Aunt Ethel was in the Hat Makers Union...

...When India went to war against Pakistan, National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger said, in a secret memo, that the Nixon Administration was "tilting toward Pakistan...

...In the new constitution, Islam is described as "the only source of law...

...The concept originated in the mid-' 70s as a way of controlling clandestine CIA operations...

...A theoretical solution would be a federal system, allowing different rules in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south...

...America undertook to keep the dominoes from falling in Europe and Asia and even in Guatemala and Nicaragua...

...Lewis...

...The framers of the Iraqi constitution have been trying to navigate between the two...

...ally...

...You may ask why the Bush Administration seems bent on a reduction of U.S...

...Where have we heard that before...

...At one point, the White House entertained the idea of a Presidential "finding...

...troops too soon, are being induced to fall in line...

...My brother organized social workers in St...

...That is debatable...

...It was the device used by President Ronald Reagan, in his case retroactively, to authorize otherwise illegal arms shipments to Iran and aid to the Nicaraguan contras...

...now Iraq...

...Readers will recall Reagan's complaining about being "up to my keister in leaks...

...attitudes toward India and Pakistan...

...The service sector has been growing, and the blue collar no longer dominates the employment scene...

...Lyndon B. Johnson fired his adviser and friend Walter Jenkins, who was discovered to have had a homosexual relationship...

...Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, with a beaming Rumsfeld at his side, said, "We confirm and we desire speed in the withdrawal of American forces...

...The current American and British view of Pakistan, however, is conditioned by Musharraf's inability, despite lavish U.S...

...Guided by analogies, we have lurched from syndrome to syndrome...

...It is rare that a President will endanger his own position to support an aide who has given his all serving him...

...Seymour Hersh writes in the July 25 New Yorker magazine that the Administration, concerned about Iranian influence with the Iraqi Shiite majority, favored the slate controlled by then acting Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Smite and strong U.S...

...It struck me that something was very different when visiting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reached an agreement with President Bush that would permit India to get international help with its peaceful nuclear program while retaining its nuclear arms program...

...The idea of trying to influence the election came up several times...

...You stare at the calendar and search for lessons...

...He sent a curt letter of resignation as vice president to President William Green, and later he pulled the miners out of the federation with a four-word message: "Green—we disaffiliate...

...There are provisions allowing individuals to decide matters like divorce and inheritance by religious law, if they so choose...

...L. Paul Bremer III, head of the Coalition Authority, was warned by an adviser, Larry Diamond, that the Iraqis, new to contested elections, would steal and stuff the ballot box...

...It may be too early to say "no more Iraqs," but not too early to say it is time for a "no more syndromes" syndrome...

...President Pervez Musharraf has done nothing to punish him...

...An Administration determined to transform the Middle East and to foster democracy had no hesitation about invading Iraq on dubious grounds...

...History may record that the Bush era marked the end of the "no more Vietnams" era...

...forces in Iraq...

...He said that Rove "has the confidence of the President...

...Chamberlain promised peace in our time, and his blunders helped to produce total war in our time...

...Over the years subpoenas issued to reporters have been increasing without arousing any great outcry from a public largely turned off on the news media...

...Rove was not out of the woods...

...It is symbolic that whereas most of the 9/11 hijackers originated in Saudi Arabia, three of the four suicide bombers in London on July 7 had been in Pakistan...

...Finally, in 1935, an intemperate John L. Lewis, head of the United Mine Workers, stormed out of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) convention in Atlantic City after an altercation on the floor...

...The role of Rove and associates added up to a small incident in a very large scandal: the effort to delude America into thinking it faced a threat dire enough to justify a war...

...It did not seem to matter that the CIA had advised the Italian information was fragmentary and lacked detail...

...With Green and Lewis both gone, succeeded by the more forward-looking George Meany and Walter Reuther, respectively, unity returned to the house of labor and gave some reality to the union song "Solidarity Forever...

...No news is bad news for an Administration gearing up for war...

...The government can demand to have a source identified only after demonstrating that there is no other way to obtain information needed in a criminal investigation...

...An Attack on the Press "JOURNAUSTS are not entitled to promise complete confidentiality...

...A half century ago Secretary of State John Foster Dulles condemned India as "immoral" because of its policy of nonalignment in the confrontation of the superpowers...

...Prodded by Vice President Dick Cheney, and in the hope of getting more conclusive information, the CIA sent Joseph Wilson, an old Africa hand, to Niger to investigate...

...True, President George W. Bush has often rejected the idea of a withdrawal timetable as only encouraging the insurgents, but the White House is facing the grim fact that the insurgency does not appear to be in its last throes, whatever Vice President Dick Cheney may say...

...Louis...

...After the Cooper e-mails Bush said only that Rove should not be judged in the midst of an ongoing investigation...

...History offers examples of intimate aides who serve at the President's pleasure having to resign when they incur his displeasure...

...it is mandated by their religion...

...Apparently opposition arose in one or both of the Congressional intelligence committees, whose proceedings are highly secret...

...At a press conference, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld used the word "extremist" or a variation of it 11 times...

...There was no Communist monolith, and Americans paid heavily for the "no more Munichs" slogan...

...But enough is known to surmise that the leaks of Rove and others deputized by him amounted to an angry act of retaliation against someone who had the temerity to challenge the President of the United States when he was solving to find some plausible reason for invading Iraq...

...But it also reflects the end of the Cold War and the new requirements of a war against terrorism...

...He told various people that the President was at least mistaken...

...The weapons of mass destruction theme was not yielding very much, until a dubious Italian intelligence report—partly based on forged documents, it later turned out—provided reason to speculate that Iraq might be trying to buy socalled yellowcake uranium from the African country of Niger...

...For the devout, the application of religious law is not an option...

...Early in the investigation of the Plame leak, a White House spokesman flatly denied that Deputy Chief of Staff Rove was involved...

...One can imagine the fury in the White House...

...The interim charter contains compromise language describing Islam as "one main source of Iraqi law...

...This is not to suggest that President Bush will ditch Rove, the architect of his two Presidential campaigns...

...I was an early member of the Newspaper Guild and thus witnessed the first great rupture in the house of labor...

...Switching Friends We seem to be witnessing a historic change in U.S...

...This is a kind of constitutional double-talk that only disguises the deeper conflict over whether majority rule will, under whatever disguise, end up as religious rule in Iraq...

...And when Ehrlichman, convicted of perjury, appealed to Nixon for a pardon, his dear friend ignored him...

...Now that it has quit the federation, followed by the Teamsters Union and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, organized labor has suffered a grievous blow...

...It made clear his belief that Bush deliberately manipulated intelligence in order to justify an invasion...

...Vietnam plus 30 years...

...Its symbol was British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, the man of appeasement with the umbrella who tried to satisfy Adolf Hitler's appetite by feeding him Czechoslovakia...

...The ratio of union members in the total work force is down to 12.5 per cent from 24 per cent in 1973...

...But the Bush Administration had reason for concern...

...That is not to say reporter-source relations are completely unprotected...

...The biggest union is the Service Employees International Union, headed by the dynamic Andrew Stern...

...But other than that, it seems ready to show the kind of favoritism to India once shown to Pakistan...

...Loyalty to the President is a big deal at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue...

...Ronald Reagan fired his national security adviser, Admiral John M. Poindexter, who was enmeshed in the Iran-contra affair...

...The President himself, in his 2003 State of the Union address no less, pronounced those fateful 16 words, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa...

...Al-Jaafari became prime minister, and one of his first actions was to sign several agreements with Iran...

...That reflected, first of all, concern about the activities of Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who has been helping the nuclear programs of North Korea and other countries...

...Three days later Robert Novak's column appeared, giving the name of Wilson's wife, Valerie Piarne, and revealing that she was an undercover CIA officer...

...aid, to crack down on the terrorist training centers and the Taliban operating from just across the Afghan border...

...Confidentiality is observed in doctorpatient relations, in priest-penitent relations and, yes, lawyer-client relations...

...troops even though Iraqi forces are something less than ready to take over...

...Constitutional Double-Talk In Islamic Iran, the veil for women is prescribed...

...Moreover, Niger's uranium was committed to other countries for many years to come...

...Fitzgerald's pursuit and the jailing of New York Times correspondent Judith Miller seemed less designed to find out who leaked the identity of an undercover CIA officer than to discourage future inauspicious leaks...

...Later, press spokesman Scott McClellanmade up for the omission...

...Backing a candidate in a foreign election would qualify as a covert operation...

...Clearly there is a danger of falling into the analogy trap—of making new mistakes while trying to avoid repeating old ones...

...Jimmy Carter had to fire his close friend and budget adviser, Bert Lance, for banking irregularities that occurred before Carter took office...

...But time has not stood still for organized labor...

...American authorities have also been pressuring the Iraqi transitional government to finish writing a constitution, even if there are some holes in it, and to move on to a December election...

...Some signs of a coming policy change are semantic...

...Finally, Wilson directly challenged the Administration with a New York Times Op-Ed article headlined: "What I Didn't Find in Africa...

...One can expect many a whistle-blower to think twice before blowing that whistle to a reporter...

...The Bush Administration has turned down an Indian request to be recognized as a nuclear weapons state under the NonProliferation Treaty...

...Novak has yet to say, at least publicly, whether Rove was his source...

...The law requires the President inform Congressional intelligence committees of plans for covert actions in advance and in timely fashion...

...Trying to establish civil law could well lead to civil war...

...One part of the answer may lie in what this war—oops, struggle—is doing to American soldiers...

...Washington Notebook By Daniel Schorr Changing Course in Iraq It feels a little like the summer of 2002, when White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card responded to rumors of a coming invasion of Iraq by saying, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August...

...In the Newspaper Guild, we elite journalists had to open our ranks to clerical and even maintenance workers, which strengthened our hand in contract negotiations with newspaper proprietors...

...But that would reinforce the tendency among the Shiites to be drawn to the magnet of Iran, which has already attempted to exert influence in the area...

...One can imagine the pressures on those who choose civil law...

...A generation of Americans who grew up on "no more Munichs" confronted Josef Stalin, who replaced Hitler as the symbol of totalitarianism...

...If you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution," said General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking at the National Press Club...

...But loyalty can be a one-way street...

...It gave us everything from Korea to the Bay of Pigs disaster to the Vietnam disaster, under the banner of anti-appeasement...

...Many future investigations are likely to be dropped for fear of subpoenas to journalists to expose their sources...

...Manipulating America Let me remind you that the underlying issue in the Karl Rove controversy is not a leak but a war, and how the United States was misled into that war...

...More recently, Pakistan has been valued as a staging area for the war in Afghanistan...