What makes for a successful transition from a poor colonial state to one that grows and gains political stability? Simple - one decent politician (just one is needed) who will step down after one or two terms as president rather than become president for life and the basic institutional structure to create markets - property rights and the rule of law.

It's not that complicated, but a tough combination to find. See Ralph Peters' New York Post column on the recent progress in Mozambique that fits this model.

(July 13 2004)

The Bush administration has been let off the hook by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s skewering of U.S. intelligence agencies for providing unfounded or overstated conclusions on Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD). The key issue, unaddressed by the Senate committee, is whether the Bush administration created pressure for the intelligence agencies to reach such an exaggerated opinion of the Iraqi threat.

The Democrats on the committee foolishly bought into an agreement that will likely postpone a committee report on that more important issue until after the election. Yet voters would profit from information about whether the Bush administration pressured the intelligence community or exaggerated, twisted the truth or even lied about the Iraqi threat in its rush to justify war. The very fact that the Republicans wanted a delay in resolving such important questions should indicate where the evidence leads.

Suspiciously and surprisingly, up until high profile declarations by President Bush and Vice President Cheney in August 2002, the CIA had never stated categorically that Saddam Hussein had WMD. According to Bob Woodward, in his book Plan of Attack, the vice president noted on August 26, 2002 that “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” According to Woodward, one month later, the president said, “The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons.” After those speeches, CIA director George Tenet--a holdover from the Clinton administration and, according to some intelligence officials, eager to win a place in the president’s conservative inner circle—rushed to commission a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi WMD. The last prior intelligence estimate on the subject was done in 2000 and was duly cautious—as intelligence estimates usually tend to be.

Yet in the wake of the high profile comments of the president and vice president, the new October 2002 estimate stated boldly and without caveats, in its summary of “Key Judgments,” that “Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons.” Yet the evidence in the body of the report to back up this key judgment was thin and sometimes even contradictory to this conclusion. The thinness of the intelligence community’s evidence was reflected in the Senate committee’s searing finding that the community’s conclusions on Iraqi WMD were mostly unsubstantiated or overreaching. Furthermore, such grandiose conclusions from a normally cautious intelligence community, after categorical statements by its masters and funders, seem to indicate a response to pressure. After all, the process is supposed to work the other way around. Statements of high-powered policymakers are supposed to reflect the best estimates that the intelligence community has to offer, not vice versa. In August and September 2002, the president and vice president’s statements clearly went beyond what the intelligence community had concluded at that time.

Even if some would naively believe that this suspicious chronology did not indicate administration pressure, the administration is still responsible for the analysis that its intelligence community produces and should have actively reviewed, detected and questioned the overly ambitious conclusions based on thin evidence.

In another example of top administration officials going beyond the intelligence community’s findings, President Bush, at a meeting with 18 members of Congress on September 26, 2002, declared that, “Saddam Hussein is a terrible guy who is teaming up with al Qaeda.” Yet despite its harsh criticism of the intelligence community, the Republican-controlled Senate committee commended the CIA for its finding that no close relationship existed between Iraq and al Qaeda. The 9/11 Commission recently reached the similar conclusion that no collaborative relationship existed between Saddam Hussein’s regime and the terrorist group. On this issue, CIA analysts that came before the committee reported feeling pressured by administration officials but should be commended for not wilting under the heat.

Does other evidence exist that the Bush administration pressed the intelligence community to agree with its harsh assessment of the Iraqi threat? First, in a highly unusual move, the administration set up a competing office in the more hawkish Pentagon to explore links between Iraq and terrorist groups—most likely to stiffen the CIA’s backbone on this issue. In addition, Vice President Cheney made five to eight out-of-the-ordinary visits to the CIA. Normally, CIA officials go to the offices of high-level officials to give briefings on their findings. Furthermore, the Senate committee reported that the repetitive questions asked by administration officials were regarded by some intelligence analysts a pressure tactic.

So although the Senate committee report is useful, it allows the Bush administration to escape addressing the most important question facing voters in November: Did the Bush administration pressure the intelligence community to hype the Iraqi threat in order to justify shedding American blood in an unnecessary and ill-advised war?

My problem with the upcoming election is that one of these two men, George Bush or John Kerry is going to win it. Here is an absolutely excellent and very funny piece of animation that points out the absurdity of the above fact. When you get to the website click on animation then choose This Land. Be patient it takes a small amount of time to download but it is worth it. Also, do not turn on your sound until you see the picture, sometimes part of the song plays first before the animation begins. Thank God for humor, I have a growing feeling that we are all going need it more than ever during the next four years.

[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

Before the fall of communism, Republicans were fond of pointing out that people were risking their lives to get out of communist countries, and risking their lives to get in to capitalist countries. This, they insisted, was all one needed to know in order to evaluate the respective merits of the two systems.

Interestingly, the Republicans have been remarkably slow to appeal to that test lately -- perhaps because this time the results would not favour their position.

As Lew Rockwell points out, in the days of Saddam Hussein"people from all over the region wanted to come to Iraq"; by contrast, under the American puppet régime"those who come are there for jihad, while the flow otherwise runs in the opposite direction."

And that's no surprise. Iraq under Hussein was one of the most liberal societies in the Arab world. Of course that isn't saying much, and it's quite consistent with the undeniable truth that Hussein was a murderous, dictatorial thug. The fact that most Iraqis were better off under that murderous, dictatorial thug than they are under the American occupation is a shameful indictment of U.S. foreign policy.

Those of a Panglossian disposition may insist that Iraq's current wretched condition is merely temporary, a result of the war, and that in a short while, once the last pockets of resistance have been stamped out, it will become a shining, free, prosperous oasis to which immigrants will eagerly flow. Soviet apologists were saying the same thing about Russia for seventy years.

But what is the plan for achieving this miracle? As La Boétie and Hume have taught us, no ruler can maintain power by force alone. And as Rockwell reminds us, Hussein didn't. But the U.S. is trying to. Only failure can result.

Charles Dunoyer began his career as a dissident journalist bitterly attacking the reigning monarchy in France. After its overthrow, the excesses of its republican and imperial successors eventually led him to call for the monarchy's restoration. I used to attribute this to a weakening of Dunoyer's libertarian principles, and to some extent I still think it was. But I understand how he felt.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to welcome my friend and colleague, Peter Boettke, to the ranks of Liberty and Power as a new Contributing Editor. Pete is the Deputy Director of the James M.Buchanan Center for Political Economy, a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center, and a professor in the economics department at George Mason University. He is also an author of many books and essays, and one terrific thinker. You can find out more about him here. Welcome aboard, Pete!

The moments when your politics and real life clash are always anxious and unpleasant ones. For me they normally involve morphing uncontrollably into my father, an unabashed Daley (the orignal not current one) Big-Government Democrat from Chicago. You hope that none of your liberal and/or conservative friends notice the slip and you search vainly through your mind for some intellectual escape hatch from your sin.

One of the most problematic areas for me has been the TSA and privacy fights over airline passenger information. Part of me, the libertarian part, the good part, has read about the amazingly poor record of the TSA both in protecting the rights of citizens and, more importantly, actually improving security. The libertarian part of me is also thrilled the TSA's latest attempt to look into people's lives CAPPS II was defeated by organizations like the EFF, who are doing great work on everyone's behalf. As was the case with Supreme Court's recent decisions against the government's detaining enemy combatants, the death of CAPPS II yesterday deserves to be enjoyed by civil libertarians.

Then there's the part of me that flies about 80,000 miles a year for my job. That part of me wonders a lot about whether or not flying is really about civil liberties. Clearly, I shouldn't have to tell a government agency, that took over security by force from the airlines, details of my personal life to get on an airplane. I also shouldn't have to take abuse from their officials at checkpoints. But, the flying part of me does not want to get on an airplane that's unnecessarily unsafe.

Now that's not to say that CAPPS II would have made flying safer - on the whole it might have, but the costs of the risks being lower would have been too high. But let's suppose the government weren't involved in"protecting" us in flight. Would private airlines not impose similar security measures to make their planes safe enough to avoid civil liability? In short, if I privately contract with Northwest Airlines, who's to say I wouldn't agree that passengers might have to reveal certain things in order to fly to protect their planes and other passengers?

Are our concerns as advocates of liberty merely that these are intrusions into privacy or that it's the government that's intruding? For me, it's the later, because I assume a privately run system would give me the choice to decide on an airlines that had a privacy policy/safety record ratio I could live with. But does everyone here agree with that?

Is this the beginning of a trend? Francis Fukuyama has announced that he is not voting for Bush.

My new Fox column poses five questions each for vice presidential candidates John Edwards and Dick Cheney.