Even if Obama thought first — or even only — about reelection, how could he have chosen to lie the way he did about Libya?

Mark Steyn writes:

The State Department has now conceded that there was no movie protest at all. and that it was, in fact, one of the most sophisticated military attacks ever launched at a diplomatic facilityBoth these very obvious points were surely known to Washington by 6 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday September 12, by which time the surviving consulate staff had been evacuated to Tripoli. Yet Ambassador Rice, President Obama, et al., were still blaming the video days later. Obama and Secretary Clinton always refer to Ambassador Stevens as “Chris” — Chris this, Chris that — as if he were a treasured friend or intimate. Yet they and the sad hollow men around them dishonor their “friend” in death.

Quite aside from the wrongness of lying, generally and specifically, in this case, and quite aside from the motivation to lie — I'm going to presume, without more, it was campaign politics — why did Obama think he could get away with this lie long enough, and why was he not daunted by the risk entailed in going on and on, doubling down on the lie, and even lying in a U.N. speech? How did he have the nerve to co-opt our U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, and subvert her credibility and honor? How did he get this millstone around the neck of Hillary Clinton, who has such a strong interest in her independent career and who knows a thing or two about the devastation of getting caught lying? (And this lie can't be waved away as as lie "about sex." It's a lie at the very heart of our trust in the President.)

Now, I have a few more questions, focusing on the choice to construct the lie out of that "Innocence of Muslims" video. Here's a montage of statements that were made about the video:

OBAMA:  I don't care how offensive this video was, it was terribly offensive and we should shun it.

HILLARY:  This video is disgusting and reprehensible.  It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose, to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage.

CARNEY:  Let's be clear.  These protests were in reaction to a video that had spread to the region.

OBAMA:  You had a video that was released by somebody who lives here, sort of a shadowy character, an extremely offensive video.

CARNEY:  The unrest we've seen has been in reaction to a video.

OBAMA:  A crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world.

RICE:  It was a spontaneous, not a premeditated response, a direct result of a heinous and offensive video.

OBAMA:  I know there are some who ask, "Why don't we just ban such a video?"  The answer is enshrined in our laws.  Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech.

Was this just the nearest lame excuse, like the dog ate my homework? The President must have known that the truth about the attack on the embassy would eventually emerge. He couldn't have assumed that those called to testify in congressional hearings would commit perjury. Even if everyone would be willing to commit perjury, how could they think they could credibly pull off lies about protests — vivid public events — that never took place? Maybe Obama's only concern was that the truth not emerge before the election, but given the risk that it would, why wasn't he afraid of how bizarre and outrageous the video story was?

The video story, moreover, put Obama in a position where he had to present caring for the feelings of violent foreigners as something that challenges our commitment to free speech, as if it were a difficult matter to brood over. He made it sound as though he would ban the video — or take the proposal to ban it seriously — if only the Constitution didn't stand in his way. Was he interested in making a show of respect for constitutional law? It didn't come off as too respectful, especially when they arrested the filmmaker (who was, conveniently, on parole and thus arrestable). This was the worst sort of scapegoating. Obama called this man — this erstwhile nonentity — "a shadowy character."

And this inane and unnecessary display of concern for the feelings of Muslims depended on thinking about Muslims as a bunch of idiots and criminals. It wasn't respectful at all to promote this caricature of Muslims as people who look at a stupid video and lose their minds, take to the streets, and work themselves up into a murderous rage. The video story could only work as a cover for the truth if it could be leveraged on an offensive stereotype of Muslims. It is the story about the response to the video — far more the video itself — that has "a deeply cynical purpose, to denigrate a great religion"! Why didn't Obama care that he was insulting Muslims in this weird charade about caring for Muslims?

Why was any of this worth doing, even cynically? Even if you assume Obama put his own reelection first, how could he possibly have selected this lie and thought it was a good idea? Yes, the planned terrorist attack in Libya hurts the image he would like to have as the vanquisher of al Qaeda, but the truth about that has already come out, with 3 weeks left to go before the election. By handling the matter the way he did, we have — on top of the damage to the vanquisher of al Qaeda image — a glaring lie and plain evidence of extremely poor judgment.

Obama at the U.N.: "[A] crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world."

"I know there are some who ask why we don’t just ban such a video.... The answer is enshrined in our laws: our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech."

“Like me, the majority of Americans are Christian, and yet we do not ban blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs," he said. "As President of our country, and Commander-in-Chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day, and I will always defend their right to do so. Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views--even views that we profoundly disagree with.

“Now, I know that not all countries in this body share this understanding of the protection of free speech. We recognize that," said Obama. “But in 2012, at a time when anyone with a cell phone can spread offensive views around the world with the click of a button, the notion that we can control the flow of information is obsolete. The question, then, is how do we respond. And on this we must agree: there is no speech that justifies mindless violence."

"Freedoms must not interfere with the freedoms of others," said Ahmadinejad.

"If someone insults, what would you do? ... Is insulting other people not a form of crime?"

In other words, it's irrelevant that the U.S. government didn't make the "Innocence of Muslims" video. In this frame of thinking, the government should be protecting people from infringement of their freedom not to be insulted.

Ahmadinejad also talked about Salman Rushdie: "Where is he now?... Is he in the United States? If he is, you shouldn't broadcast that for his own safety."

(Most of the linked article is about Ahmadinejad's opinion of Israel — it doesn't belong in the Middle East and will be removed.)

(By the way, in my home town, a man was arrested for what the news report characterizes as insulting journalists. If insulting people is going to be a crime, you'd think the least sympathetic victims would be journalists.)

"Carbon Credits Gone Awry Raise Output of Harmful Gas."

Manufacturers "quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide, but could earn more than 11,000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas."

That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect. The credits could be sold on international markets, earning tens of millions of dollars a year.

That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high — a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone later.

If they "quickly figured" it out, then it was obviously always foreseeable, but we're told "the United Nations... established what seemed a sensible system." Why could it "seem" sensible? Only through outrageous negligence or deliberate corruption. Which was it?

"The Obama administration has blocked Texas’ new law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls..."

"... saying it would suppress Hispanic voter turnout, and the United Nations is now investigating the fairness of such laws in Texas and other states."

But voters in this country still overwhelmingly support voter ID laws and don’t think they discriminate.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 72% of Likely U.S. Voters believe voters should be required to show photo identification such as a driver’s license before being allowed to vote.

"Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women..."

"... handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged 'immodest.'"

Deep Doudou.

Doudou Diene is the human rights investigator sent to the United States by the U.N. to "gather first-hand information on issues related to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance." He'll be here for 3 weeks to get this "first-hand information." I don't know. How would you spend 3 weeks trying to get first-hand information in a country of 300 million?

Does the U.N. have a duty to undertake a military intervention in Burma?

Matthew Lee explains the "responsibility to protect." Military intervention is the most extreme option, but there is a policy, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly that extends from the obligation to stop genocide.

ADDED: The Australian has an editorial "Tear Down Burma's Bamboo Curtain."

"The feelings are very bad, very confusing -- everywhere, it's confusing."

Mogadishu.

MORE: Here:

The Islamist fighters, who had seemed invincible after taking Mogadishu in June, now seem powerless to stop the steady advance of the Ethiopian-backed forces of the transitional government.

By this afternoon, the transitional government troops were within 60 miles of Mogadishu and calling for the Islamists to surrender. The Islamist leaders refused, saying they would take their fight “everywhere,” which some people viewed as a veiled threat to expand the guerilla tactics and suicide bombs they have already used.

The fast-moving developments seem to confirm what United Nations officials and witnesses in Somalia have been saying since the fighting erupted a week ago: that the young forces of the Islamists, however religiously inspired, were no match for the better trained, better equipped Ethiopian-backed troops who have tanks and fighter jets.

Still, the conflict is hardly over. Thousands of people continue to march in the streets of Mogadishu, rallying behind the Islamists, and analysts are unanimous that an Ethiopian occupation of Mogadishu, a city thick with weapons and xenophobia, could become a bloodbath.

IN THE COMMENTS: Paco Wové writes:

"All this could have been averted," Prendergast said. "If the U.S..." {snip}

Ahh, yes. I knew it had to be all our fault somehow.

"A putrid, enraged, aggrieved place."

Unbearably sad descriptions of the suffering after the earthquake. A million people are homeless, cold, and hungry. Many persons with broken bones and other serious injuries are stranded in places far from the hope of medical care.

Journeying for miles on foot, desperate survivors from high-altitude villages streamed into major towns where Pakistani, American, Afghan and United Nations helicopters landed on makeshift helipads to evacuate the injured. All told, there were 40 helicopters on duty Wednesday, but with more than 52,000 injured, they appeared to come nowhere near meeting the need for evacuations....

A man named Jahanzeb said he had walked for a whole day to reach Balakot from Sangar; at least 50 people, he said, were badly injured there and unable to travel. He knew of four who had died of their injuries, after being pulled from the rubble. The villagers built a makeshift helicopter pad on Monday, he said, but the army had not yet arrived.

Jehangir Khan, an old man with a white beard, said he had carried his injured daughter, Saira, down from their village, Bhumara, on a stretcher and waited three days to get her on a helicopter. On Wednesday, Saira, a slight girl of perhaps 15 - she did not know her age - lay on a stretcher under cotton quilts. Her leg was broken, she was bleeding and she felt pain in her abdomen, she said. By day's end, she was loaded onto an American Chinook helicopter along with 28 of the most seriously wounded here. Her brother, also injured, was not allowed on. Her sister, Zaheda, had died in the quake.

Congress and the judiciary -- with a response from Justice Kennedy.

Here's the latest NYT report on Congress and the judiciary. Here's a passage about the attacks on Justice Kennedy:

At a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the court's spending request, Representative Todd Tiahrt, Republican of Kansas, veered from the budget issues to press Justice Kennedy.

"Lately we've had rulings that seem to go beyond the rule of law" and that reflect "outside influence," the congressman told the justice. He pointed to a Supreme Court decision last month barring the execution of those who were juveniles when they committed their crimes. That decision, which was written by Justice Kennedy and which cited international treaties and practices abroad, appeared to reflect "pressure put on by the United Nations and other agencies," Mr. Tiahrt said.

Mr. Tiarht said the court was "not interpreting the Constitution and laws that govern America anymore," and added that his views were shared by people "across the United States."

Justice Kennedy, appearing unruffled, replied mildly that disagreements over the meaning of the Constitution were "a very important part of democratic dialogue." He added, "This give and take is very healthy."

Nice that Kennedy actually responded. So often there's no comment. But I love the cool, measured response that models judicial demeanor. It helps people see that judges function in a different way from politicians, even though the politicians are pushing the proposition that they don't.

There are also cooler heads among the politicians:

Both Mr. Specter and Mr. Frist said the tone of the Senate fight over judicial nominations and the intense lobbying by outside groups interested in the issue were complicating their efforts to strike a compromise with Democrats and avoid a showdown.

"We need to lower the rhetoric," Mr. Frist said. "For the life of me, I can't understand how we benefit moving America forward and we have the other side of the aisle talking about shutting down government."

And by the way, I thought Senator Schumer did a great job of defending the filibuster on "Meet the Press" last Sunday, even while sitting next to Senator Cornyn, whom you could tell he did not like.

UPDATE: Schumer was on "Fox News Sunday," not "Meet the Press." No wonder I couldn't find the transcript.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reading the article more carefully, I see that Justice Kennedy was actually there being confronted, which explains the relatively temperate remarks by Tiahrt (as one of the commenters noted). Intemperate remarks targeting Kennedy for impeachment were made over the weekend, and obviously Kennedy is aware of them. His response when directly confronted was a typical judicial response for that setting, so it actually isn't extraordinary at all. Had he not been there, I don't think he would have offered a comment, and the comment that he did make is really quite close to no comment at all.

Are we sure the Wead tapes were recorded secretly?

The NYT reports that Doug Wead secretly recorded private conversations he had with George Bush back when Bush was planning his run for the presidency:

Mr. Wead said he recorded the conversations because he viewed Mr. Bush as a historic figure, but he said he knew that the president might regard his actions as a betrayal. As the author of a new book about presidential childhoods, Mr. Wead could benefit from any publicity, but he said that was not a motive in disclosing the tapes.

"Might"? But of course it would be a flat-out betrayal to make secret recordings of a conversation with someone who came to you as an old friend and sought advice, as Bush purportedly did with the man he called "Weadie" or "Weadnik."

The NYT puts the story of the tapes on its front page, and the first few sentences hint that there may be some juicy morsels in the tapes. But:

The private Mr. Bush sounds remarkably similar in many ways to the public President Bush. Many of the taped comments foreshadow aspects of his presidency, including his opposition to both anti-gay language and recognizing same-sex marriage, his skepticism about the United Nations, his sense of moral purpose and his focus on cultivating conservative Christian voters.

The similarity between the private Bush and the public Bush is so great, in fact, that I suspect the Times is being taken for a ride and Bush actually knew he was being taped:

When Mr. Wead warned him that "power corrupts," for example, Mr. Bush told him not to worry: "I have got a great wife. And I read the Bible daily. The Bible is pretty good about keeping your ego in check."

Bush comes across as a remarkably consistent, morally grounded man. Look at the material about gay rights:

Mr. Bush appeared most worried that Christian conservatives would object to his determination not to criticize gay people. "I think he wants me to attack homosexuals," Mr. Bush said after meeting James Robison, a prominent evangelical minister in Texas.

But Mr. Bush said he did not intend to change his position. He said he told Mr. Robison: "Look, James, I got to tell you two things right off the bat. One, I'm not going to kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?"

Later, he read aloud an aide's report from a convention of the Christian Coalition, a conservative political group: "This crowd uses gays as the enemy. It's hard to distinguish between fear of the homosexual political agenda and fear of homosexuality, however."

"This is an issue I have been trying to downplay," Mr. Bush said. "I think it is bad for Republicans to be kicking gays."

Told that one conservative supporter was saying Mr. Bush had pledged not to hire gay people, Mr. Bush said sharply: "No, what I said was, I wouldn't fire gays."

As early as 1998, however, Mr. Bush had already identified one gay-rights issue where he found common ground with conservative Christians: same-sex marriage. "Gay marriage, I am against that. Special rights, I am against that," Mr. Bush told Mr. Wead, five years before a Massachusetts court brought the issue to national attention.

If the tapes are what they purport to be, respect for Bush should grow. But how do we know Bush and his friend didn't stage the tapes? The Times tells us "The White House did not dispute the authenticity of the tapes or respond to their contents." Did the White House confirm the tapes were made secretly? That they were made at the time they are said to have been made?

The New York Times hired Tom Owen, an expert on audio authentication, to examine samples from the tapes. He concluded the voice was that of the president.

Well, good. But how did the Times convince itself that the tapes were made secretly? To me, they seem too good to be truly confidential conversations with an old friend.

Haunted?

The NYT writes that the "U.S. Is Haunted by Initial Plan for Iraq Voting":

In its struggle to transfer sovereignty back to Iraq last spring, the Bush administration made some tough decisions about the makeup of the political system and how Iraqi elections could occur quickly and fairly. But now a little-noticed decision on election procedures has come back to haunt administration officials, just weeks before the vote is to take place, administration and United Nations officials say.



The fundamental decision set up one nationwide vote for a new national assembly, rather than elections by districts and provinces. With a violent insurgency spreading through the Sunni Arab areas of the country, it now looks as if fewer Sunnis will vote, distorting the balance of the legislature and casting doubt on whether the election will be seen as legitimate.

Considering the endless difficulties we see in the U.S. over redrawing district lines, which is done by those who have already been elected to a government perceived as legitimate, it is hard to imagine how that line drawing could have gone well, even if much more time were taken. The headline has the "U.S. Haunted" by the decision – ostensibly made by Carina Perelli, chief of the United Nations electoral assistance mission in Iraq – but the regret of the decision is only traced to "some" former aides of Paul Bremer, the former American administrator in Iraq. Bremer himself has not expressed regrets, nor have White House officials.



Presumably, if a plan with districting had been adopted, an alternate set of problems would be "haunting" us now. You can't compare the idea of district voting to the reality of a nationwide vote. In fact, other former Bremer aides say that districting was preferred as an idea but "the practical problems were overwhelming." The Times seems to identify fixing the January election date as the root problem, and yet a later date would have brought its own set of practical problems. Practical people must move forward under the conditions that exist, and, presumably, practical people are in charge and don't sit around feeling haunted by what might have been.

The problem of underrepresentation of Sunnis in a future legislature has already stirred talk among Americans, Iraqis and United Nations officials of making adjustments after the voting. Among the ideas being discussed are simply adding seats to the 275-member legislature, or guaranteeing that the future government or constitution-writing committees have a fixed percentage of Sunni representatives.

UPDATE: The article I've linked here appears on the front page of the Sunday Times. I wrote that post before I reached the Op-Ed page, where I see now that is a piece written by Larry Diamond, the same Bremer aide who is the source for the main quote expressing negativity about the nationwide election. He recommends postponing the election.

How to film a remake: more character development ... for King Kong.

So you're remaking "King Kong," and you're Peter Jackson. Why remake a classic? Others might say, because of the computerized special effects now available. Jackson's idea is more character development, especially for Kong:

"He's a very old gorilla and he's never felt a single bit of empathy for another living creature," Jackson said.



So a lot of thought has gone into exploring what would happen if there were a relationship between an old, brutalized gorilla and a young woman.



"You introduce this other person into his life which initially he thinks he's going to kill and then he slowly moves away from that and it comes full circle," he said. "That's what we're exploring and its really fun to go into that psychological depth with it."

Who knew Kong was old? So his interest in the girl is of the dirty old man variety. These Hollywood movies: they always put an older male with a much younger female. Or is Jackson going to de-sexualize the story? Maybe a war and peace allegory? Kong is the victim of empire, driven to terrorism. The girl, Ann Darrow, then somehow affects him so that he throws off his terrorist ways (and falls from a tall NYC building). But what is Ann in this War on Terror allegory? The U.N.?



UPDATE: Can you imagine how different the history of the United Nations would have to have been before it would work to have a remake of King Kong in which the building he falls from is the U.N.?

What country are you? I took the what country are you test. In fact, I originally posted their little image thing of the results, but then I decided I really didn't need a big turquoise United Nations flag on my blog and deleted it. Oh, what the hell! In a way, I actually agree with the result, not because I'm a huge U.N. fan, but I do actually believe/hope that reason and dialogue will save us all, eventually. So here it is:

You're the United Nations!

Most people think you're ineffective, but you are trying to completely save the world from itself, so there's always going to be a long way to go. You're always the one trying to get friends to talk to each other, enemies to talk to each other, anyone who can to just talk instead of beating each other about the head and torso. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, and you get very schizophrenic as a result. But your heart is in the right place, and sometimes also in New York.

Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid