Who Can Really Say?

I'm adding two more links to my blogroll -- and I'll pretty much leave them to speak for themselves. The first is to Mark Steyn, who introduces his latest for the Chicago Sun-Times with this:

For a year or so now, I've woken up to a ton of e-mails each morning with the subject marked BUSH LIED! -- or, to be more precise, BUSH LIED!!!!!!! I'm not one who thinks it helpful to characterize a policy difference as a ''lie.'' So, when John Kerry says he supports the Kyoto Treaty even though he voted for a bill that declared the United States would never ever ratify it, that doesn't mean he's a ''liar,'' it just means that, well, to be honest, I haven't a clue what it means, you better to take it up with him, now he's out of the hospital after his elective surgery. ''Elective surgery" means you vote to have the operation, and then spend the next year insisting you've always been strongly opposed to the operation.

The second is to James Lilek's and his Bleat (this from Thursday):

Then, a few hours later with Judy Woodruff:

Kerry: "They are doing [the transfer] in such, a frankly, an inept way, Judy, that they're not really inviting anybody sufficiently to the table. People don't want to go to work for Paul Bremer and the provisional authority. What you need to do is have a transfer of authority for the reconstruction and for the transformation of the government to a legitimate international entity. Every day that goes by that this Administration has refused to do it has complicated the doing of it. They in fact have made it much harder to accomplish what could have been accomplished and should have been accomplished a long time ago. So I refuse to accept that logic from them, and I laid out this plan months ago. They are trying to do it through the back door, almost through the keyhole, rather than openly coming forward and acknowledging they need help."

If I may coin a new term: diplobabble. We have a stark choice: Bush?s blunt and frequently inarticulate remarks, versus Kerry?s prolix, labrynthic diplobabble. Which legitimate international entity? Not the coalition we have now, obviously. He can only mean the UN, whose dealings with Iraq have not exactly been characterized by high-minded noble intentions. Incidentally: If the US pressured Israel to make peace with the PA and grant massive concessions, would anyone be complaining that the agreement hadn?t been run through ?a legitimate international entity??

Beneath all the diplobabble is a clear tenet of the Kerry Doctrine: Actions are legitimized solely by the quantity of allies. (In the case of Rwanda, Sudan et al, inaction is legitimized by the number of other Great Powers disinclined to act.) Other people don?t want to go to work for Paul Bremer, and in Kerry?s view that?s a problem.

Solution: make our Marines go to work for Kofi Annan.

Questions: when the UN takes control before the hand-over, and refuses to authorize a military response to an assault on coalition troops, and the emboldened ?rebels? kill a dozen Marines in a new attack, can we vote Kofi out of office? Can we sue Hans Blix?

And when the French officials show up to help ease the transition to civilian leadership, what do we say when they insist on banning headscarves for schoolgirls?

Steyn and Lileks. It doesn't get any better.