The Taxpaying Minority, by Air Fleischer

If the tax forms you're filing this year show Uncle Sam entitled to any income tax, you increasingly stand alone. The income tax system is so bad, and increasingly reliant on a shrinking number of Americans to pay the nation's bills, that 40% of the country's households -- more than 44 million adults -- pay no income taxes at all. Not a penny.

Think of it this way. After dropping off your tax forms at the Post Office, you find 100 people standing on the sidewalk. Forty of them will be excused from paying income taxes thanks to Congress. Twenty of them, the middle class, will pay barely a thing. The 40 people who remain, the upper middle class and the wealthy, will pay nearly all of the income taxes.

Look at that crowd again and find the richest person there. That individual will pay 37% of all the income taxes owed by those 100 people. The 10 richest people in the crowd will pay 71% of the income-tax bill. The 40 most successful people will pay 99% of everyone's income taxes. Yet for some lawmakers in Washington, these taxpayers aren't paying enough. Our tax system comes up short in a lot of areas. It doesn't foster economic growth. It isn't very simple. And it certainly isn't fair. The one place where it does excel is at redistributing income.

According to a recent study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, those who make more than $43,200 (the top 40%) pay 99.1% of all income taxes, the taxes that support our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, for example, fund the federal portion of transportation, education, environmental and welfare spending.

Those who made more than $87,300 in 2004, the top 10%, paid 70.8% of all income taxes, an increase from their share of 48.1% in 1979. Think about it. Ten percent pay seven out of every 10 dollars and their share of the burden is rising.

And those super-rich one percenters? Their share of the nation's income has risen, but their tax burden has risen even faster.

In 1979, the first year of the study, these affluent individuals made 9.3% of the nation's income and they paid 18.3% of the country's income tax. In 2004, these fortunate few made 16.3% of the nation's income but their share of the income tax burden leaped to 36.7%. Think about that. One percent take in less than 17% of the country's income, but pay almost 37% of the country's income tax.

As for the middle class, CBO reports they make 13.9% of the nation's income and their share of the nation's income tax dropped to 4.7%. In 1979, they made 15.8% of the nation's income and paid 10.7% of the nation's income tax.

The combination of across the board marginal income tax rate cuts and repeated expansions of the earned income tax credit (EITC) for lower-income Americans has created this situation in which fewer people are responsible for paying more and more of the income tax. When President Bush in 2001 cut the lowest tax rate to 10% from 15%, several million additional workers were excused from paying any income tax. Raising top rates, as Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton did in 1990 and 1993, also shifted the burden to a smaller group of Americans.

The EITC program redistributes money from those who pay income taxes to 22 million families and individuals with incomes less than $36,348. These workers not only don't have to pay any income tax, they're given a government check as a subsidy to help make ends meet. The EITC is also designed to relieve them of the cost of paying for their share of Social Security and Medicare.

If Republicans, including their presidential candidates, wonder why their calls for tax relief don't resonate like they used to, it's because there aren't that many income taxpayers left. They've been taken off the rolls.

As for the Democrats, they historically have raised taxes and redistributed income as a core philosophy. It doesn't matter to them how much money some people pay -- the argument is that the wealthy can always pay more. According to this point of view, it's immaterial that the tax code is highly progressive; it can always be made more progressive. While raising taxes on the few to benefit the many might be a political winner, it's an increasingly risky policy to pursue.

If, as now happens, 60% of the people in our democracy can force 40% to pay the bills, what's to stop 65% from making 35% pay it all? Since no one wants to pay taxes, what's to stop 90% of people in a democracy from making 10% pay it all? Or why not let 99% of the country off the hook, as long as the remaining 1% picks up the tab?

The problem is that there is a tipping point after which piling taxes onto the rich will leave the government unable to meet its obligations. And perhaps we're already reaching that point, where most people won't have a serious stake in what the government does because they don't pay for it. They want services and benefits, but they don't pay the price. That's a formula for runaway spending and no accountability. In other words, a system that looks a lot like the one we already have.

This can't last forever. When government revenues derive mostly from the wealthy, the fortunes of a few determine the fate of us all. Surpluses and deficits will be driven less by the economic strength of the country, and more by the gains made by the rich in hedge funds, mutual funds, equities and stock options. Like a spinning top that twirls on a narrow point, the top will stay up so long as it continues to go round. Once it slows down it falls, and the government's main source of tax revenue will plunge with it.

What a Catch-22. Members of Congress who want to fund antipoverty programs will have to hope the rich get richer, because the wealthy will need to make more to pay for all the federal programs.

The usual rebuttal made by those who support raising top rates is that lower income Americans pay Social Security and Medicare taxes and therefore need "relief." Of course they pay these taxes. But then, they alone get a good return on their money.

Top earners, on the other hand, pay payroll taxes so their money can be redistributed to others. According to the CBO study, the top 20% of workers, those with incomes over $64,300, pay 44.2% of the payroll tax while the bottom 20%, those who make less than $17,300, pay 4.2%. In return, when it's time to retire, lower-income workers typically receive more in Social Security benefits than they paid in, while the wealthy, who paid the most in taxes, simply can't live long enough to get back what they paid. For much of the middle class and the wealthy, Social Security isn't a retirement program -- it's another program that redistributes their income.

As for Medicare, it doesn't matter that the rich paid far more in taxes; all recipients receive the same benefits. Think of it this way. If Medicare were a car, its price for a low-income worker would be $145 and its price for a millionaire would be $14,500, even though it's the very same car.

Here's why. A taxpayer who makes $1 million a year pays $14,500 in Medicare taxes while a worker who makes $10,000 a year pays $145. But when they retire and visit their doctors or go to the hospital, Medicare reimburses both an equal amount of money. That's a pretty big redistribution of income and a pretty good deal for the low-income worker.

At the end of the day, everyone in this county is in it together. We have an obligation to help the neediest among us and the wealthy should pay more. But a system in which almost half the country pays no income taxes and 40% pay all the income tax has gone too far. Instead of raising taxes and punishing the successful by making them pay even more, it's time to junk the current system and start anew with a code that fosters economic growth for all, not increased redistribution of income for some.

Mr. Fleischer, a former White House press secretary, is president of Ari Fleischer Communications.

Beating the Rap: Will the Imus imbroglio trip up hip hop?

On yesterday's "Meet the Press," host Tim Russert mentioned how he and other journalists appeared on the Imus program for years knowing it used over-the-top humor. He also noted that rapper Snoop Dogg degrades women and yet is hired by Chrysler to sell its cars. In response, PBS's Gwen Ifill, herself an early victim of Mr. Imus's degrading rants, was refreshingly candid. "So we're all hypocrites, Tim. Let's see what we can do to get past it."

Music and Lyrics: Hip-hop "artists" are no better than Imus.

"Hip-hop artists rap about what they see, hear and feel around them, their experience of the world. Like the artists throughout history, their messages are a mirror of what is right and wrong with society. Sometimes their observations or the way in which they choose to express their art may be uncomfortable for some to hear, but our job is not to silence or censor that expression."

The Wolfowitz Files: The anatomy of a World Bank smear.

Product Recalls: Informing and Educating at a Crucial Time

Bono's birthday donation drive / U2 auction @ Ebay

U2/African Well Fund Auction - 100% of the proceeds of this auction will go towards building water projects in Africa.

Bono's birthday donation drive - For the fifth year in a row, the African Well Fund is pleased to announce plans for a fundraising drive to " Build a Well for Bono's Birthday ".

From March 22nd through May 6th, the African Well Fund invites U2 fans and others who are inspired by Bono's tireless activism on behalf of Africa to make a donation in honor of Bono's birthday on May 10th. Your donation in the amount of $100, $75, $40, or whatever you can afford, will go a long way in helping to provide clean water for the people of Africa.

Donations from the four previous campaigns totaled over $80,000 and have been used by our partner Africare to fund well projects in Uganda, Ethiopia, Angola and Zimbabwe, and our current well projects are underway in Uganda, Sierra Leone and Rwanda. Check the AWF Wells page for more information on our projects. This past September, two African Well Fund members traveled to Africa to see wells built by previous birthday fundraisers. You can see video from the trip at youtube.com or read the trip blog from AWF's visit to Africa for more information.

A New Epic by Tolkien

One of the publishing world's best-selling franchises is getting a long-awaited new installment. Nearly 34 years after the death of J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, his publisher has set a big U.S. press run of 250,000 copies for a new novel.

The book, "The Children of Húrin," which comes out Tuesday, is set about 6,000 years before the period depicted in "The Lord of the Rings." For Houghton Mifflin, it's perhaps the last opportunity to build on a franchise that it estimates has sold 80 million books in the U.S. since the 1938 publication of "The Hobbit."

Christopher Tolkien, the author's 82-year-old son, has been working on "Children" for three decades, stitching together outlines, notes and unfinished drafts his father left behind, including an incomplete version of the tale written as an epic poem. The result is entirely in the elder Mr. Tolkien's words, with only minor grammatical changes in things such as verb tense, according to Webster Younce, the editor who oversees the Tolkien list for Houghton Mifflin.

The publisher is keeping the book under wraps until its official publication next week, saying only that it chronicles the story of Túrin, son of the titular Húrin, as he tries to evade a cursed fate. But many elements of the story have been published in earlier works, such as Christopher Tolkien's 12-volume history of Middle Earth. According to Tolkien scholars, the tale recounted in "Children of Húrin" involves tragic themes such as suicide and unknowing incest. The central narrative seed is a sequence of songs from a Finnish epic; those songs may have folkloric origins similar to those behind Shakespeare's "Hamlet," says Verlyn Flieger, an English professor at the University of Maryland.

"He never turns to evil, but everything that Túrin touches gets destroyed," says Michael Drout, an English professor at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, based on his reading of earlier Tolkien material. "Irony drives the entire plot."

The Tolkien franchise is important to Houghton Mifflin's bottom line. Since 2001, when the first "Lord of the Rings" movie was released, books in that trilogy have sold an estimated 11.9 million copies, according to data compiled by Nielsen BookScan, which tracks sales from about 70% of U.S. consumer booksellers. In 2003, Tolkien books represented 20.7% of net sales for Houghton Mifflin's Trade and Reference Publishing segment, according to a company Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

As for the new volume, anticipation is high, even among those who know the story's general outlines. "Nobody has seen anything of this book," says Prof. Flieger. "I can't wait to get my hands on a copy."

The Real MVPs

A movement that could upend baseball's economics is gaining steam. The idea: Peg a player's value not just to his results in the box scores, but to his potential impact on the team's bottom line. See a chart and hear a podcast on the new science of baseball pay. Read More...

CIA chief says military roots don’t hinder his ability to run civilian spy agency

Of the five main agencies whose sole mission is intelligence, only the National Reconnaissance Office is currently run by a civilian.
National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is a retired Navy vice admiral. The head of the National Counterterrorism Center, John Scott Redd, is a retired Navy vice admiral. If his nomination is approved by the Senate, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper will be the defense undersecretary for intelligence.

Finally, a taste of success for Hamilton

AP

Reds OF is finding success in his bid to overcome addiction.

How U.S. Used a Bank To Punish North Korea

Nuclear Talks Are Said To Proceed, as Macau Frees Frozen Accounts

Steve's Jobs

The music moguls trusted Steve Jobs once and he saved them. It's time for them to trust him again.

If they don't, they shouldn't be surprised by what comes next. Having squandered the trust of its consumers, the music industry is rapidly losing the loyalty of its content providers as well. Artists have been the big losers in all of this, and by necessity they've had to learn a little about marketing and distribution. Software is software, even if it's got a beat -- so what's to keep Steve Jobs and Apple from going into the music business itself?

As Religious Strife Grows, Europe's Atheists Seize Pulpit

Islam's Rise Gives Boost To Militant Unbelievers; The Celebrity Hedonist

Damage Control: Author Dezenhall Challenges Tylenol Cyanide Scare Response, Conventional PR Wisdom

Damage Control: Author Dezenhall Challenges Tylenol Cyanide Scare Response, Conventional PR Wisdom

This week's spotlight: Eric Dezenhall, CEO, Dezenhall Resources

The old rules of crisis management don't cut it anymore, believes D.C.-based communications exec and author Eric Dezenhall. What's more: This is 25th anniversary of the Tylenol cyanide scare, which Dezenhall says should not be upheld as a model of crisis management. "The myth is they immediately recalled the product, but it actually took eight days. Retailers began pulling it first," says Dezenhall, who began his career in the White House Office of Communications during the Reagan presidency and has since managed "monster controversies" for top brands and personalities in the pharmaceuticals, petrochemical and entertainment sectors.

"This is important because you now have everybody upholding the 'instant recall.' But it's unrealistic because companies would constantly be in recall mode if they were to follow that line of thinking," explains Dezenhall, whose recently released Damage Control: Why Everything You Know about Crisis Management is Wrong advances similar claims and more.

"Another reason this is a bad model is nobody was blaming Johnson & Johnson for poisoning people," Dezenhall continues. "Everyone understood there was a madman on the loose and the company was a victim. It's easier to get out of a crisis in such 'sniper crises.' Far more common are 'character crises,' where the company is the villain. Those are harder to manage."

In addition: "There was also a very easy action you could take if you didn't want to die during the Tylenol scare. You threw out your Tylenol. But imagine telling a woman with breast implants to take them out," Dezenhall posits. "Imagine telling someone who bought a $40,000 SUV to take it back. Ridiculous. You can't. So the Tylenol case was a relative storm of very easy actions and scenarios that shouldn't be held up for today's practitioners," he reiterates. "It's not the model we should be following—just as Calamine lotion isn't the antidote to diabetes. It's the wrong set of 'solutions' for managing the types of crises most of us face."

Read on for more of Dezenhall's controversial take on this sacred cow of crisis communications, his assessment of JetBlue's recent crisis response—and his sometimes surprising "new rules" of practicing PR in an increasingly adversarial age:

How did the Tylenol case come to be so iconic if it's such a bad model?

The reason it became known for being so brilliantly managed is that a PR firm that didn't handle it wrote a case study declaring it to be brilliant. They rewrote the facts and went around on road shows for years proselytizing the case.

Basically, it came down to some very clever PR people rewriting how it went down, positioning it as their own work—and then using it as a rainmaking tool. From there, lots of PR people preached this case for new business development purposes. Business school professors also love this case study and the "theories" behind it because it's so neat and tidy. But the truth is crises are typically far messier. Traditional crisis communications is rarely up to the task.

What's "wrong" with crisis communications as we know it?

Conventional crisis communications is about issuing apologies, staying on message and getting out there quickly. That's insufficient. It should be more about recognizing that modern crises aren't always organic and simple. Instead, they're agenda-driven conflicts catalyzed by motivated adversaries. The best way to answer the question, then, is to say that modern crises aren't communications problems. They're conflicts.

Conventional PR is anchored in the belief that the public want to be educated, as if the public is waiting to hear more about what an industrial polluter has to say. But the truth is the public isn't listening. The Edward Bernays school of PR assumes that the public is a blank state to be manipulated. But my experience is they're not even listening. The public doesn't yearn to be educated by multinationals. So my perspective is that true crisis communications now is more guerrilla warfare than conventional warfare.

You claim in your book that PR isn't the best discipline to combat crisis—why?

The answer is it's not in the DNA of most PR people to do what's necessary to manage a crisis. PR people by nature tend to be positive people who are very uncomfortable with the existence of conflict. They want it all to be OK. The problem with that is everything won't be OK when you're dealing with conflicts. What you have to look at in any crisis is not only what the problem is, but also what the DNA is of the people at table.

Corporate PR people are used to communicating positive information. They're not used to sparring with people who want to hurt them. Their job is about building and maintaining "relations." That makes sense when the focus is on news releases, speeches and the usual corporate communications mission. In that sphere, their DNA is correct. But not when you're dealing with crisis management, where you're facing hostile parties. Political-oriented PR people are less limited that way.

How does that critique of the typical PR mindset translate to advice for readers?

For starters, corporations and their PR representatives should be better at attracting people to the table who have been through litigation. Bring on people who know what it's like to have protesters out there. Hire PR team members who have dealt with savage litigation and blanket negative media coverage. Realize that PR people who come from the marketing or "promotional" sphere are disasters at mitigating crisis.

Another tip that comes out of this is to be aware of your own hard wiring. If you abhor confrontation, don't volunteer for crisis work. Admit that you should be on the marketing side—and work hard to find the right partners to sit with you at the table when crisis strikes.

Who are those right people—who should be in the war room?

Let's start with who shouldn't be there. Mid-level people with no decision-making power—get them out of the room. Others include: technical people with no capacity to summarize complicated things for public consumption, and note-takers or people who feel compelled to send detailed emails on laptops about the proceedings. When there's someone in the room taking detailed notes, I get up. I've had too many situations where I've later seen my memos in the newspaper. You never know the loyalties of the people in the room.

Could you explain that statement—why do you say that?

A corporation under siege is no longer a company. It's a collection of individuals looking for self preservation, so you never know who will send that email to The Wall Street Journal.

So back to the question: Who absolutely must be in the room?

The top lawyer, the top business manager or your CEO, a crisis counselor and an expert on whatever the technical issue or question is that's under consideration. That's it. And yes, you need a PR person in the room—but it has to be someone who is adept at dealing with bad news. If that's not you, find that person and get him or her in there.

What are some of your "new rules" of crisis management?

Don't try to spin a public that doesn't want to be spun. For example, BP's feel-good advertising didn't win over the public following 2005-6 allegations of leaks and commodity trading fraud. And don't confuse crises with conflicts, nuisances or marketplace assaults. HP made the mistake of inflating its 2006 boardroom leak nuisance into a crisis.

What is the number one crisis tip you learned during your tenure at the White House?

The most important factor in who survives a crisis is the fundamental likeability of the target. People liked Reagan. They let him slide on a lot of things. I was a 22 year old kid. I wasn't a power player, but I do recall that Deputy White House Chief of Staff Mike Deaver would rarely let Reagan talk to hostile audiences with the belief he would win them over. Instead, he was just put in situations where he was strong and audiences liked him.

So the tip is this: Nothing is to be gained by trying to convince people who hate you to like you. Preach to the choir instead.

Brian Pittman; bpittman@bulldogreporter.com

McCain's Finest Hour

Hamilton, aka Roy Hobbs, gets first MLB hit -- two-run HR

Cincinnati Reds' Josh Hamilton, left, is congratulated by manager Jerry Narron after Hamilton's two-run home run during the third inning of a baseball game against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Tuesday, April 10, 2007 in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

In the third inning, Hamilton hit Edgar Gonzalez's first pitch into the right-field seats for a two-run homer. It was also Hamilton's first big-league hit. Hamilton, who was mobbed by teammates in the first-base dugout when he returned, became the first Reds batter to homer for his first Major League hit since Chris Denorfia on Sept. 9, 2005, vs. Pittsburgh.

The Billionaire in Triple A

White's $2.4 billion windfall would place him 131st on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans in 2006, $100 million ahead of Mark Cuban. He could buy the A's, Angels, Mariners and Rangers and turn the AL West into the AL White. Or he could purchase the Dodgers, as teammates suggested this spring, and pay himself to be the closer. The rock is worth almost 10 times more than Alex Rodriguez's record 10-year, $252 million contract. "White," Los Angeles pitcher Randy Wolf says, "should be A-Rock."

Dodgers' pitcher Matt White.

Dump Eric Milton

Abe Lincoln watches the Washington Nationals

hat tip: Church of Baseball

Defining Marriage Down . . . is no way to save it.

Take the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), a collaborative effort of universities in over 40 countries. It interviewed about 50,000 adults in 35 countries in 2002. What is useful for our purposes is that respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with six statements that directly relate to marriage as an institution:

1. Married people are generally happier than unmarried people.

2. People who want children ought to get married.

3. One parent can bring up a child as well as two parents together.

4. It is all right for a couple to live together without intending to get married.

5. Divorce is usually the best solution when a couple can't seem to work out their marriage problems.

6. The main purpose of marriage these days is to have children.

Let's stipulate that for statements one, two, and six, an "agree" answer indicates support for traditional marriage as an authoritative institution. Similarly, for statements three, four, and five, let's stipulate that agreement indicates a lack of support, or less support, for traditional marriage.

Then divide the countries surveyed into four categories: those that permit same-sex marriage; those that permit same-sex civil unions (but not same-sex marriage); those in which some regions permit same-sex marriage; and those that do not legally recognize same-sex unions.

The correlations are strong. Support for marriage is by far the weakest in countries with same-sex marriage. The countries with marriage-like civil unions show significantly more support for marriage. The two countries with only regional recognition of gay marriage (Australia and the United States) do better still on these support-for-marriage measurements, and those without either gay marriage or marriage-like civil unions do best of all.

In some instances, the differences are quite large. For example, people in nations with gay marriage are less than half as likely as people in nations without gay unions to say that married people are happier. Perhaps most important, they are significantly less likely to say that people who want children ought to get married (38 percent vs. 60 percent). They are also significantly more likely to say that cohabiting without intending to marry is all right (83 percent vs. 50 percent), and are somewhat more likely to say that divorce is usually the best solution to marital problems. Respondents in the countries withgay marriage are significantly more likely than those in Australia and the United States to say that divorce is usually the best solution.

A similar exercise using data from a different survey yields similar results.

Wrong on Timetables

The Democratic Congress doesn't understand what is going on in Iraq.
by William Kristol & Frederick W. Kagan

The Iraq Report III

The Anbar Awakening: Displacing al Qaeda from Its Stronghold in Western Iraq.
by Kimberly Kagan

For Americans, the war's most important events from August to December 2006 occurred in Baghdad. For al Qaeda and other Sunni Islamic extremist enemies in Iraq, equally important events in that same period occurred in Ramadi, the capital city of Anbar Province. Al Qaeda terrorism provoked many of Anbar's sheiks actively to cooperate with U.S. Forces, oppose all terrorists in the province, support the Iraqi Police and Army, form an effective city government and strengthen the provincial council. The sheiks called their movement "The Awakening." The hostility of the local population changed Ramadi from an al Qaeda stronghold into an area effectively contested by U.S. and Iraqi forces.

Editor's note: The Iraq Report will be published at www.weeklystandard.com approximately every two weeks and will chronicle and analyze ongoing coalition military operations both in Baghdad and throughout Iraq. This version of the Iraq Report does not contain the images and footnotes that can be found in the pdf. To read the full report in pdf click here or on the image below.

Iraq Report I: From "New Way Forward" to New Commander, March 1, 2007

Iraq Report II: The Baghdad Security Plan begins., March 15, 2007

U2's Larry Mullen Jr to join the Corrs

Larry Mullen Jr celebrates hands on role with the Corrs sisters.

Interview with Vice President Richard B. Cheney

Burned Over Bono: U2’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Messiah and His Religious Politic

Chad E. Seales
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Abstract

Within the last decade, many fans and members of the popular press have labeled Bono, lead singer of the band U2, a “Rock ‘n’ Roll Messiah,” because of his global humanitarian efforts and relentless effusion of theological and political messages in song and concert. Focusing on the relationship between religious practice and secular activism, I argue that Bono has performed a secularized soteriology–a public prescription of spiritual and economic salvation unbounded by religious institutions–that conjures an imagined World Polity; and this message has been packaged and delivered in ways that blur distinctions between show business and modern revival techniques.

Read more...

Allen, Texas - snapshot

Trulia.com
Money.com -- 2006

Rolling Stone: The Greatest Artists, Albums and Songs of All-Time

U2 in shock split over 'Sir Bono's' honorary knighthood (satire)

'Sir Bono's' new mobile phone holder.

Bono receives honorary knighthood

Bono has been a vocal campaigner about global aid and trade

Bono received the honour from British Ambassador David Reddaway

Ohio player: Bronson Arroyo has a new team and new stomping grounds

Arroyo shows us around Cincinnati
Exploring Fenway with Timlin and Papelbon

Send out the Hobbs Signal!

Reds 5, Cubs 2

Here We Are
Reds Insider
Photos - 1
Photos - 2

Adam Dunn homered twice on Monday as the Reds opened their season with a 5-1 win over the Cubs.

• Recap

(AP Photo/Al Behrman)
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(AP Photo/David Kohl)
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Cincinnati Reds - 2007 Complete Opening Day Coverage

• The 88th Findlay Market Opening Day Parade begins at 11 a.m. ET Monday.
• The Reds open the season at 2:10 p.m. against the Cubs.
• Parking will be scarce. Consider Metro and TANK buses.
• The game will be on FSN Ohio HD, DirecTV Channel 637, Dish Network Channels 425 and 427, ESPN2 (Time Warner Cable Channel 31, WLW-AM (700) radio, MLB.tv and MLB.com, which has podcasts.
• Follow events throughout the day on Enquirer's Opening Day blog.
• Reds 2007 Season Schedule - Printable Schedule - Promotions & Giveaways - Sortable Schedule - Downloadable Schedule - General Ticket Info


Reds Reporter 2007 Predictions


Reds Blog Brigade
Baseball Minutia
Cincinnati Reds Blog
Church of Baseball
The Cutting Edge
JinAZ on Baseball and the Reds
C. Trent Rosecrans
The Olde 320 Pub
Red Hot Mama
Redleg Nation
Reds Minor Leagues
Reds and Blues
We Heart the Reds

New Reds' blogs in 2007

ESPN on the upcoming 2007 MLB Season

ESPN Predicts The 2007 MLB Season
ESPN.com's Predicted 2007 Standings

ESPN.com Illustration

The House Hunt - 1

Want to go house hunting with us without the driving? Enjoy the below.

Customer Full Report
Customer Full Report
Customer Full Report
Customer Full Report
Customer Full Report
Customer Full Report
Customer Full Report
Customer Full Report
Customer Full Report
K Hovnania - Maxwell Creek - The Brookhaven
David Weekly - The Aviary - The Missouri

How to Win in Iraq—and How to Lose, by Arthur Herman

It is best if an enemy nation comes and surrenders of its own accord.
—Du You (735-812)

To the student of counterinsurgency warfare, the war in Iraq has reached a critical but dismally familiar stage.

On the one hand, events in that country have taken a more hopeful direction in recent months. Operations in the city of Najaf in January presaged a more effective burden-sharing between American and Iraqi troops than in the past. The opening moves of the so-called “surge” in Baghdad, involving increased American patrols and the steady addition of more than 21,000 ground troops, have begun to sweep Shiite militias from the streets, while their leader, Moqtada al Sadr, has gone to ground. Above all, the appointment of Lieutenant General David Petraeus, the author of the U.S. Army’s latest counterinsurgency field manual, as commander of American ground forces in Iraq bespeaks the Pentagon’s conviction that what we need to confront the Iraq insurgency is not more high-tech firepower but the time-tested methods of unconventional or “fourth-generation” warfare.¹

In Washington, on the other hand, among the nation’s political class, the growing consensus is that the war in Iraq is not only not winnable but as good as lost—Congressman Henry Waxman of California, for one, has proclaimed that the war is lost. Politicians who initially backed the effort, like Democratic Senators Hillary Clinton and Joseph Biden, and Republican Congressmen Walter Jones and Tom Davis, have been busily backing away or out, insisting that Iraq has descended into civil war and that Americans are helpless to shape events militarily. A growing number, like Congressman John Murtha, even suggest that the American presence is making matters worse. The Democratic party has devoted much internal discussion to whether and how to restrict the President’s ability to carry out even the present counterinsurgency effort.

In short, if the battle for the hearts and minds of Iraqis still continues and is showing signs of improvement, the battle for the hearts and minds of Congress, or at least of the Democratic majority, seems to be all but over. In the meantime, still more adamant on the subject are many of our best-known pundits and media commentators. According to Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, who speaks for many, Iraq “is so broken it can’t even have a proper civil war,” and America is therefore now left with but a single option: “how we might disengage with the least damage possible.” To the left of Friedman and his ilk are the strident and often openly anti-American voices of organizations like moveon.org.

It is indeed striking that war critics like Senators Harry Reid and Joseph Biden, who in 2005 were calling on the Pentagon to mount a proper counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, and to send enough troops to make it happen, should now be seeking ways to revoke legislative authority for that very operation. Exactly why they should have changed their minds on the issue is not obvious, although they and their colleagues do claim to be expressing not only their own judgment but the opinions and sentiments of the American people at large. If recent polls are to be trusted, however, these politicians may well turn out be wrong about popular sentiment.² And if past history and our current experience in Iraq are any guide, they are certainly wrong about the war on the ground.

In fact, the historical record is clear. The roots of failure in fighting insurgencies like the one in Iraq are not military. To the contrary, Western militaries have shown remarkable skill in learning and relearning the crucial lessons of how to prevail against unconventional foes, and tremendous bravery in fighting difficult and unfamiliar battles. If Iraq fails, the cause will have to be sought elsewhere.

_____________

II

Most wars are lost, not won. To most Americans, the nearest example of a failed war is Vietnam. As in Iraq today, we came up against a guerrilla-type insurrectionary force led by ideological extremists; in the end, we were forced to withdraw and surrender the country of South Vietnam to the aggressors. But an even more striking parallel to our present situation exists in the French experience in Algeria almost exactly 50 years ago. There, French troops and a beleaguered local government faced an insurgency mounted by Muslim extremists who had managed to gain the upper hand. In response, the leadership of the French army had to figure out, almost from scratch, how to fight unconventional wars of this kind—with results that have influenced the thinking of counterinsurgency experts ever since.

The armed insurrection against French rule in Algeria began in November 1954. The insurgent force, the National Liberation Front (FLN), was a direct prototype of today’s al Qaeda and the insurgent forces in Iraq. Its leaders were motivated less by nationalism than by virulent anti-Western (and, not incidentally, anti-Jewish) ideologies. Their goal was not military victory, which they knew was impossible in the face of French conventional force. Instead, they set out to provoke reprisals against Muslims by Algeria’s whites in order to trigger an all-out civil war. To this end they employed terror bombings, torture, and the savage murder of Muslim moderates and Algeria’s professional class. “One corpse in a suit,” an FLN leader was quoted as saying, “is worth twenty in uniform.” All the while, the main audience they were trying to reach and influence was not in Algeria; it was in France itself. As the American counterinsurgency expert Bruce Hoffman has written, the Algerian rebels “were counting on the fatigue and disenchantment of the French to help turn the tide if the war lasted long enough.”

It was a brilliant plan. Like American troops in Iraq today, French troops in Algeria found themselves reacting to one crisis after another, while a succession of commanders, strategies, and resources was rotated into the effort in piecemeal fashion. Even with 140,000 soldiers on the ground, in a country with less than half the population of Iraq in 2007, the French government found itself helpless to reverse the course of events. The rapidly deteriorating situation prompted Algeria’s white population to turn against its government. By late 1956, when terror bombings in the capital city of Algiers killed 49 people and maimed many more, the overstressed, overstretched French police and army were ready to throw in the towel.

But on August 1, 1956, a French lieutenant colonel of Tunisian descent named David Galula had taken command of the mountainous and rebel-infested Aissa Mimoun area of Kabylia. To the FLN’s unconventional mode of warfare, Galula responded with unconventional methods of his own. These proved so successful so quickly that they were soon adopted by French commanders in other parts of Algeria.

As early as January 1957, French General Jacques Massu and intelligence chief Roger Trinquier were ready to apply some of Galula’s techniques to the urban environment of the capital, Algiers. After weeks of hard fighting, Massu and his paratroopers broke the back of the insurgency in the city, installing a block-by-block intelligence network that kept the FLN on the run and encouraged moderate Muslims to step forward.

Indeed, the 1957 battle for Algiers marked a crucial turning point in the fight against the FLN. By 1959, Galula’s principles had been extended across Algeria. Some 600 “specialized administrative sections” were set up, each headed by army officers to oversee civil as well as military affairs. The new structure finally allowed the French army to use effectively its superior numbers (including 150,000 loyal native troops, more than a third of the total) and conventional military hardware. Helping to put the guerrillas on the defensive were such tactics as the division of troops into “static” and “mobile” units to deal with terrorist outbreaks; the use of helicopters for counterinsurgency operations; and construction of a 200-mile, eight-foot-high electric fence (the so-called Morice Line), which shut down the FLN’s sources of support from neighboring Tunisia. By January 1960, the war that many had considered lost three years earlier was virtually won.

_____________

---

Footnotes

1 In the modern period, first-generation conflicts like the American Civil War were characterized by decisive battles between large standing armies. Second-generation conflicts involved static defenses and industrial-size mobilization of resources and command, as in World War I. World War II inaugurated third-generation warfare, in which the decisive ingredients were large mechanized blitzkrieg-style maneuvers and devastating air power. That era culminated in the first Iraq war. In today’s Iraq war, by contrast, big decisive battles have been replaced by low-intensity running skirmishes with guerrilla-style combatants aiming not for military triumph but for political and ideological success.

2 Thus, an IBD/TIPP poll taken in February of this year showed 66 percent of respondents believing that it is “important” that the U.S. succeed in Iraq, including 53 percent of Democrats and 85 percent of Republicans; the number of those “very hopeful” that the U.S. will succeed had risen from 29 percent in December to 35 percent. A Public Opinion Strategies poll taken at the same time showed much the same result, with 53 percent believing that Congressional Democrats were pushing President Bush too hard to withdraw American troops.

3 The best recent account is Mark Woodruff, Unheralded Victory: The Defeat of the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army, 1961-1973 (1999).

---

About the Author

Arthur Herman, who has taught history at George Mason University and Georgetown University, is the author of The Idea of Decline in Western History and To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, among other books. His essay, “Getting Serious About Iran: A Military Option,” appeared in the November 2006 COMMENTARY.

MLB Projections for 2007

DJC's 2007 Projections

AL East
Red Sox
Yankees*
Blue Jays
Orioles
Devil Rays

AL Central
Tigers
Indians
White Sox
Twins
Royals

AL West
Angels
Mariners
A's
Rangers

NL East
Phillies
Braves*
Mets
Marlins
Nationals

NL Central
Cubs
Cardinals
Reds
Astros
Brewers
Pirates

NL West
Dodgers
D-backs
Giants
Padres
Rockies

* = Wild Card

NL MVP -Albert Pujols
AL MVP -Michael Young
NL Cy Young -Roy Oswalt
AL Cy Young - Johan Santana
NL Comeback Player - Derek Lee
AL Comeback Player - Sammy Sosa
NL ROY - Josh Hamilton
AL ROY - Delmon Young

Hardball Times 2007 Projections
Sports Illustrated 2007 Projections

Sporting News 2007 Projections

AL East
Yankees
Red Sox
Blue Jays
Orioles
Devil Rays

AL Central
Twins
Tigers*
White Sox
Indians
Royals

AL West
Angels
A's
Mariners
Rangers

NL East
Mets
Phillies*
Braves
Marlins
Nationals

NL Central
Cardinals
Astros
Cubs
Brewers
Reds
Pirates

NL West
Dodgers
Padres
D'Backs
Giants
Rockies

Athlon 2007 Projections

AL East
Yankees
Red Sox
Blue Jays
Orioles
Devil Rays

AL Central
White Sox
Tigers*
Twins
Indians
Royals

AL West
Angels
Rangers
A's
Mariners

NL East
Mets
Phillies*
Braves
Marlins
Nationals

NL Central
Cardinals
Brewers
Astros
Cubs
Reds
Pirates

NL West
Dodgers
Giants
D'Backs
Padres
Rockies

Yankees over White Sox
Dodgers over Mets
Yankees over Dodgers

NL MVP - Albert Pujols
NL Cy Young - Ros Oswalt
NL ROY - Andy LaRoche
AL MVP - Michael Young
AL Cy Young - Chien-Ming Wang
AL ROY - Alex Gordon

Three Cheers Cincinnati

W @ White House Correspondent's Dinner

MC Rove

Apple Cult Becoming a Religion

Time: A Time for Miracles, by Bono

Irish rock star Bono is greeted on arrival at a school near Lesotho's capital Maseru, May 17, 2006.

Head Trip

Steve Mitchell/Associated Press

FATEFUL DELIVERY Adam Greenberg after being hit by the first pitch in his first at-bat in the majors. Two seasons later, he is still fielding his big-league dream.

Hamilton making strong comeback from cocaine

In Defense of Wind Grasping

Heat Wave: The Fascination With Pitch Velocity

ESPN.com Illustration

Study links child care to poor behavior

New York: Say Everything

As younger people reveal their private lives on the Internet, the older generation looks on with alarm and misapprehension not seen since the early days of rock and roll. The future belongs to the uninhibited.

...She left her teens several years before the revolution began in earnest: the forest of arms waving cell-phone cameras at concerts, the MySpace pages blinking pink neon revelations, Xanga and Sconex and YouTube and Lastnightsparty.com and Flickr and Facebook and del.icio.us and Wikipedia and especially, the ordinary, endless stream of daily documentation that is built into the life of anyone growing up today. You can see the evidence everywhere, from the rural 15-year-old who records videos for thousands of subscribers to the NYU students texting come-ons from beneath the bar. Even 9-year-olds have their own site, Club Penguin, to play games and plan parties. The change has rippled through pretty much every act of growing up. Go through your first big breakup and you may need to change your status on Facebook from “In a relationship” to “Single.” Everyone will see it on your “feed,” including your ex, and that’s part of the point.

...But in the past ten years, a new set of values has sneaked in to take its place, erecting another barrier between young and old. And as it did in the fifties, the older generation has responded with a disgusted, dismissive squawk. It goes something like this:

Kids today. They have no sense of shame. They have no sense of privacy. They are show-offs, fame whores, pornographic little loons who post their diaries, their phone numbers, their stupid poetry—for God’s sake, their dirty photos!—online. They have virtual friends instead of real ones. They talk in illiterate instant messages. They are interested only in attention—and yet they have zero attention span, flitting like hummingbirds from one virtual stage to another.

• Next: Read Excerpts From Caitlin Oppermann's Myspace, Facebook, Vimeo, and More

Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame Photos

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The Iraq Report II: The Baghdad Security Plan begins.

This report, the second in a series, describes the purpose, course, and results of Coalition operations in Baghdad during the first three weeks of Operation Enforcing the Law (also known as the Baghdad Security Plan), from General Petraeus' assumption of command on February 10, 2007, through March 5. It describes the flow of American and Iraqi forces into Baghdad; American and Iraqi command relationships; the efforts of those forces to prepare positions and develop intelligence in critical neighborhoods; the limited clearing operations that the forces already in Baghdad have conducted; and operations against the so-called Mahdi army, or Jaysh al Mahdi, in Baghdad. It describes and evaluates the apparent responses of the Jaysh al Mahdi and al Qaeda to these preparations and early operations, and highlights some of the differences between this operation and last year's offensives in Baghdad, Operations Together Forward I and II.

The Iraq Report will be published at www.weeklystandard.com approximately every two weeks, and will chronicle and analyze ongoing coalition military operations both in Baghdad and throughout Iraq. The first edition,

To download the complete report in PDF form, click here.

The Iraq Report : From "New Way Forward" to New Commander.

This report, the first of a series, describes the purpose, course, and results of coalition military operations between January 10, 2007, when President Bush announced a change in U.S. strategy in Iraq, and February 10, when General David Petraeus replaced General George Casey as overall U.S. commander in Iraq. It describes operations in Baghdad, in the villages and towns around the capital, and in Diyala province to the northeast. All of these operations preceded the Baghdad Security Plan now getting underway. Some of them were aimed at preparing for that operation; others were independent undertakings responding to local opportunities or challenges. This report describes in detail and evaluates significant combat on Haifa Street in Baghdad, and clear-and-control operations south of Baqubah in Diyala province, placing these operations within the overall strategic context of the struggle. It discusses coalition efforts to disrupt al Qaeda networks in Iraq, the probable effects of those efforts, and the integral relationship between those efforts and efforts to stem sectarian violence. This report also briefly addresses the evidence for at least tacit Iranian support for Sunni insurgents in Diyala. Subsequent editions of the Iraq Report will be published at www.weeklystandard.com approximately every two weeks, and will chronicle and analyze ongoing coalition military operations both in Baghdad and throughout Iraq.

To download the complete report in PDF form, click here.

Rock Star As Theologian

Rock Star as Theologian

By Steve Beard
3/21/2007

Bono's Blue-Tinted Witness

This article first appeared in the December 2005 issue of BreakPoint WorldView magazine. Subscribe today ($25/10 issues) or get someone you know a gift subscription! Call 1-877-322-5527.

A review of Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas by Michka Assayas (Riverhead, 2005).

Life is a stage for Bono. The charismatic Irishman has lived under the spotlight of countless venues around the globe. His bleeding-heart social activism on behalf of the poor and suffering in Africa has landed him behind podiums next to the most powerful politicians in the world. The paparazzi are present to chronicle the overwhelmingly hip, blue-tinted sunglasses in a room of dramatically un-hip policy wonks.

Everything seems larger when it deals with Bono—the issues he addresses, the questions he ponders, and the forums he is granted. Nowhere is that more clearly displayed than in the recently published 323-page Q&A, titled Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas.

Assayas is a French music journalist who has covered the band U2 from its inception. Over the period of two years, Bono and Assayas explored Bono’s childhood, the emergence of the band, his marriage, his social activism, the peculiar nature of celebrity, and the way he works out his Christianity. What arises as the most interesting aspect of the book is Bono’s fearless and winsome witness to faith.

At the height of his success and fame, Bono and his father would often go down to a local pub and drink Irish whiskey on Sunday afternoons. On one occasion his father told him, “There’s one thing I envy of you. I don’t envy anything else. You do seem to have a relationship with God.” Bono asked: “Didn’t you ever have one?” “No,” he said. “But you have been a Catholic for most of your life,” Bono responded. “Yeah, lots of people are Catholic. It was a one-way conversation. . . . You seem to hear something back from the silence!” Bono said: “That’s true, I do.”

“How do you feel it?” His father asked him. “I hear it in some sort of instinctive way, I feel a response to a prayer, or I feel led in a direction,” Bono replied. “Or if I’m studying the Scriptures, they become alive in an odd way, and they make sense to the moment I’m in, they’re no longer a historical document.”

According to Bono, his father was “mind-blown by this.” I imagine that many readers may share the surprise at this rock star’s intimate faith.

SPIRITUAL PROVOCATEUR
For more than twenty-five years, Bono has been one of the most effective and enigmatic spiritual provocateurs. Who else talks to rock journalists about the theological superiority of grace over karma, writes the foreword to a specially-packaged book of Psalms, launched a conscience-raising line of clothing called Edun, and was seriously endorsed by the Los Angeles Times to head the World Bank? He makes pitches for the Bible (The Message) and has been nominated for two Nobel Peace Prizes.

Pope John Paul II wanted to wear his sunglasses when they met. Arch-conservative Senator Jesse Helms cried when he heard Bono describe the plight of hungry children in Africa. The U2 frontman single-handedly has done more to relieve third-world debt than all the Armani-clad finance ministers that could be packed into a United Nations conference room. He has a mysterious charisma, an unpretentious grace that affords him the allowance to be the only one wearing sunglasses indoors.

“When you’ve sold a lot of records, [laughs] it’s very easy to be megalomaniac enough to believe that you can change things. If you put your shoulder to the door, it might open. Especially if you’re representing a greater authority than yourself . . . ,” he confesses with confidence. “I promise, history will be hard on this moment. And whatever thoughts you have about God, who He is or if He exists, most will agree that if there is a God, God has a special place for the poor. The poor are where God lives. So these politicians should be nervous, not me.”

SHADE-WEARING FAITH
During his conversation with Assayas, Bono poetically stated: “Coolness might help in your negotiation with people through the world, maybe, but it is impossible to meet God with sunglasses on. It is impossible to meet God without abandon, without exposing yourself, being raw.”

His interlocutor responded: “What about your own sunglasses then? Do you wear them the same way a taxi driver would turn off his front light, so as to signal to God that this rock star is too full of himself and not for hire at the moment?”

Caught red-handed, Bono humbly responds, “You don’t know what’s going on behind those glasses, but God, I can assure you, does.”

Throughout his career, Bono has done his part to puncture the power of nihilism and hopelessness by pointing listeners to a transcendent reality of heaven, hell, angels, demons, deliverance, redemption, grace, and peace. U2’s lyrics unfold a world beyond the things that can be merely seen and rationally grasped.

Whether we want to or not, most of us create within our minds a picture and concept of God that fits neatly within a three-volume systematic theology text that we can proudly display on our bookshelves. Bono doesn’t buy that. He is a fan of the Psalms, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, and Job—books filled with anxiety, doubt, and loaded with questions. As he wrote in the foreword to the Psalms, “my religion could not be fiction, but it had to transcend facts. I could be mystical, but not mythical and definitely not ritual.”

During one conversation with Assayas about theology, Bono says, “It’s a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the Universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma.

“You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the Universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that ‘As you reap, so will you sow’ stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff. . . . I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity.”

DEALING WITH JESUS
The statement about Jesus on the cross sparks one of the most intimate and frank discussions in the entire book. “The son of God who takes away the sins of the world, I wish I could believe in that,” confesses Assayas.

“But I love the idea of the Sacrificial Lamb,” Bono replies. “I love the idea that God says: Look, you cretins, there are certain results to the way we are, to selfishness, and there’s mortality as part of your very sinful nature, and, let’s face it, you’re not living a very good life, are you? There are consequences to actions. The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That’s the point. It should keep us humbled. . . . It’s not our own good works that get us through the gates of Heaven.”

Still unconvinced, Assayas states frankly: “Such great hope is wonderful, even though it’s close to lunacy, in my view. Christ has his rank among the world’s great thinkers. But Son of God, isn’t that farfetched?”

“No, it’s not farfetched to me,” replies Bono. “Look, the secular response to the Christ story always goes like this: He was a great prophet, obviously a very interesting guy, had a lot to say along the lines of other great prophets, be they Elijah, Muhammad, Buddha, or Confucius. But actually Christ doesn’t allow you that. . . . He doesn’t let you off that hook. Christ says, No. I’m not saying I’m a teacher, don’t call me teacher. I’m not saying I’m a prophet. I’m saying: ‘I’m the Messiah.’ I’m saying: ‘I am God incarnate.’ And people say: No, no, please, just be a prophet. A prophet we can take. You’re a bit eccentric. We’ve had John the Baptist eating locusts and wild honey, we can handle that. But don’t mention the ‘M’ word! Because, you know, we’re gonna have to crucify you.”

Stepping into the argumentation of C. S. Lewis’s classic apologetics, Bono continues: “So what you’re left with is either Christ was who He said He was—the Messiah—or a complete nutcase. I mean, we’re talking nutcase on the level of Charles Manson . . . The idea that the entire course of civilization for over half of the globe could have its fate changed and turned upside-down by a nutcase, for me that’s farfetched.”

RELIGION IN ANSWERS

“How come you’re always quoting the Bible?” asks Assayas with a certain exasperation. “Was it because it was taught at school? Or because your father or mother wanted you to read it?” In response, Bono tells the story of attending a Christmas Eve service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin and describes the moment when the incarnation really made sense to him.

“The idea that God, if there is a force of Love and Logic in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself is amazing enough,” he said. “That it would seek to explain itself and describe itself by becoming a child born in straw poverty, in [excrement] and straw . . . a child . . . I just thought: ‘Wow!’ Just the poetry . . . Unknowable love, unknowable power, describes itself as the most vulnerable.”

Behind a huge pillar, during the singing is when the epiphany occurred. “I was sitting there, and it’s not that it hadn’t struck me before, but tears came down my face, and I saw the genius of this, utter genius of picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this,” he said of the birth of Christ. “Love needs to find form, intimacy needs to be whispered. To me, it makes sense. It’s actually logical. It’s pure logic. Essence has to manifest itself. It’s inevitable. Love has to become an action or something concrete. It would have to happen. There must be an incarnation. Love must be made flesh.”

I am fairly confident that much of this conversation is jaw-dropping to many U2 fans around the world—as well as to some Christian critics of Bono and the band. After all, these are not the kinds of public conversations a reader expects to hear from a jet-setting rock star.

One of the chapters is titled “Add Eternity to That,” and it is a log of their conversation that took place one week after the Madrid train bombings on March 11, 2004. The terrorist attack left 191 dead and more than 1,800 injured. During this interview, Bono attempts to clarify between faith in Christ and the fanaticism of terrorism.

“My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ. Christ teaches that God is love. What does that mean? What it means for me: a study of the life of Christ,” Bono says. “Love here describes itself as a child born in straw poverty, the most vulnerable situation of all, without honor. . . . God is love, and as much as I respond [sighs] in allowing myself to be transformed by that love and acting in that love, that’s my religion. Where things get complicated for me, is when I try to live this love. Now, that’s not so easy.”

Perhaps these conversations with a French journalist help explain the beauty, relevance, and longevity of Bono’s career. He is brutally honest about his shortcomings, as well as his hope for redemption. “But with Christ,” he testifies, “we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross.”

As with all articles published by BreakPoint WorldView, the views of authors do not necessarily represent that of Chuck Colson or Prison Fellowship. With that in mind, we do not necessarily recommend this book by Michka Assayas: Some readers may find some of its content offensive (profanity). Rather, we did want to highlight Bono’s remarks on faith for our readers’ consideration.

Steve Beard is the creator of Thunderstruck.org, a website devoted to faith and pop culture, and a regular contributor to the blog The Culture Beat.

For Further Reading and Information

Kristine Steakley, "Faith of a Rock Star," The Point, 22 March 2007.

NY Times: The Washington Back Channel: Do You Want To Know A Secret?

Horacio Salinas for The New York Times

By MAX FRANKEL

Leaks, backgrounders, favors, masked attribution: For decades, journalists and government officials have traded in a sort of information black market, manipulating one another and, to some extent, readers too. It’s not pretty — as the Libby trial revealed. But it’s crucial.

U.S. Watch Lists Are Drawn From Massive Clearinghouse

Terror Database Has Quadrupled In Four Years
U.S. Watch Lists Are Drawn From Massive Clearinghouse
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 25, 2007; A01

GRAPHIC: Feeding the Terrorism Clearinghouse

The intelligence community's system of compiling and distributing names for watch lists has plenty of critics, but Russ Travers of the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean says: "What's the alternative?" (By Lois Raimondo -- The Washington Post)

Each day, thousands of pieces of intelligence information from around the world -- field reports, captured documents, news from foreign allies and sometimes idle gossip -- arrive in a computer-filled office in McLean, where analysts feed them into the nation's central list of terrorists and terrorism suspects.
Called TIDE, for Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, the list is a storehouse for data about individuals that the intelligence community believes might harm the United States. It is the wellspring for watch lists distributed to airlines, law enforcement, border posts and U.S. consulates, created to close one of the key intelligence gaps revealed after Sept. 11, 2001: the failure of federal agencies to share what they knew about al-Qaeda operatives.
But in addressing one problem, TIDE has spawned others. Ballooning from fewer than 100,000 files in 2003 to about 435,000, the growing database threatens to overwhelm the people who manage it. "The single biggest worry that I have is long-term quality control," said Russ Travers, in charge of TIDE at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean. "Where am I going to be, where is my successor going to be, five years down the road?"
TIDE has also created concerns about secrecy, errors and privacy. The list marks the first time foreigners and U.S. citizens are combined in an intelligence database. The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it. At any stage, the process can lead to "horror stories" of mixed-up names and unconfirmed information, Travers acknowledged.
The watch lists fed by TIDE, used to monitor everyone entering the country or having even a casual encounter with federal, state and local law enforcement, have a higher bar. But they have become a source of irritation -- and potentially more serious consequences -- for many U.S. citizens and visitors.
In 2004 and 2005, misidentifications accounted for about half of the tens of thousands of times a traveler's name triggered a watch-list hit, the Government Accountability Office reported in September. Congressional committees have criticized the process, some charging that it collects too much information about Americans, others saying it is ineffective against terrorists. Civil rights and privacy groups have called for increased transparency.
"How many are on the lists, how are they compiled, how is the information used, how do they verify it?" asked Lillie Coney, associate director of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center. Such information is classified, and individuals barred from traveling are not told why.
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said last year that his wife had been delayed repeatedly while airlines queried whether Catherine Stevens was the watch-listed Cat Stevens. The listing referred to the Britain-based pop singer who converted to Islam and changed his name to Yusuf Islam. The reason Islam is not allowed to fly to the United States is secret.
So is the reason Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, remains on the State Department's consular watch list. Detained in New York while en route to Montreal in 2002, Arar was sent by the U.S. government to a year of imprisonment in Syria. Canada, the source of the initial information about Arar, cleared him of all terrorism allegations last September -- three years after his release -- and has since authorized $9 million in compensation.
TIDE is a vacuum cleaner for both proven and unproven information, and its managers disclaim responsibility for how other agencies use the data. "What's the alternative?" Travers said. "I work under the assumption that we're never going to have perfect information -- fingerprints, DNA -- on 6 billion people across the planet. . . . If someone actually has a better idea, I'm all ears."'Thousands of Messages'
The electronic journey a piece of terrorism data takes from an intelligence outpost to an airline counter is interrupted at several points for analysis and condensation.
President Bush ordered the intelligence community in 2003 to centralize data on terrorism suspects, and U.S. agencies at home and abroad now send everything they collect to TIDE. It arrives electronically as names to be added or as additional information about people already in the system.
The 80 TIDE analysts get "thousands of messages a day," Travers said, much of the data "fragmentary," "inconsistent" and "sometimes just flat-out wrong." Often the analysts go back to the intelligence agencies for details. "Sometimes you'll get sort of corroborating information," he said, "but many times you're not going to get much. What we use here, rightly or wrongly, is a reasonable-suspicion standard."
Each TIDE listee is given a number, and statistics are kept on nationality and ethnic and religious groups. Some files include aliases and sightings, and others are just a full or partial name, perhaps with a sketchy biography. Sunni and Shiite Muslims are the fastest-growing categories in a database whose entries include Saudi financiers and Colombian revolutionaries. U.S. citizens -- who Travers said make up less than 5 percent of listings -- are included if an "international terrorism nexus" is established. A similar exception for the administration's warrantless wiretap program came under court challenge from privacy and civil rights advocates.Information Sharing
Every night at 10, TIDE dumps an unclassified version of that day's harvest -- names, dates of birth, countries of origin and passport information -- into a database belonging to the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center. TIDE's most sensitive information is not included. The FBI adds data about U.S. suspects with no international ties for a combined daily total of 1,000 to 1,500 new names.
Between 5 and 6 a.m., a shift of 24 analysts drawn from the agencies that use watch lists begins a new winnowing process at the center's Crystal City office. The analysts have access to case files at TIDE and the original intelligence sources, said the center's acting director, Rick Kopel.
Decisions on what to add to the Terrorist Screening Center master list are made by midafternoon. The bar is higher than TIDE's; total listings were about 235,000 names as of last fall, according to Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. The bar is then raised again as agencies decide which names to put on their own watch lists: the Transportation Security Administration's "no-fly" and "selectee" lists for airlines; Consular Lookout and Support System at the State Department; the Interagency Border and Inspection System at the Department of Homeland Security; and the Justice Department's National Crime Information Center. The criteria each agency use are classified, Kopel said.
Some information may raise a red flag for one agency but not another. "There's a big difference between CLASS and no-fly," Kopel said, referring to State's consular list. "About the only criteria CLASS has is that you're not a U.S. person. . . . Say 'a Mohammed from Syria.' That's useless for me to watch-list here in the United States. But if I'm in Damascus processing visas . . . that might be enough for someone to . . . put a hold on the visa process."
All of the more than 30,000 individuals on the TSA's no-fly list are prohibited from entering an aircraft in the United States. People whose names appear on the longer selectee list -- those the government believes merit watching but does not bar from travel -- are supposed to be subjected to more intense scrutiny.
With little to go on beyond names, airlines find frequent matches. The screening center agent on call will check the file for markers such as sex, age and prior "encounters" with the list. The agent might ask the airlines about the passenger's eye color, height or defining marks, Kopel said. "We'll say, 'Does he have any rings on his left hand?' and they'll say, 'Uh, he doesn't have a left hand.' Okay. We know that [the listed person] lost his left hand making a bomb."
If the answers indicate a match, that "encounter" is fed back into the FBI screening center's files and ultimately to TIDE. Kopel said the agent never tells the airline whether the person trying to board is the suspect. The airlines decide whether to allow the customer to fly.
TSA receives thousands of complaints each year, such as this one released to the Electronic Privacy Information Center in 2004 under the Freedom of Information Act: "Apparently, my name is on some watch list because everytime I fly, I get delayed while the airline personnel call what they say is TSA," wrote a passenger whose name was blacked out. Noting that he was a high-level federal worker, he asked what he could do to remove his name from the list.
The answer, Kopel said, is little. A unit at the screening center responds to complaints, he said, but will not remove a name if it is shared by a terrorism suspect. Instead, people not on the list who share a name with someone listed can be issued letters instructing airline personnel to check with the TSA to verify their identity. The GAO reported that 31 names were removed in 2005.A Process Under Fire
A recent review of the entire Terrorist Screening Center database was temporarily abandoned when it proved too much work even for the night crew, which generally handles less of a workload. But the no-fly and selectee lists are being scrubbed to emphasize "people we think are a danger to the plane, and not for some other reason they met the criteria," Kopel said.
A separate TSA system that would check every passenger name against the screening center's database has been shelved over concern that it could grow into a massive surveillance program. The Department of Homeland Security was rebuked by Congress in December for trying to develop a risk-assessment program to profile travelers entering and leaving the United States based on airline and financial data.
Kopel insisted that private information on Americans, such as credit-card records, never makes it into the screening center database and that "we rely 100 percent on government-owned information."
The center came in for ridicule last year when CBS's "60 Minutes" noted that 14 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were listed -- five years after their deaths. Kopel defended the listings, saying that "we know for a fact that these people will use names that they believe we are not going to list because they're out of circulation -- either because they're dead or incarcerated. . . . It's not willy-nilly. Every name on the list, there's a reason that it's on there."

Feeding the Terrorism Clearinghouse

Each day, waves of new information are fed into terrorism-suspect databases, and some intelligence analysts fear the quantity of information will overtake the human capacity to manage it.

GRAPHIC: By Seth Hamblin and Todd Lindeman, The Washington Post - March 25, 2007