ROGER SIMON COLUMN
APRIL 30, 2003

WASHINGTON - - Since I am a little less fascinated with Gary Hart than Gary Hart is, I had not planned on writing about him again so soon.

But on Sunday the Dallas Morning News printed an interview with Hart in which Hart attempts to re-write his past.

There is a curious disconnect between Hart’s supporters and Hart when it comes to his past, by the way. While Hart’s supporters don’t want to think about Hart’s past, Hart is obsessed with it. Or, more particularly, with revising it.

Rena Pederson, editor-at-large and former editorial page editor of the Morning News, did a serious and substantive interview with Hart and quoted him about national security, the economy, globalization, interest rates, tax cuts, etc.

Pederson also asked him about “those tabloid photos of Donna Rice sitting on his lap while his wife, Lee, was back home in Colorado.”

Hart said most people tell him they are tired of hearing about it.

“Since the subject was on the table, however, he insisted he never actually dared reporters to follow him,” Pederson wrote. “He only had suggested to reporter E.J. Dionne that, as a sitting U.S. senator, he had nothing to hide and invited the journalist to travel with him on his presidential campaign.”

One wonders why Hart brought this up - - even “insisted” on it - - considering it is not the truth.

Here is what E.J. Dionne, then the chief national political correspondent of the New York Times, wrote in the Time’s Sunday magazine on May 3, 1987.

''Follow me around. I don't care,'' he (Hart) says firmly, about the womanizing question. ''I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'd be very bored.''

Is this Hart inviting Dionne alone to travel on the presidential campaign with him or is he inviting “anybody” to “put a tail on me”?

Now, here is a third version, the version Hart told me in a lengthy, tape-recorded interview that I conducted with him in 1988 and which appears in my book, “Road Show.”

" ‘People say “you brought it on yourself,” ’ Hart said. ‘I didn't bring it on myself…. other candidates' campaigns were starting rumors about my personal life and so on. So reporters started saying 'What about these rumors?' And then I was in the business of responding to rumors. And finally the rumor-rumor-rumor got to the point - - in frustration, I said, look, follow me around. I obviously didn't mean into my house. I meant into restaurants, in public places and so on."

Hart then went on to give an interesting incite about his last decision to run for president:

“ ‘I told friends of mine that I seriously did not want to run for president,’ he said. ‘This is early '87, before I announced. I told Kathy Bushkin (his 1984 press secretary); I told Billy Shore (his senior adviser); I told my wife and I told Warren Beatty. I said: “I don't like the feel of this, I don't like what I sense. Something bad is going to happen.” I knew it was being fed by other campaigns to a degree, who were saying to the reporters: focus on his personal life, focus on his personal life.’

“But if you had this ominous feeling and you knew other campaigns were urging reporters to focus your personal life, why on earth did you have Donna Rice over at your house? I asked him.

“Hart's voice was firm and measured, with just the hint of frustration in it. ‘I felt I was entitled to have in my house, in our house, anybody I wanted to,’ he said. "It was my business. And I still feel that way, frankly. I don't think the press is justified in staking out or placing candidates under surveillance. I...don't know.’ There was a long pause. ‘I think the whole thing had less to do with bounds than it had to do with, in a curious way, integrity. For me, my independence was so much a part of who I was and my insistence on that independence was a condition of running. There was part of my personal life that I was not willing to sacrifice."

So Hart would not sacrifice his personal life, he would not sacrifice a night with Donna Rice, for the presidency.

He calls it integrity. I could come up with several other names, but “stupid” tops the list and “weak” comes in a strong second.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
APRIL 28, 2003

WASHINGTON - - The first Democratic presidential debate will take place in Columbia, S.C. on Saturday and some people are already complaining it is way too early to pay attention to something as trivial as choosing a president.

Crowded fields cause the candidates to start early because they have to raise money, hire staff and sew up the support of party activists in a very competitive environment. To put it another way: If you snooze, you lose.

Besides, it’s not that early.

Back in the 1988 campaign, there were seven Democrats running for president and they first debated in Houston in July 1987, seven months before the first contest, the Iowa caucus.

This time there are nine Democrats and they are debating in early May, eight months before the Iowa caucus. So big deal.

If we don’t see anything strange about playing baseball in the snow, why is it strange to have democracy in the spring?

The South Carolina debate is being hosted by ABC with George Stephanopoulos doing the moderating. Stephanopoulos is talented and has spent a lifetime in politics and while some say you can’t have a coherent evening with nine candidates debating in 90 minutes (minus time for commercials), who says it has to be coherent?

Modern political campaigns are about theater and debates have become mini-dramas - - rehearsed and choreographed - - and while the campaigns are pretending to be casual about this, they are taking it very, very seriously.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression and many people will be seeing the Democratic field for the first time.

While nobody will be able watch the debate on live TV, some ABC affiliates will carry it after their local news on Saturday night. And on Sunday, C-SPAN will broadcast the entire debate four times.

Mike McCurry, Bill Clinton’s press secretary and now a Washington communications consultant, was asked to help put the debate together due to the happy coincidence that the McCurry ancestral home is in Abbeville, S.C. and Mike’s father, Joe, is on the executive committee of the South Carolina Democratic Party.

A number of TV outlets wanted to sponsor the debate and McCurry evaluated each proposal. “The critical question was whether the format would put the potential nominees in a good, dignified light, have an opportunity for engagement and not be a food fight,” he said.

But the TV outlets also wanted compelling television and McCurry thought ABC’s proposal was the best mixture: In the first block, Stephanopoulos will ask questions of the candidates, hitting on the major themes of the day - - war, peace, the economy, etc.

In the second, and probably most exciting, block, each candidate will get to ask one question of one of the other candidates of his or her choice.

“It will be interesting to see if they all gang up on Kerry,” said McCurry, speaking of Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, generally considered to be the early front runner.

The third block will be Stephanopoulos asking each candidate a question, to be followed by one-minute closing statements by each candidate.

McCurry worked for one of the greatest campaigners of all time and I asked McCurry if any in the current Democratic field was as good as Clinton.

“One of them will be over time,” McCurry said diplomatically, “and they all will get better as they go along. In early 1991 Clinton did not look like the world-class communicator he became. So don’t look at the field in South Carolina and expect to see a completely polished presidential nominee. It would be better to look at them and see who has the most potential.”

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
APRIL 23, 2003

WASHINGTON - - “I won't be the first adulterer in the White House,” Gary Hart used to say. “I may be the first one to have publicly confessed, but I won't be the first.”

Then he would talk about Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower and how they all fooled around and nobody minded.

True, Hart had gotten caught and they had not, but who besides reporters - - those sanctimonious, hypocritical, self-appointed keepers of the public morals - - really objected to his behavior?

Not the people. No, the people still loved Gary Hart. He was sure of that. He had thousands of letters of support, he said, that had come to his home in Troublesome Gulch near Kittredge, Colorado, to prove it.

Hart did not have to drop out of the presidential race in 1987 after an extra-marital affair was alleged by the press. He could have, as Bill Clinton later did, simply kept running.

But Hart folded. And immediately found out that he did not like semi-obscurity. So six months later, he announced he had taken a look at the remaining Democrats in the race - - Mike Dukakis, Dick Gephardt, Paul Simon, Jesse Jackson, Al Gore and Bruce Babbitt - - and found them wanting.

They were devoid of real ideas, he said. They could not lead and they could not win. So he was forced - - nothing else he could do! - - to return to the race.

Jesse Jackson summed it up perfectly. "Gary Hart has a superiority complex," he said, "without having the superiority."

Now, some 16 years later, Gary Hart is once again poised to enter the presidential race and for the same reason: None of the Democrats, not any of the nine currently announced, are as brilliant, as visionary, as much of a winner as he is.

Besides, Hart points out, he never got a fair break the last time he ran. The press drove him out of the race, not the people.

The Atlanta Constitution had run an editorial cartoon showing a man exposing himself to two women. "Ignore him," one woman said to the other. "It's just Gary Hart with another new idea."

The Baltimore Sun's editorial had said: "Maybe he just thinks the campaign trail is a good place to meet some girls."

And James Reston, senior columnist for the New York Times, said of the Democrats: "Their best men won't run and their worst won't quit."

Such attacks were actually a good thing, Hart figured, because for the first time people would identify with him, people would pity him.

"For the first time in my life," Hart told Hunter Thompson, then a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, "black people come up to me on the street and want to shake hands with me."

"What do we call it, Gary?" Thompson asked. "What kind of vote is it? The adulterer's vote? The sex fiend vote?"

"The victim's vote," Hart replied.

Hart has been wallowing in his victimhood ever since.

No matter what else he has accomplished, no matter what books he has written, degrees he has gotten, or commissions he has co-chaired, nothing has been enough to satisfy him, nothing has been enough to disabuse him of the notion that the presidency was unfairly snatched away from him, an error of historic proportions that cannot go uncorrected.

''Walter Mondale can just go away,'' Hart told Matt Bai in a New York Times profile this February. ''John Glenn can go away. Michael Dukakis can go away. I can't just go away.''

Hart’s wife, Lee, then asked the key question: “Why?”

''I don't know,'' Hart said, shaking his head. ''I don't know. I don't know.”

Nobody cares about Hart’s adultery any more (few cared about it back then.) It was more a question of his honesty, judgment and raging ego.

Several recent articles have quoted Hart on the grave injustice he suffered in 1987, but I have yet to see an article mention what happened in 1988, when Hart re-entered the race.

Hart entered the New Hampshire primary (a contest he had won by nearly 10 percentage points four years before), and awaited the judgment of the people.

He ended up with a 4,888 votes or about 4 percent, finishing last among the Democrats. When his 114-day campaign was over, his best showing turned out to be in Puerto Rico where he got 7.5 percent of the vote.

I don’t really care if Hart runs again or not. But if he does, he runs a risk: That his fantasy of riding to the rescue of his party and nation will be shattered by the harsh reality that he has nothing new or unique to say and voters could care less about his victimhood.

"If I run for president,” he told the Washington Post last month, “my biggest fear would be not running a credible race."

Be afraid, Mr. Hart. Be very afraid.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
APRIL 21, 2003

WASHINGTON - - If ignorance is bliss, then things are downright blissful when it comes to protecting this country from future terrorist attacks.

Instead of taking practical and possibly expensive measures to make ourselves safer, we are taking symbolic and cheap measures that will do virtually nothing to safeguard our nation.

Prime example: Instead of making sure that every cargo container that enters U.S. waters does not contain a nuclear device or other weapon of mass destruction, we have instead started handing out .40 caliber semi-automatic pistols to airline pilots this week.

Which measure do you think really would protect America? Cargo inspection or cowboys in the sky?

Back in January, I wrote about how putting a nuclear weapon in the hold of a cargo ship is the most likely way that we will be attacked by such a weapon.

While we have committed billions to a “Star Wars” satellite defense system, attacking the United States by means of a nuclear missile is extremely unlikely, even if a rogue state managed to gets its hands on such a weapon.

Missiles are easy to track. Any state that attacks the United States by missile would be obliterated in return.

But putting a nuclear device in a cargo ship of international registry, sending it into, say, San Francisco or New York or Los Angeles harbor and detonating it would be relatively easy. And we would not know whom to retaliate against.

Which is why we have to check all cargo on all ships entering our harbors.

But we aren’t doing that. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal ran a story stating that about 12 million containers enter U.S. ports each year. Only 4 percent undergo security checks.

“Eighteen months after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the nation's ports remain conspicuously vulnerable to assault, law-enforcement officials say,” the Journal reported. “They fear a chemical or nuclear weapon could be smuggled inside one of the estimated 12 million shipping containers to enter U.S. ports annually. Or, an underwater mine could destroy a ship, blocking the channel, or a large vessel could be pirated and used to crash into a bridge, historic landmark or shoreside tanks holding fuel or hazardous materials.”

The story goes on to point out that while Congress has committed $8 billion to airport security, our nation’s ports have been promised only about $350 million.

How much money is actually needed? The Coast Guard says it will need $6 billion over the next 10 years to safeguard our seaports.

That is not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. But when Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., tried to add $1 billion for port security to the president’s request for nearly $80 billion to fight the war in Iraq, the Senate voted it down.

And it’s not like people have been silent about the problem. On the contrary, they have been sounding alarm bells. The Journal quotes Noel Cunningham, the port of Los Angeles’ police chief, as saying that Los Angeles harbor is “wide open” to attack.

The Iraq war has cost us $20 billion so far and will cost us many times that by the time our occupation of that country is over (if it is ever over.)

But we won’t spend an extra $1 billion to begin protecting our own harbors against attack?

That’s ignorant. And, somehow, I don’t feel all that blissful about it.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
APRIL 16, 2003

WASHINGTON - - In just about two weeks, the nine Democrats running for president will gather in Columbia, S.C., for their first debate.

All nine have sat on the same stage only once before at a forum sponsored by the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) about a week ago. It was a lively and worthwhile evening, much enhanced by a panel of four reporters who asked the candidates some tough and interesting questions.

The CDF ought to be congratulated for using reporters, as this practice has fallen out of favor and has been largely replaced by town hall meetings, where ordinary citizens do the questioning.

There is certainly a place for this format, but there is also something to be said for professional reporters, who follow the candidates and issues very closely, getting a chance to pin the candidates down.

Besides, with some town halls you never know how ordinary the ordinary citizens are.

“John McCain was probably the last time there were true town hall meetings,” one political operative experienced in such matters told me. “They were really uncontrolled. Most other town halls are strictly ticketed and they don’t leave a lot to chance.”

Town halls have become popular because the media gurus employed by the campaigns think the candidates will get much easier questions from ordinary citizens (to say nothing of their own supporters) than they will get from reporters.

When reporters ask questions, things get risky and campaign staffs exist in large measure to minimize risks.

Debates can be hugely important and hugely risky. Ever since the first televised presidential debate in 1960, debates have been remembered for embarrassments and disasters, not for a serious exchange of ideas.

In 1960, Richard Nixon’s makeup made him look like a corpse. In 1976, Gerald Ford stumbled badly when he assured the world there was “no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” In 1988, Dan Quayle fell into a trap and compared himself to Jack Kennedy. The same year, Michael Dukakis failed to show sufficient passion when answering a questions posed by CNN’s Bernard Shaw about a fictitious rapist and murderer of Dukakis’ wife. And in 1992 George H.W. Bush was caught impatiently looking at his wristwatch. (Ever since then, well-prepped candidates have taken off their watches before they take the stage.)

That is the down side. The upside is that debates can attract a huge number of viewers compared to other campaign events.

About 25 million Americans watched Al Gore and George Bush give their acceptance speeches at their conventions in 2000. About 12 million people watched each of them try to be warm and fuzzy on “Oprah.”

But their debates drew 46.6 million viewers to the first, 37.6 million to the second and 37.7 million to the third.

Primary debates don’t draw anywhere near these numbers because commercial networks don’t carry them nationally (nor is interest as great.) But primary debates can make an important initial impression on voters.

ABC is sponsoring the debate in South Carolina on May 3 and is making it available to its affiliates as well as to C-SPAN, South Carolina Public Television and ABC’s radio network.

The exact format currently remains a secret not only to the press but to the candidates, which is one other difference between primary and general election debates.

In the general election, debate details are negotiated down to whether the candidates will stand or sit, whether they can use notes, whether they can roam the stage, and whether reaction shots from the audience will be allowed. (In the Dukakis/Bush debate of 1988, reaction shots had been banned, so the television audience never saw how Mrs. Dukakis reacted to Shaw’s question.)

For the South Carolina debate all we know is there will be one questioner, “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos. (His ABC biography points out that he once worked for Richard Gephardt, one of the presidential candidates, so wait and see if Stephanopoulos hits Gephardt with a high, hard one early to show how impartial he can be.) The debate will last 90 minutes and all the rules will be determined by ABC with no veto power by the candidates.

In other words, the candidates do not yet know if they will stand, sit, stoop, or crouch.

One other important thing we do know: ABC is promising that this will be a real debate and not a forum. This usually means the candidates will get a chance to question each other, rebut each other, and beat each other up.

“The Children’s Defense Fund forum allowed us to see some of their skills,” the political operative said. “Were they sensitive to the audience, sensitive to question, sensitive to the television camera? In South Carolina, we will see how they attack and counter-attack each other.”

And I am sure there will be a serious exchange of ideas in there someplace. Maybe. If you care.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
APRIL 14, 2003

WASHINGTON - - On April 5, 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton made campaign history by saying, "I will appoint judges to the Supreme Court who believe in the constitutional right to privacy, including the right to choose.”

It was (we thought) honest and refreshing: Clinton was doing away with the pretense that he did not have a “litmus test” for his nominees.

And, on June 30, Clinton expanded on this by saying: “I think a judge ought to be able to answer a question in a Senate hearing: ‘Do you or do you not support the right to privacy, including the right to choose?’ ”

A week later on July 7, Bill Moyers interviewed Clinton on PBS and endeavored to make sure that not only Clinton but everybody else understood exactly what Clinton was saying.

"Will you see to it," Moyers asked, "if you're elected . . . your first appointee (to the Supreme Court) will be a strong supporter of Roe vs. Wade?"

"Yes," Clinton replied.

"Is that not a litmus test?" Moyers asked.

"It is, and it makes me uncomfortable," Clinton replied, "(but) I would want the first judge I appointed to believe in the right to privacy and the right to choose."

There. He had said it plainly (we thought.) He had a litmus test and he was going to use it.

Then something happened: Clinton got elected.

And at his first formal press conference in March, 1993, he was asked by a reporter: "Mr. President, during the campaign you gave some pretty strong indications that (in choosing) your Supreme Court nominee, you would certainly consider their position on abortion. Is that still the case?"

"Thank you for asking," Clinton said, “because I want to emphasize what I said before: I will not ask any potential Supreme Court nominee how he or she would vote in any particular case. I will not do that."

But is that really what he had said before? Go back and read his words and decide for yourself.

We would eventually come to know this as Clinton-speak, an alternative view not just of the English language, but of reality. But back then it was still new and confusing. (It would later grow old and confusing.)

And Clinton continued: "But I will endeavor to appoint someone who has certain deep convictions about the Constitution. And I strongly believe in the constitutional right to privacy. I believe it is one of those rights embedded in our Constitution, which should be protected."

Reporters were still perplexed, but believed (ho-ho-ho) that Clinton could be pinned down.

"Given what you just said about the right to privacy," a reporter asked, "do you think it's appropriate, and will you or members of your administration, be asking potential nominees if they support the right to privacy and whether they think that right includes the right to abortion?"

This was, however, no longer a question Bill Clinton wanted to answer.

"I will not ask anybody how they will vote in a specific case," Clinton replied again. "I will endeavor to appoint someone who has an attachment to, a belief in a strong and broad constitutional right to privacy."

I have never understood why presidents and presidential candidates dance around this issue. I have never understood why there is anything wrong with a litmus test.

“Voters should assume that I have no litmus test on that issue or any other issue,” George Bush said on Oct. 3, 2000 during his presidential debate with Al Gore.
“The voters will know I'll put competent judges on the bench, people who will strictly interpret the Constitution and will not use the bench to write social policy.”

In other words, candidates like to speak in code. That is so they can imply one thing and mean another. Or, even if they mean what they say, they don’t want to state it plainly and risk angering anybody.

Last week, however, presidential candidate John Kerry seemed to be speaking plainly: “Any president ought to appoint people to the Supreme Court who understand the Constitution and its interpretation by the Supreme Court. In my judgment, it is and has been settled law that women, Americans, have a defined right of privacy and that the government does not make the decision with respect to choice. Individuals do.”

In other words, Kerry will appoint pro-choice justices. Kerry says this is not a litmus test, however. “Litmus tests are politically motivated tests; this is a constitutional right,” he said.

That’s about as plain as anyone has made it this time around. And, agree with him or not, at least you know how he intends to choose his justices if elected.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
APRIL 9, 2003

WASHINGTON - - On television, they are tearing down Saddam Hussein’s statue again. They have been tearing it down all day because the networks just love that picture and keep running it over and over.

I suppose the picture is meant to symbolize how the people of Iraq now love us and hate Saddam.

But I can’t shake the feeling that about a month ago these same people were spitting on President Bush’s picture and burning the American flag.

I can’t shake the feeling that at least some of these people back whoever is winning at the moment.

But I guess you can’t really blame them for that: The Democratic Party is having the same problem.

Back before the war began, many Democratic party regulars - - those who show up at political events, anyway - - were firmly anti-war.

And the top tier of the party’s presidential candidates, who were all pro-war - - John Kerry, Richard Gephardt, John Edwards and Joe Lieberman - - got beat up pretty good at party events.

At the California Democratic State Convention in Sacramento in March just before the war began, Kerry got heckled when he said, “The United States of America should never go to war because it wants to; we should go to war because we have to!"

"Then why did you vote for it?" a man shouted out from the crowd.

Which was a pretty good question.

When Edwards told the crowd, "I believe Saddam Hussein is a serious threat. I believe he must be disarmed, including with the use of military force if necessary," he was soundly booed.

Lieberman didn’t show up because he probably didn’t want to get booed. “If Lieberman had shown up,” one Democratic operative told me, “they probably would have thrown furniture at him.”

So Lieberman sent a videotape. And the videotape got booed.

But at least these politicians were standing up for what they believed in. Sen. Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, decided to stand up only for his own re-election.

Facing re-election last year, Harkin voted for the resolution authorizing President Bush to invade Iraq.

But after winning re-election, Harkin said he was “fooled” and, sensing where the Democratic Party now stood in Iowa, he ripped Bush up on the war.

“If you’re a cowboy from West Texas, it’s okay to want to go in and kick Saddam Hussein’s butt,” Harkin said last month before the war began. “But if you’re president of a country that will commit hundreds of thousands of troops, spend billions of dollars, and likely need the help of the world to rebuild Iraq over the next 10 years, you had better explain why you’re going to unilaterally attack a country that is not an imminent threat to us.”

Today, Harkin does not want to dwell on the war. He wants to talk about important domestic issues, instead.

Gee, I wonder why.

Last weekend in Des Moines, Iowa, Harkin hosted the first of his forums for the presidential candidates. This one featured John Edwards and Harkin had been telling reporters for days that he didn’t want it to turn into a 90-minute anti-war forum.

Everybody expected Edwards to get beat up by the liberal, anti-war Democrats of Iowa.

So before the first question, Harkin told the crowd, “We are still at war in Iraq. I know there will be questions on the war…but I hope the discussion focuses mainly on the economy.”

Harkin didn’t have to worry. Nobody wanted to stand up in front of C-SPAN and ask a question about the war. So, amazingly, Edwards did not get a single word of criticism for supporting this war.

But maybe that is not so amazing: Before the war began, many Democrats were against it. Now that the war seems virtually won, many Democrats seem very reluctant to question it.

That’s the thing about winning. Afterwards, everybody wants to be on your side.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
APRIL 7, 2003

WASHINGTON - - The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long and so it was with Michael Kelly, whose young life and luminescent career were snuffed out on the 16th day of the Iraq war.

Kelly, 46, was an embedded journalist with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division. On Thursday night, he died when the Humvee in which he was riding plunged into a canal in the darkness near Baghdad.

Kelly became the first American journalist to die in the war, which has also claimed the lives of four foreign journalists, more than 50 U.S. service members and an uncounted number of Iraqis. President Bush expressed his "sorrow and condolences to the Kelly family" on Friday.

Kelly was covering the war as an editor-at-large for the Atlantic Monthly, where he was editor from 1999 until last fall, and as a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post.

An award-winning writer, he had already earned his bones and proved his courage in the last Gulf War, as well as in Bosnia, Croatia and Gaza. But he went to cover the current war not just because it was a story he did not want to miss, but out of a sense of duty.

Just days before his death, he told The New York Times that he and other journalists were embedding with U.S. forces because "there was a real sense after the last gulf war that witness had been lost. The people in the military care about that history a great deal, because it is their history."

The first journalist to be killed in this war was Terry Lloyd, a reporter with Britain's Independent Television News, who came under fire in southern Iraq near Basra on March 22. That same day, Paul Moran, an Australian Broadcasting Corp. cameraman, was killed in a suicide bombing in northern Iraq. On March 30, Gaby Rado, a British ITN correspondent, was found dead at an Iraqi hotel, though his fall from the roof appears unconnected to combat. Then Wednesday a land mine explosion killed Kaveh Golestan, an Iranian freelance cameraman for the British Broadcasting Corp, as he climbed out of a car in the northern town of Kifri.

In the first Gulf War, in which journalists were on their own if they wanted to get close to the action, Kelly and another journalist rented a Jeep and went bounding into the desert, where Iraqi soldiers tried to surrender to them.

This year, Kelly wrote that the new embedding system was a worthwhile experiment because a "system that allows eyewitness reporting across the spectrum of conflict, no matter how constrained, has to produce a picture of war, and of the military that goes to war, more true and complete than a system that seeks to deny eyewitness reporting."

Aware of the dangers that everyone involved in the war faced, he went nonetheless. "I've had one good break after another," he told the Boston Globe last year. "A long series of lucky breaks and good jobs and stories and a life I like living.

Last week, his luck and life ran out. But he died as lived, a seeker of truth and eyewitness to history.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
APRIL 2, 2003

WASHINGTON - - In war, 24 hours can be a lifetime. And U.S. war planners must have felt like they went through several of their lifetimes during one 24-hour period this week.

In just one day, all the frowns, knitted brows and deep worry lines over the war were wiped away and replaced with broad smiles.

The same U.S. troops that seemed bogged down, enmired and enmeshed one day, suddenly had smashed two Iraqi divisions and were driving hard on Baghdad the next.

And for the war planners, it could not have come at a better time.

By April 1, much of the nation’s media seemed thoroughly convinced the U.S. effort in Iraq had gone seriously astray.

The newspapers were filled with unnamed sources saying that we had not assembled sufficient forces before invading Iraq, we did not have enough artillery or armor there, and that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was to blame.

As one story in The New York Times put it: “One colonel, who spoke on the condition that his name be withheld, was among the officers criticizing decisions to limit initial deployments of troops to the region. ‘He (Rumsfeld) wanted to fight this war on the cheap,’ the colonel said. ‘He got what he wanted.’ ”

But that was only the beginning. Like a rock flung into a pond, the ripples of criticism spread out and washed over even President Bush. And they came from within his own party.

A second story in The Times provided this extraordinary statement: “I don't understand what is floating his ship except patriotism and terrorism concerns,” said one conservative Republican political strategist. “If the tide turns, there's nothing else that keeps his boat afloat. There's a sort of feeling out there of, `Where is this thing going?' We were all happy to follow President Bush into this, but we're now starting to look up at the hillside and wondering who's up there.”

The story went on: “It's obvious that all the Rumsfeld and (Paul) Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense) battle plans are not panning out," said a veteran Republican strategist based in Washington. "Rumsfeld can only reform things so long before it gets pointed out that they underestimated what was necessary. Where are the flowers being thrown at our forces? Where are the peace signs?"

And this: "What's troublesome is the loss of deterrent value," the retired general said. "A month ago everybody in the world looked at the U.S. military as being 10 feet tall. We're not 10 feet tall.”

Oh, yeah? Ask them how tall they think we are today.

Those days we spent bombing Iraqi troops, when U.S. forces were either bogged down or taking a planned breather, seem to have paid off as our soldiers have decimated two of Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard. And after days of hearing that our forces were stopped 50 or 60 miles from Baghdad, we are now hearing they are 20 of 30 miles from Baghdad. We even got a prisoner of war back.

And, finally, there was this from The Washington Post: “Hundreds of curious civilians, many of them smiling and waving, lined the narrow, dusty streets (of Najaf) whiled soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division” passed by.

Yes, there are still four elite Iraqi divisions that have not yet been degraded by our air assault. Our supply lines are still long and in need of defending. Iraqi forces are not, as I write this, surrendering en masse. If Saddam is dead, his forces seem to be fighting without him. And, so far, we have not found any weapons of mass destruction that this war is supposed to be about.

And, of course, taking Baghdad could involve hideous, block-by-block fighting. Things could, in other words, still go badly.

So maybe the lesson is this: In war, instant analysis isn’t worth a thing. In a single day, everything can change.

This isn’t a sprint and it isn’t a marathon. It’s a roller coaster ride.