Inside the Ring

Test case

The nomination of Gen. T. Michael Moseley to be Air Force chief of staff is being viewed inside the Pentagon as a test case to judge the game plan of Sen.John McCain, Arizona Republican.

Mr. McCain, a Senate Armed Services Committee member, held up a number of Pentagon nominations last year over the Boeing tanker lease scandal.

A Defense Department inspector general report delivered to Congress this week contains nothing to implicate Gen. Moseley, we are told. Gen. Moseley, who successfully directed the air war to bring down Saddam Hussein, is highly regarded by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and was rewarded with promotion to four stars and appointed Air Force vice chief.

But Mr. McCain has shown a willingness to block any nominee in his effort to get more Boeing-related information from the Pentagon. Officials will watch closely at Gen. Moseley’s confirmation hearing to see how Mr. McCain treats the nominee to succeed Gen. John Jumper.

Next in line will be nominees as secretaries of the Navy and Air Force.

Note home

This is an e-mail from a U.S. government official who leaves Baghdad soon, after a six-month tour. He tells us the Iraqi-U.S. alliance is winning partly because Abu MusabZarqawi offers only one alternative: bloodshed.

“They can blow themselves up and take innocent people with them, but they can never win the popular support. They are loathed by the Iraqi on the street. To see what kind of government they are capable of producing, one need only look at the Taliban. They’re great at forcing men to grow beards or stoning women, but they can’t provide basic social services, build roads, educate their children or create employment. Like the Nazis, Soviets and Apartheid before them, they will ultimately fail simply because they are incapable of succeeding. In my lifetime, I have witnessed three great triumphs of the human spirit: the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nelson Mandela walking out of prison and Iraqis defiantly going to the voting booth on January 30th despite the constant threat of death.”

Influence opportunity

The Chinese government is continuing its efforts to interfere with Congress’ legislative power.

A Chinese official who identified himself to staff and members of Congress as “Dr. Liu” threatened legislators with “serious” consequences if provisions of the fiscal 2006 defense-authorization bill were passed into law.

“It is obviously part and parcel of their efforts to lobby the U.S. Congress,” one U.S. official told us.

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