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Earlier today I raised the question of whether our “War on Terror” had actually made us safer, and if perhaps it might be time to start discussing some other strategies. The response from some of my righty readers was that we should not discuss other strategies, and that they wouldn’t mind seeing me die in a terrorist attack, just for raising the issue.

Yeah… well screw you, too.

In addressing my questions, I thought it might be useful to point out that the number of major terrorist attacks worldwide have actually tripled between 2003 and 2004.

The number of “significant” international terrorist attacks rose to about 650 last year from about 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides briefed Monday on the numbers by U.S. State Department and intelligence officials.

650 is an awful lot of terrorist attacks, but according to the Financial Times, it’s not quite as large a number as 3,200.

In April the US State Department had said there were 651 “international” terrorism incidents last year. But using a broader definition to include attacks that “deliberately hit civilians or non-combatants” the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) on Tuesday raised that number to 3,192. The incidents resulted in the deaths, injury or kidnapping of almost 28,500 people.

Of course the number of terrorist attacks in the US was nearly zilch, a number the Bush administration claims represents the success of their anti-terrorism policies. But apart from the occasional abortion clinic bombing or animal rights nutcase (yes, the left has a few crazies of its own), terrorist attacks on US soil are exceedingly rare, and almost always of domestic origin. Eight years passed between the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the devastation of 9/11, and for the life of me, I can’t think of another attack on the homeland by foreign terrorists.

But the “War on Terrorism” is a world war… a war we are openly fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and covertly fighting throughout the world. So the best measure of the war’s progress is the number of terrorist attacks worldwide. And the trends just don’t look so good for our current policies.

The chart above was created by BTC News using the Terrorism Knowledge Base. And what it clearly shows is that the number of terrorist attacks declined throughout the Clinton years, and have increased year by year since Bush took office.

And so again, I think it is fair to ask: has the Iraq war made the world a safer place? And isn’t it time we have a reasonable discussion over whether military might alone is enough to defeat international terrorism?

From Kos:

The big DC rumor is that Rehnquist will announce his retirement tomorrow between 10-11 a.m. ET.

If that happens, would Bush split the difference — Gonzales and some winger to pacify the Dobson brigades?

And if so, which one would be nominated as Chief Justice?

I will be on the John Carlson Show this afternoon at 4:30 pm, KVI-570. I believe we will be discussing the London bombings.

At least 33 people have died and hundreds were injured, as four explosions ripped through London’s Underground and a double-decker bus. Al-Qaeda has reportedly claimed responsibility in a statement posted to an Islamist website.

The terrorist attacks were likely timed to coincide with the G8 Summit currently taking place in Scotland.

London is perhaps my favorite city. I have walked those streets and ridden those trains and busses and have enjoyed the hospitality and friendship of Londoners… the images of death and destruction are as painfully real to me as those from New York City, where I lived for four years. So I don’t want to appear to be cynically exploiting this terrible tragedy, but, I think it is fair to ask, nearly four years after 9/11… how is the “War on Terror” going? Has the enormous amount of blood and treasure we have spent in Iraq really made us any safer? Are American cities any less vulnerable to this kind of horror than London, or any less likely to be a target? Are we seeking vengeance abroad at the expense of providing real security to our citizens at home?

Can we really defeat an international, jihadist, terrorist movement with brute force alone, or is it time reasonable people can start talking about supplementing our conventional arms with unconventional strategies — diplomacy, aid, economic development, etc. — without instantly being attacked as cowards, appeasers or traitors?

Just thought I’d ask.

The sponsors of I-912, the “Pricks for Potholes” initiative, turned in 232,000 signatures today; 224,880 are needed to qualify. Over on (un)Sound Politics, our friend Stefan celebrated the event with the headline “No New Gas Tax to make the ballot.” Um… yeah, maybe… but considering this is the same guy who predicted Dino Rossi would win his election contest lawsuit just days before the case was “dismissed with prejudice,” I’d take his prognostication with a grain of salt.

Large numbers of signatures are routinely disqualified, so the Secretary of State generally recommends a cushion of about 20% over the number of signatures required. I-912 sponsors would have to bring in around 40,000 additional signatures by Friday to meet that target.

Considering the fact that there is an organized opposition that will be monitoring the signature verification process, you can be sure that every signature that can be challenged, will be… so at this point I’d say that I-912 is still too close to call. If enough signatures are disqualified to keep I-912 off the ballot, some supporters might be tempted to cry foul, but I’m confident Stefan would never want to dilute the process with double signers, people not registered to vote, and signature mismatches.

We’ll have a better idea of the initiative’s status on Friday, but we likely won’t know if it qualifies for the ballot until mid-August.

As it turns out, there are so many liberals in Seattle, and so much beer, that our fair city hosts two Drinking Liberally chapters. The West Seattle branch meets tonight, and every Wednesday, 7 pm, at West 5, 4539 California Ave SW.

I intend to stop by tonight and see if the West Seattle folk drink any more liberally than the Montlake folk. Hope to see some of you there.

(Oh… and just so you know, the Spokane chapter also meets tonight, 7:30 pm, at the Red Lion Pub, 126 N Division St.)

A survey by the National Association of Counties shows that methamphetamine has become the number one drug problem in most communities, surpassing heroin and cocaine.

Of the responding law enforcement agencies, 87 percent report increases in meth related arrests starting three years ago. Fifty percent of the counties surveyed estimated that 1 in 5 of their current jail inmates were housed because of meth related crimes. Seventeen percent of the counties indicate that more than half of their jail populations are incarcerated because of meth related crimes.

Finally… a homegrown American industry that knows how to compete with low-cost foreign producers.

The survey notes that for every meth lab shut down, 10 new ones are created. If true, I suppose that poses a problem for Pierce County, which according to the Tacoma News Tribune cleaned up 542 labs in 2004… over a third of the 1399 discovered statewide last year.

Generally, my libertarianism doesn’t extend much beyond the First Amendment, but the utilitarian in me can’t help but acknowledge that our “War on Drugs” is a dismal failure that has done nothing to reduce addiction, and has merely diverted market share away from heroin and cocaine to other destructive drugs like meth and Oxycontin. The meth crisis is a classic example of market forces at work… if we do nothing to diminish the demand for drugs, it is near impossible to diminish the supply.

Prohibition is prohibition — it didn’t work with alcohol, and it’s not working with drugs — and it’s utterly ridiculous that our elected leaders can’t engage in a serious debate over reexamining our drug policies without putting their careers at risk. Perhaps it is too much of a shock to ask the American people to accept a legal (if highly regulated and taxed) drug industry, but at the very least we need to consider shifting some of the huge amount of resources we spend on interdiction and incarceration, to efforts that work… like education, prevention and treatment.

UPDATE:
A reader in the comment thread pointed out the following interesting tidbit from the Washington Post:

The report comes soon after the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy restated its stance that marijuana remains the nation’s most substantial drug problem. Federal estimates show there are 15 million marijuana users compared to the 1 million that might use meth.

Yeah, that’s right… those local sheriffs don’t know what they’re talking about. The biggest threat to public safety and health is pot smoking. And you wonder why our national drug control policy is failing?

As we embark on what is likely to be a vicious political war over Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s replacement, I think it important to take a quick a look at the issue that will be at the heart of much of the vitriol coming from both the right and the left: abortion. There is no question that President Bush is being pressured by his patrons in the religious right to appoint a justice who will vote to reverse Roe v. Wade, and so it is instructive to explore the likely, practical impact on American women should their right to choose be denied or narrowly restricted.

Writing in The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy in May of 2003 (“Envisioning Life Without Roe: Lessons Without Borders“), Susan A. Cohen did exactly that, compiling historical data on abortions and maternal mortality for the pre- and post-Roe United States, as well as that for a number of nations with either liberal or restrictive abortion laws. The conclusion is clear:

The American pre-Roe experience, just as that in the developing world today, demonstrates quite clearly that liberal abortion laws do not cause abortion, unintended pregnancy does. Indeed, some of the world’s lowest abortion rates may be found in countries with the most liberal abortion laws, where services are easily available and even subsidized; by contrast, high abortion rates (and, generally, high maternal mortality rates as well) may be observed in countries where the procedure is severely restricted.

As Cohen points out, illegal abortion was quite common in the US prior to the 1973 Roe decision, with as many as 800,000 procedures a year estimated to have taken place during the 1950s and 1960s. While affluent women could travel within the US or overseas to seek safe, legal abortions, poor women, mostly young and minority, often suffered severe health consequences. Even after the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s dramatically reduced abortion-related maternal deaths, maternal mortality rates remained high compared to current levels.

Before and after comparisons like that in the US can be repeated country by country, but perhaps the most striking example is that of Romania, where abortion was legalized in 1957, outlawed in 1966, and legalized again after Ceaucescu’s fall in 1990.

When abortion was against the law in Romania, from
1966 to 1989, abortion-related deaths soared.

Romania’s abortion-related death rate soared after abortion was outlawed in 1966, and plummeted after it was relegalized in 1990. The lesson in Romania and elsewhere is that women will seek abortions whether they are legal or not; restricting access merely makes them less safe. According to the World Health Organization, unsafe abortions are responsible for about 13% of the half million annual deaths worldwide from pregnancy-related causes… in the most restrictive nations of Latin America, the rate is as high as 21%.

Indeed, not only do restrictive abortion laws uniformly increase maternal mortality rates in developed and developing countries alike, some of the nations with the most restrictive abortion laws also have some of the highest abortion rates.

ABORTION LAWS, RATES AND MATERNAL MORTALITY
Country	Abortion rate per 1,000 women, 15-44	Maternal Deaths per 100,000 live births
Where abortion is Broadly Permitted
Australia	22	6
England/Wales	16	10
Finland	10	6
Netherlands	7	10
United States	21	12
Where Abortion is Severely Restricted
Brazil	38	260
Chile	45	33
Colombia	34	120
Dominican Republic	44	110
Mexico	23	65
Peru	52	240
Note: Most recent data available. Sources: Abortion data — AGI, Sharing Responsibility, Appendix Table 4, p. 54; Finer LB and Henshaw SK, Abortion incidence and services in the United States in 2000, Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2003, 35(1):6-15. Maternal mortality rates — United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), The World’s Women 2000: Trends and Statistics, New York: UNSD, 2000/updated 2002.

While the consequences of having an abortion depend on whether it is safe and legal, the cause is universal: unplanned pregnancies. 28% of the 210 million annual pregnancies worldwide are unplanned, and 22% end in abortion. Reducing unwanted pregnancies through wider and more effective use of contraception is the only effective means of reducing abortion rates… making our abortion laws more restrictive will only make abortion less safe.

In the three decades since Roe became law, Americans have forgotten their history and grown complacent about the very real human costs of illegal abortions, allowing the debate to increasingly focus on moral and religious beliefs rather than the public health issue that abortion really is. Abortion foes have successfully struck an emotional chord by illustrating their arguments with images of the undeniable horror of dead and mangled fetuses. Meanwhile, pro-Choice forces have tended to make a more intellectual appeal, arguing a vague and unwritten constitutional right to privacy.

But if Roe is overturned and Congress or the States narrowly restrict access to legal abortion, the public health calamity will be very real and very bloody. Thousands of young women will die of sepsis from botched, back-alley abortions. That is the undeniable conclusion from studying the impact of abortion laws at home and abroad. And that is the emotional, rhetorical appeal supporters of Roe must make if we are to educate our fellow Americans as to what is really at stake.

It is time to fight horror with horror.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

I will be there, and I invite you all to join me for a beer or two.

Can Rove spin himself out of trouble? (“Photo” courtesy Democratic Underground)

When you’re dealing with a spinmeister like Karl Rove, reading between the lines is the only place you’ll find any useful information. And that’s exactly what Lawrence O’Donnell does in his latest Plame/Rove update on The Huffington Post.

Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, finally admitted that his client did indeed talk to Time Magazine’s Matt Cooper, prior to Robert Novak blowing Valerie Plame’s cover. But O’Donnell focuses on the words with which Luskin chose to defend Rove’s actions.

Luskin then launched what sounds like an I-did-not-inhale defense. He told Newsweek that his client “never knowingly disclosed classified information.” Knowingly. That is the most important word Luskin said in what has now become his public version of the Rove defense.

Not coincidentally, the word ‘knowing’ is the most important word in the controlling statute ( U.S. Code: Title 50: Section 421). To violate the law, Rove had to tell Cooper about a covert agent ” knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States.”

So, Rove’s defense now hangs on one word

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Seattle Monorail Project Board Chair Tom Weeks, and Executive Director Joel Horn, have resigned:

TO: Seattle Monorail Project Board of Directors
FROM: Tom Weeks and Joel Horn
DATE: July 4, 2005

Effective immediately, we are stepping down from our positions as Chairman of the Board and Executive Director with the Seattle Monorail Project.

Two weeks ago today, Seattle Monorail Project staff delivered to the Board a fixed-price contract to build the 14-mile Green Line along the voter-approved route from Ballard through Downtown to West Seattle. The proposed agreement to design, build, operate and maintain the Monorail is within voter-approved funding limits.

The agreement, however, was overshadowed by the interest costs of the finance plan. Though we tried to explain the complex, long-term financing proposal, and called for apples-to-apples comparisons with other major regional transportation projects, the Board and the people of Seattle have made it clear that the proposed financing plan will not work and that a better plan must be developed.

We take full responsibility for the current situation and feel that it is in the best interest of the Project to step down.

I’m a pretty cynical guy, and part of my role as a political blogger is to be pretty damn cynical. But I have to say I’ve been somewhat disturbed by the way some journalists, pundits, talk-radio hosts and other bloggers have cynically personalized their attacks on the Monorail by attacking the SMP staff and board.

There was no scandal, no corruption, and no grand deception. By all accounts the SMP staff and board are stand-up citizens, who have worked hard to achieve an ambitious vision. Yes, they have failed… but there is no shame in that.

From the beginning Joel Horn said that if they could not deliver on the promises made to voters, then they would not build the Monorail. Saddled with a revenue source that fell way short of projections, it has proven impossible to propose an acceptable financing plan to build the promised system. The SMP and their allies on the Seattle City Council could have arrogantly pressed on with constructing the Monorail despite public opposition to a half-century or more of car tabs. That they have responded to public criticism by pausing the project, and potentially killing it, should be an opportunity not to personally attack SMP board members and staff, but rather to celebrate a process that works.

By stepping down, Horn not only proves himself a man of word, but he also demonstrates his continued dedication to the vision.

The Monorail began as a grass-roots effort to provide Seattle with an environmentally sustainable mass transit system that would get people out of their cars. The public embraced the Monorail. The citizens of Seattle voted four times to support it. People still want the Monorail, but they want a better financing plan to pay for it.

We want what’s best for Seattle and we firmly believe that we owe it to our children, our grandchildren and the environment to build the Monorail

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On this, the United States’ 229th birthday, I would like to honor the document that has made our nation the greatest economic, military and political power in the history of man, by proposing the following Constitutional amendment:

Neither Congress nor the States shall propose any Constitutional amendment that desecrates the Constitution of the United States by proposing a dumb-fuck, stupid-ass Constitutional amendment that runs contrary to the inviolable principles embodied in the Bill of Rights.

I call this the “Constitution Desecration Amendment.”

I know the wording may still be a little rough around the edges, so any suggested tweaking will be duly considered. In the meanwhile, I’m taking the rest of the day off to celebrate a nation so free, that I have the right to burn its flag… if I so choose.

It is great to be an American.

Nobody uses pop culture as a springboard for political analysis quite like the New York Times’ Frank Rich. In today’s column, Rich compares President Bush’s Fort Bragg speech unfavorably to Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds.” Both were intended to whip up fear in their audience… but only Spielberg succeeds.

Both Mr. Bush’s critics and loyalists at times misunderstand where his failure leaves America now. The left frets too much that the public just doesn’t get it – that it is bamboozled by the administration and won’t see the light until it digests the Downing Street memo. But even if they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for John Kerry, most Americans do get it. A majority of the country view the Iraq war as “not worth it” and going badly. They intuitively sense that as USA Today calculated on Friday, there have been more U.S. military deaths (roughly a third more) in the year since Iraq got its sovereignty than in the year before. Last week an ABC News/Washington Post survey also found that a majority now believe that the administration “intentionally misled” us into a war – or, in the words of the Downing Street memo, that the Bush administration “fixed” the intelligence to gin up the mission.

Meanwhile, the war’s die-hard supporters, now in the minority, keep clinging to the hope that some speech or Rovian stunt or happy political development in the furtherance of democratic Iraqi self-government can turn public opinion around. Dream on. The most illuminating of all the recent poll numbers was released by the Pew Research Center on June 13: the number of Americans who say that “people they know are becoming less involved emotionally” with news of the war has risen from 26 percent in May 2004 to 44 percent now. Like the war or not, Americans who do not have a relative or neighbor in the fight are simply tuning Iraq out.

The president has no one to blame but himself. The color-coded terror alerts, the repeated John Ashcroft press conferences announcing imminent Armageddon during election season, the endless exploitation of 9/11 have all taken their numbing toll. Fear itself is the emotional card Mr. Bush chose to overplay, and when he plays it now, he is the boy who cried wolf. That’s why a film director engaging in utter fantasy can arouse more anxiety about a possible attack on America than our actual commander in chief hitting us with the supposed truth.

Rich outline’s Bush’s failures — both in rhetoric and in policy — and concludes that the Republicans could be facing a tough mid-term election.

Iraq may not be Vietnam, but The Wall Street Journal reports that the current war’s unpopularity now matches the Gallup findings during the Vietnam tipping point, the summer of 1968. As the prospect of midterm elections pumps more and more genuine fear into the hearts of Republicans up for re-election, it’s the Bush presidency, not the insurgency, that will be in its last throes. Is the commander in chief so isolated in his bubble that he does not realize this? G.W.B., phone home.

Read the whole thing.

Lawrence O’Donnell, who broke the news that Karl Rove was at least one source of the Valerie Plame leak, has posted an update on The Huffington Post, defending his allegations from comments by Rove’s attorney.

On Friday, I broke the story that the e-mails that Time turned over to the prosecutor that day reveal that Karl Rove is the source Matt Cooper is protecting. That provoked Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, to interrupt his holiday weekend to do a little defense work with Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times. On Saturday, Luskin decided to reveal that Rove did have at least one conversation with Cooper, but Luskin told the Times he would not “characterize the substance of the conversation.”

Luskin claimed that the prosecutor “asked us not to talk about what Karl has had to say.” This is highly unlikely. Prosecutors have absolutely no control over what witnesses say when they leave the grand jury room. Rove can tell us word-for-word what he said to the grand jury and would if he thought it would help him. And notice that Luskin just did reveal part of Rove’s grand jury testimony, the fact that he had a conversation with Cooper. Rove would not let me get one day of traction on this story if he could stop me. If what I have reported is not true, if Karl Rove is not Matt Cooper’s source, Rove could prove that instantly by telling us what he told the grand jury. Nothing prevents him from doing that, except a good lawyer who is trying to keep him out of jail.

It will be interesting to see if Rove can spin himself out of prison.

In an interview with the AP’s David Ammons, commercial real estate broker salesman Dino Rossi once again claims that he’s not bitter over his narrow loss in the governor’s race, and his monumental defeat in court.

The loss and frustrating appeal were painful, but he’s not bitter, he said.

“Probably the only ‘fair’ the Rossi family is going to get this year is the state fair at Puyallup,” he said with a laugh.

It took me a couple of takes before I got the, um… “joke.” Translation: “it’s not fair!” Gees… what a whiner.

In ending his futile contest, Rossi said that he would not appeal Judge Bridges decision, because he did not believe he could get a fair hearing from a “liberal” State Supreme court. He did not back down from this statement.

“Six of the nine justices are liberals — one used to work for Gregoire (in the Attorney General’s Office), so the likelihood of them actually overturning an outcome they liked would be slim to none.

“I don’t pull back” from any of his criticism.

That’s right… according to Rossi, “liberal” justices are simply incapable of basing their rulings on the law… they just decide cases based on who they want to win.

Asshole.

Trashing the integrity of our state’s highest court is not exactly the kind of positive leadership Rossi promised he would bring to the governor’s office. His comments are also very revealing about what he and his ilk believe the true role of the court should be.

“Obviously, it’s very disappointing, but to waste a bunch of time and energy being angry about something you can’t control doesn’t make any sense to me.”

And the thing he’s angry about not controlling… is the State Supreme Court. You see, Republicans expect their judges to always rule according to the party line, and so they expect the same from Democrats. That’s why there’s so much anger from the right at Justice Kennedy for staying true to his conservative, federalist principles rather than consistently siding with the RNC platform.

But the truth is, most justices base their rulings on the law, not their preferred outcome, as can be seen in the state Supremes’ recent decision in favor of the Seattle Times, despite their stated preference that Seattle remain a two-newspaper town.

Rossi didn’t appeal the election contest decision because there was nothing to appeal… Judge Bridges’ ruling was based on the evidence, not the law, and the Supremes almost never reject a lower court’s evidentiary findings. To blame his loss on a “liberal” Supreme Court is not only childish, it shows a lack of respect for the voters who put these justices on the bench.

Makes me think he’d have been just as poor a governor as he is a poor loser.