News Trust dot Net

A non-profit initiative called Newstrust is developing a system for rating news from a very broad array of sources. And unlike previous efforts that employed teams of paid reviewers (a model that proved economically unviable), this one is a social network model which uses the intellect of the masses to rate all manner of news content and news sources. In beta now and due out in early 2008, Newstrust will not only be a stand-alone site where consumers can come to find the best journalism as ranked by an army of volunteer media reviewers, but more importantly it will (we can hope) be deployed over all manner of online news sources so that readers will on any news-related website see an objective rating of that site's quality and of specific news content.

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Anyone can sign up to be a Newstrust reviewer, with nothing more than an e-mail address. That gets you the right to start reviewing news sources (websites, blogs, etc.) and individual articles. Reviewers are asked to rate news sources using a simple 5-star selection. Each source gets an aggregate score. Ratings for individual stories are more interesting and deeper; story reviewers are asked a series of questions about the article (rate with 1-5 stars):

Is it a good story?

Do you trust this publication?

Is the story informative?

Is the story fair?

Is the story well sourced?

Does the story show the "big picture"

The reviewer also can leave a text review, which will show up on Newstrust along with the story.

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More importantly, Newstrust's developers are building bias filters into the algorithm that drives the site. Every member reviewer of Newstrust gets a "member rating," which is an assessment of their performance as a reviewer. When administrators notice a reviewer that consistently reviews sources and articles with a particular political bias, for example, that reviewer's member rating gets knocked down. While the biased member can continue rating things, his impact on the overall scores is neglible, and his written reviews are either placed where few will see them or not shown at all.

Administrators actively look for reviewers who are trying to game the system and influence ratings toward a particular point of view (e.g., a conservative reviewer who regularly gives 5 stars to opinion pieces on Fox News while ranking New York Times articles with 1 star). Such people are then sent an e-mail with a request to comply with the non-partisan spirit of Newstrust and start reviewing content and sources objectively.

The site also has tiers of reviewers. Everyone starts out as a Reviewer, but if you really get into this and perform in an objective manner, you can be promoted to a Host or even an Editor.

A future enhancement to the site will be bias-adjusted reviews – that is, optional ratings based exclusively on reviews by Hosts and Editors. (That may be a paid premium service.)

Trouble for the Democrats

In yesterday's Washington Post, Dan Balz and Chris Cillizza report on remarks by House Majority Whip James Clyburn. Among other gems:

Many Democrats have anticipated that, at best, Petraeus and U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker would present a mixed analysis of the success of the current troop surge strategy, given continued violence in Baghdad. But of late there have been signs that the commander of U.S. forces might be preparing something more generally positive. Clyburn said that would be "a real big problem for us."

Chickenhawks

Baldilocks notes that Paul McLeary has admitted to fumbling when he wrote that the milbloggers were chickenhawks.

He also links to several discussions of the term "chickenhawk" on his blog.

Chickenhawks?

This is showing up all over the place. It seems the Columbia School of Journalism needs a dictionary which properly defines the term "chicken-hawk".

In another ridiculous attack on bloggers covering the New Republic Scott Beauchamp incident, Paul McLeary of the partisan hack outlet the Columbia Journalism Review says milbloggers are chickenhawks

Mr. McLeary must not know what the "mil" stands for.

Life after Katrina

From NRO: A piece on how New Orleans has fared in the two years following Katrina.

...what would keep the good times rolling?

First, crime control is a must. The bad guys have returned with a vengeance. The local homicide rate has climbed a staggering 100 percent this year, according to a recent NBC News story. New Orleans needs a strong dose of Giuliani-style "broken windows" policing. Fighting small crimes usually nabs the perpetrators of bigger violations. An NYPD-type CompStat system also would help police commanders pinpoint crimes on precinct maps and employ those indicators to deploy cops exactly where crimes tend to unfold.

Second, FEMA still cannot connect trailers with everyone who needs them. While some still seek them, others who have finished rebuilding their houses no longer need trailers, but cannot get FEMA to collect them.

FEMA could help by deregulating its failed trailer operation. It should allow inhabitants to sell their trailers to those who need them. This will wheel unneeded trailers to those who want them.

Third, close Mr. Go.

The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (nicknamed "Mr. Go" and the Hurricane Highway) facilitated Katrina's devastation of New Orleans. In 1956, Congress authorized this mini-Mississippi River as a shortcut to the Gulf of Mexico. But on August 29, 2005, Mr. Go became a varnished wooden lane that sped the bowling ball of Katrina's storm surge right into the pins of New Orleans' skyline. The resulting strike still smarts.

Murtha and Pelosi -- architects of defeat?

From today's Washington Times:

Mr. Murtha plans to offer three amendments to the fiscal 2008 defense appropriations bill: One would set a 60-day timeline to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq (which will certainly help al Qaeda and the like in planning the Rwanda-ization of the country). A second Murtha amendment would implement the Pennsylvania Democrat's "slow-bleed" strategy for ensuring a U.S. military defeat by conditioning funds for the war upon the military meeting some unattainable standards for training and equipping the troops. Should the administrate violate the strictures in an effort to reinforce besieged American soldiers or prevent genocide, we have no doubt that if the Democrats are still in the majority that they will be holding oversight hearings and issuing subpoenas to U.S. military commanders and senior Pentagon officials, summoning them to testify about "why they broke the law" by sending these soldiers to the battlefield.

Mr. Murtha's third amendment would close the Guantanamo Bay facility. He hasn't said precisely what he wants to do with these terrorists, but his Democratic colleagues have weighed in, including Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia (who has been perhaps the most fervent congressional advocate of shutting down Gitmo) as well as House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri and Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan.

Three Inconvenient Truths

A piece at Tech Central Station has "Three Inconvenient Truths" for those who think the war in Iraq is lost.

First, one of the principal purposes of the surge is to persuade the Iraqi population that we are going to stay in their neighborhoods until the Iraqi army and police can take over and bring an end to violence. Only when they have confidence that we will not abandon them to the terrorists will Iraqis come forward-as they now appear to be doing-with information about who among them are the terrorists, militia members and other killers, and where they can be found.

Accordingly, efforts to force the withdrawal of our troops at a time certain undermine this policy and the work and bravery of our soldiers. They cause Iraqis to doubt our promises of long term support, and weaken their incentive to assist us with intelligence. Timetables, then, and pressing for a quick withdrawal, become a self-fulfilling prophesy. In other words, if the surge fails, President Bush will not be the only politician who takes the blame.

Second, although Senator Reid and other war opponents can glibly claim that there is no hope that an independent Iraq can survive, there is one group that is truly expert on that question, and they clearly don't believe it. That group consists of the Iraqis who are now in the Iraqi government-from Prime Minister al-Maliki on down-who risk their lives and the lives of their families every day that they serve. They are Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and all of them are targets of the insurgency and the terrorists of al Qaeda. What motive could these dedicated Iraqis possibly have to place themselves in such a position unless they believe that they can keep the country together and in the end produce a peaceful and unified state?

When we hear war opponents expound on the fact that the enmity between Shiites and Sunnis goes back a thousand years, and that it can't possibly be resolved by the United States in any reasonable period of time, we should think of the Sunnis and Shiites in the Iraqi government today, and whether they think this is a persuasive argument. If they did, they would have been gone long ago-now in Iran or Syria-trying to start their new lives. But they're not-they're in Baghdad-a completely irrational act unless they believe that this historic religious rivalry can be controlled and subdued. It is a wildly arrogant idea that we can tell them that their history cannot be overcome.

Finally, if-as seems apparent now-the surge is succeeding, opponents of the war are going to be hard-pressed to make the case for abandoning Iraq, even if there is no Shi'ite-Sunni political settlement in sight. The inconvenient truth here is that, apart from the irreconcilable Left, the American people's support for withdrawal has been based on an assessment that we were losing the war. If that no longer seems true, support for withdrawal will melt away. The Democratic leaders know this; that's why they made a concerted effort last week to get a vote on withdrawal in July. September, which will likely see a favorable report by General Petraeus, will be too late. Claims that the inability of the Iraqis to reach a political settlement is a reason for us to leave will ring a bit hollow in the face of a possible military success. After all, the American people have noticed that our Congress, unthreatened by anything more serious than an upcoming election, couldn't pass an immigration bill, can't eliminate earmarks or adopt ethics rules, and can't agree on energy legislation when gasoline is $3.50 a gallon. Politicians, they know, will be politicians, but that doesn't mean we should hand our enemies a victory instead of a defeat.

Nevertheless, because weakening the will of the American people is the only way that al-Qaeda and our other opponents in Iraq can hope to win, between now and September we will see an all-out effort to inflict heavy casualties on our troops and on Iraqi civilians. Unfortunately, this can be a winning strategy. If we are unprepared for it, a bad August and early September could still lead to a collapse in public support that would even sweep congressional Republicans with it. We should not forget that the North Vietnamese Tet offensive of 1968-although it resulted ultimately in a military defeat for the North-became a turning point in the war because it destroyed the American public's belief in our ultimate military success. A series of spectacular and dramatic attacks could do the same for our enemies in Iraq. They know that, and we should expect them to try.

But if these attacks do not occur-or if they do and are quickly quelled-the success of the surge will be an inconvenient political truth that many in the Democratic party will not easily survive.

Beauchamp cut off

Beldar observes that Private Beauchamp has been stripped of his internet and e-mail privileges.

I guess that means we won't be hearing a Beaupeep from him for a while.

The situation in Iraq

From today's NY Times:

By MICHAEL E. O'HANLON and KENNETH M. POLLACK

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration's miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily "victory" but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

<snip>

We traveled to the northern cities of Tal Afar and Mosul. This is an ethnically rich area, with large numbers of Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens. American troop levels in both cities now number only in the hundreds because the Iraqis have stepped up to the plate. Reliable police officers man the checkpoints in the cities, while Iraqi Army troops cover the countryside. A local mayor told us his greatest fear was an overly rapid American departure from Iraq. All across the country, the dependability of Iraqi security forces over the long term remains a major question mark.

But for now, things look much better than before. American advisers told us that many of the corrupt and sectarian Iraqi commanders who once infested the force have been removed. The American high command assesses that more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners (at least for as long as American forces remain in Iraq).

<snip>

How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.

Michael E. O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Kenneth M. Pollack is the director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings.

Beauchamp's diary entries

This one from Real Clear Politics

Jack Kelly notes that Beauchamp is in big trouble, pretty much regardless of whether his accounts are true or not.

If what Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp wrote in the New Republic isn't true, he's in trouble, and so is the magazine.

If what Pvt. Beauchamp wrote is true, he's in bigger trouble.

<snip>

It would be better for Pvt. Beauchamp if he made his stories up. It breaks no military rule to BS gullible liberal journalists. But if Pvt. Beauchamp is telling the truth, he and his buddies have broken so many articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that I haven't space to list them all.

It isn't only Pvt. Beauchamp who'd be in trouble. If the latter two stories are true, then his fire team leader, squad leader, platoon sergeant and platoon leader either witnessed them, and did nothing about them, or were negligent in supervising their soldiers. And if I were his company commander, I wouldn't be expecting below the zone promotion to major anytime soon.

His superiors won't be happy campers, and neither will his fellow troops, to whom he has brought unwanted scrutiny, deserved or not. I suspect Pvt. Beauchamp soon will be the guest of honor at a blanket party.

That he is Pvt. Beauchamp suggests this is not his first brush with the UCMJ. He called himself PFC Beauchamp on his Web site last September, which indicates he's been busted a stripe. He's been in the Army long enough to be a Spec 4.

Come to think of it, I wonder if the rest of the soldiers in his unit have cause for a defamation suit.

On his blog (Sir Real Scott Thomas), Pvt. Beauchamp indicates he's an aspiring writer who joined the Army to establish credentials for voicing his liberal political opinions.

"I know that NOT participating in a war (and such a misguided one at that) should be considered better than wanting to be in one just to write a book," he wrote May 18, 2006. "But...maybe I'd rather be both."

But is Pvt. Beauchamp telling the truth about what he sees in Iraq?

In a blog entry for May 8, 2006, Pvt. Beauchamp describes an atrocity: "'Put a 556 in his head.' (The caliber of an M-16 rifle is 5.56 millimeters.) On the street below, the man's brown face dissolves in a thick red mist. The lights in the city's houses shut off in unison.

Electricity rationing. Water rationing too. You ever tried to survive

for more than a few hours in 120 degree weather"

On May 8, 2006, Pvt. Beauchamp was in Germany, where temperatures rarely reach 120 degrees, and the electricity and water work just fine.

Well, the electricity *is* 50-cycle, so his appliances may not have been working very well.

Note, though, his stated reason for entering the military is about the same as Dr. Wells' reason for getting a Ph.D. in Biology.

Shock troop journalism

From Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard blog

When the Columbia Journalism Review solicits donations, it explains its mission like this:

We are dedicated to defending quality journalism, which has many enemies and challenges these days. Our best weapons are deep analysis and investigation, and these tools can be expensive. We rely on people like you to help us produce the kind of magazine and website that can make a difference.

This description is hard to square with CJR's own coverage of the Scotty Beauchamp story, which ran under the headline, "Why do conservatives hate the troops?"

CJR does not examine the complexities and challenges of pseudonymous writing, or the fact that the New Republic has failed to produce any corroboration for Beauchamp's account, or the delicacy of fact-checking spouses of your own employee. Instead, CJR writer Paul McCleary attacks milbloggers for being chickenhawks.

How dare a college grad and engaged citizen volunteer to join the Army to fight for his country! (Which is something that most of the brave souls who inhabit the milblog community prefers to leave to others.) While there are some very legitimate questions about what Beauchamp wrote, nothing, it's worthy of note, has been proved false yet. But that hasn't stopped the sharp knives of a slew of bloggers from coming out.

McCleary clearly has a lot to learn, starting with an understanding of what a milblog is and the experiences of those who write them. (Hint: mil is short for military.) CJR's donors may want to ask for a refund.

Dean Barnett on "Shock Troops"

Dean Barnett on the "Shock Troops" article at The New Republic.

VDH on Withdrawal from Iraq

Victor Davis Hanson on the consequences of retreat

It is easier to envision post-democratic Iraq as a tripartite badlands: a shaky Kurdistan living under the fear of alternate invasion from either oil-hungry Turkey or an ascendant Iran; a Sunni Anbar serving, like Waziristan or Somalia, as a terrorist haven, effused with Wahhabi money and sharia courts; and an Arab Shiite rump state of Iran, residing in safety under an Iranian nuclear umbrella, that would be the convenient jumping off point for Shiite insurgents in the Gulf States. The sorting out of populations into these various enclaves would be messy and bloody, if not like the Pakistani partition of 1947, at least akin to what we saw in the Balkans during the 1990s.

What would the effect be of all this televised carnage and chaos on the United States? Antiwar critics would turn on a dime — disclaiming their prior assertions that our presence ipso facto had been the chief cause of the violence in Iraq. Instead, when the mass beheadings of female reformers and serial shootings of "collaborators" appeared on our screens, American and European leftists would almost immediately blame our fickleness for the carnage. Theirs would not be entirely a humanitarian critique — that our withdrawal was not handled sensibly or with proper concern for civilian security — as much a damning indictment of our military incompetence, far greater than the 1990s furor during the no-fly-zone years over the Shiite and Kurdish massacres that resulted from our failure to go to Baghdad in 1991. Just as our resolve and stubbornness are now alleged to have resulted in the deaths of thousands, so our irresoluteness would soon be cited for the murders of tens of thousands.

A second effect would be a sort of psychological devastation of the U.S. military, particularly the army. Critics of the Iraq war allege that once out of Iraq, we would not have precious assets exposed in Iraq (where the enemy is), and thus enjoy better options in dealing with, for example, Iran. But what precisely is the point? That our military would flee the messy encounter with al Qaeda to reengage al Qaeda on supposedly better terrain and with better odds? As in Afghanistan? The Pakistani borderlands? Or that a Shiite Iran should be fearful of an America freed up through defeat by Sunni terrorists?

General Petreas abandons credibility?

General Petreas has been interviewed on the Hugh Hewitt show, therefore, he's now the enemy.

Another test

This is a test.
Hopefully, this will be bolded.
And hopefully, this will be in italics.

Does the UN want us to stay in Iraq?

Captain Ed Morrissey notes a quote by the UN Secretary General, warning that a precipitous withdrawal of troops may have severe consequences in Iraq.

Ban doesn't exactly endorse a long-term counterinsurgency effort in this statement, but he's asking the anti-war faction a question they thus have refused to answer. If the US retreats, how do they expect to keep a genocidal free-for-all from erupting in our wake? While the same people recall the collective failure in Rwanda and the ongoing genocide in Darfur -- conducted by radical Islamists -- and push for American intervention in the latter, they have no answer for the obvious calamitous consequences of an American pullout from Iraq.

Kling on George Bush

Arnold Kling writes about the George Bush presidency. He's not a fan of Bush.

I have never felt comfortable with George Bush. I voted for Al Gore--although I never felt comfortable with him, either. I felt even less comfortable with John Kerry, so that I voted for Bush in 2004.

Neoconservatism is not my ideology. As I pointed out four years ago, the economic ideology of neoconservatism is willing to accept a large and ever-growing government, whereas I am not. Neoconservatives are comfortable turning religious values into hot-button political causes, while I prefer to keep my conservative moral values in the background. Finally, neoconservatives are somewhat more grandiose and moralistic than I am on foreign policy.

Nevertheless, Bush has one point in his favor.

I think that President Bush has got one thing very much right, which is that Arab-Islamic terrorism is a symptom that something is rotten in the Middle East. If anything, his failures in Iraq and Palestine are due to underestimating the degree of rot. For all the allegations of his lack of intellect, George Bush is a brainiac compared to people who want to see terrorism as a symptom of something rotten in the United States or Israel.

He then addresses five points he considers "myths" about the Bush presidency:

• Myth 1: Bush lost in 2000
• Myth 2: Bush economic policies were disastrous
• Myth 3: Bush was too right-wing
• Myth 4: Bush was too partisan
• Myth 5: Iraq reflects Bush's personality

Read the whole thing.

A three-word question for Iraq

In his writings on economics, Thomas Sowell boils a lot of advanced economics down to a three-word question: "And then what?"

"And then what?" That is the question which should be asked of those who are demanding that we pull out of Iraq now.

Read the rest of it.

And remember, as I've pointed out elsewhere, this war is not optional.

The "war on terror" is a misleading phrase. It is the terrorists' war against us -- and it is not something that we can unilaterally call off. Our only choice is where to fight it, over there or over here.

President Bush's Legacy

William Kristol has a piece about how Bush's legacy will shape up, after the snarling and temper tantrums have had a chance to die down.

Let's step back from the unnecessary mistakes and the self-inflicted wounds that have characterized the Bush administration. Let's look at the broad forest rather than the often unlovely trees. What do we see? First, no second terrorist attack on U.S. soil -- not something we could have taken for granted. Second, a strong economy -- also something that wasn't inevitable.

And third, and most important, a war in Iraq that has been very difficult, but where -- despite some confusion engendered by an almost meaningless "benchmark" report last week -- we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome.

Ford's legacy improved markedly after a few decades' aging, why not Bush's?

Michael Yon on Iraq

Michael Yon wrote about an incident that has stirred some controversy.

The paragraph that generated controversy follows:

The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family.

He "only" has the word of one Iraqi official, but he also notes:

As I write these words just a few miles from the graves I saw, the resulting controversy about whether what the man said was true, or whether his words should have been written if the writer couldn’t verify them, seems precious. There is no imaginary line of credulity that al Qaeda might cross should it go from beheading children to baking them.

....

People at home might find it incredible, improbable, even impossible. Yet here in combat with al Qaeda, the idea is no more improbable-sounding than someone saying “The chicken crossed the road.” Maybe the chicken crossed the road. Maybe not. The veterans I’ve been talking with here have no difficulty imagining the chicken crossing the road, or al Qaeda roasting kids. Sickening, yes. Improbable, no.