GEORGE BUSH: I'll support a constitutional amendment saying that marriage should be for heterosexuals only. To be honest, I see this more as political maneuvering, similar to his dad's support for an amendment against flag burning. Dad's move was disingenuous, but smart: it forced the opposing party to line up on the pro-flag-burning side. I'm not sure his son's move is as smart. Tolerance for gays is increasing, and it could backfire. Still, he's drawing distinctions, which is better than Al Gore did last time around. Besides, apart from some conservative gay columnists, the gay community tilts Democratic, so it isn't like he's losing votes. As I said, I think this is political maneuvering.

Speaking of the Democrats and political maneuvering, don't forget that Bill Clinton supported the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. The act says that states do not have to recognize same-sex marriages created in other states.

Even today, in 2003, Democratic hopeful John Kerry opposes gay marriage. Candidate Howard Dean, on the other hand, is championing gay marriage civil unions, which he made legal in Vermont. Bush's move may be a sign that he expects Dean to win his party's nomination.

UPDATE: Lieberman joined Bush in opposing gay marriages, though he doesn't want a constitutional amendment preventing it.

JOSEPH LIEBERMAN: Bush is making a just war look bad, and Democrats don't recognize that the war is just.

"By its actions, the Bush administration threatens to give a bad name to a just war," the Connecticut Democrat told a Capitol Hill news conference. "But by their words, some in my party threaten to send a message that they don't know a just war when they see it, and more broadly that they're not prepared to use our military strength to protect our security and the cause of freedom."

Go, Lieberman. The only thing I question is his support of U.N. peacekeepers. Military action by U.N. committee has not been successful in the past, and there's more military action ahead.

Candidates Lieberman, John Kerry, John Edwards and Dick Gephardt all voted to support the president's authority to take action in Iraq.

The future of 100.3 The River is still uncertain, but it's a little less so now. In response to 10,000 calls and emails, the new owners have decided to keep the format. It's still unclear which employees will stay on. It's also possible that the name will change.

I hope the management realizes that those 10,000 calls and emails weren't because listeners loved the format. The people at the station are more important to us than the format.

See Tuesday's post for background, and for the letter Melissa and I sent to the station.

ATRIOS: We're taking women and children hostages in Iraq to get to members of the Baathist party. See also followup post here. If true, this is wrongful behavior for our military to engage in. I'll need more proof before I believe it, though.

UPDATE: Here's a discussion of the note at Samizdata.

AMERICAN DIGEST: Killing Fields Without Borders. The left is currently touting the American body count in Iraq since Bush declared major hostilities ended. This article points out what they're not counting: the average of 200 Iraqis per week that have died at Saddam's hands since he came into power 23 years ago. (Statistics from Human Rights Watch.) Scrapple Face phrased it another way.

STEVEN DEN BESTE: New poll data shows that the public isn't buying the "Bush lied" campaign. People are smarter than the current democratic leadership thinks.

MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY: Confessions of an anti-sanctions activist.

I will always remember the words of my mentor at Western Washington University, Leonard Helfgott, regarding my plans to go to Iraq with Voices: "Have you read Hanna Batatu's book on Iraq?[7] You must read it before you go. If you finish it, you will know more about Iraq than anyone in Washington State!" I confess that I left without finishing Batatu's 1,000-page-plus tome, and I paid for my inattention by being led astray by my friends in Voices. The most glaring example I saw of gross unfamiliarity with Iraq was a Voices group member who was wholly unaware that the Iran-Iraq war had ever taken place.[8] This latter episode revealed that the larger context of the violence in Iraq - a context that long predated the sanctions - mattered very little to Voices.

But then we - like the Iraqi regime - were always antagonistic towards the Oil-for-Food program (known sometimes as UNSC Resolution 986). One Voices founder, Bob Bossie, in a group meeting to evaluate the program, determined: "The biggest problem [Voices] face[s], as I see it, is Resolution 986."[13] The reason was explained by founding member Chuck Quilty in an interview conducted for this article: "The problem [Voices] saw right away was that 986 would be used by the United States to say that humanitarian problems in Iraq were taken care of and allay any of those who might be concerned that sanctions were killing innocent people."[14] They abhorred the program because it improved the lot of ordinary Iraqis, and therefore, diminished U.S. culpability.

I can remember the exact instant when I decided to leave the utopian fantasy world of Voices. I was on a train from Bellingham, Washington, where I lived at the time, to Portland, Oregon, to visit a friend. It was the spring of 2000, and I was reading a new article on sanctions by Amatzia Baram. Baram proceeded to shatter the myth that 1.5 million Iraqis had died of sanctions-related disease. He did it by checking Iraqi claims against recent Iraqi census data. Since 1991, Iraq's population, even by Iraqi figures, had grown way too fast for there to be anything near the number of sanctions-related deaths claimed by Iraq.